Things in books that instantly made you put it down

[IronTeeth]

I was reading a book, and it was OK (not brilliant, but had some interesting maybe potential.... and then this (image)

Ooh, you smell fresh, innocent like a good egg... not like a nasty spoiled one...

(The first in the Half-Moon Hollow series is “wry, delicious fun” (Susan Andersen, New York Times bestselling author) as it follows a librarian...)

Books where the characters are too cliched. Eg one character is a bohemian artist who wears floaty clothes and exists on next to money, lives in a trendy basement flat (probably very expensive in reality) and the other is an uptight New York career girl. Just can't stand the stereotyping and cliches. Makes the characters hard to relate to at best and shallow.
An example is Sister by Rosamund Lupton.

@SoMuchForSummerLove

Books that are contrived around a 'big event' such as The Slap. Fuck I hated that book.

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things...the whole book leads up to a shocking event. Except it's really not much of an event at all.

I just googled it and saw this review, and this is exactly how I felt about it "though you couldn't say this is a poor novel...it would be hard to imagine a paler one, its lifeblood sucked out by a Virginia Woolfish adherence to the fey, the pretend, the fortuitously elegant."

If No one speaks of Remarkable Things was extremely dull. Very disappointing, just ended. I wish I'd put it down earlier. I found the style really irritating and it definitely put me off reading any of his other books.

Definitely names.

Dexter would no more have been called Dexter (One Day) than Karen would have been Karen in Outnumbered. (on the 50 book thread we actually looked to see how many Dexters had been born in the year he would have been born to graduate (the same day as me) in 1988 and there were about 3. All in Scotland. I'm pretty sure as well that one of the days referenced was the wrong day of the week.

Freya North used to have the same female lead in all her books. Slightly quirky, swishy lemon scented hair, no make up except a touch of lip gloss (clear of course) and named something twee.

I find I have very little patience with silly books these days, which is no doubt a sign of my age (I’m the same with TV - I used to be able to watch and enjoy any old crap but these days I hardly watch anything). But a couple of particular irritations:

(1) A book by an American author set in London (it may have been Dan Brown) which at one point referred to “London’s fictional Baker Street”. He must have got confused between Sherlock Holmes’ (fictional) street number on (the real) Baker Street. Even the barest level of research would have shown this. Baker St even has a tube station named after it FFS.

(2) A chick lit book I was reading a few years ago where there was a thriller element involving the “dark web”. At one point the heroine and her love interest decided to “Google the dark web” to find something. I’m pretty sure that’s not how the dark web works.

(3) Encouraged by a friend, I bought the kindle version of Liz Jones’ book “8 1/2 stone”. It is terrible! Supposed to be about an overweight woman in her early 30’s but the tone is all wrong, and it constantly refers to things like obscure early 70’s sitcoms and chocolate bars. It also contains some very dubious material that makes me think an editor never got anywhere near it (think racist, ableist, fattist, misogynist, homophobic). I couldn’t finish it.

Most books written by men - almost always sexist so I rarely make it to the end (Matt Haig no 1 exception!) any book in which women are described as "bubbly" "feisty", books where all the characters are pretty white blonde 25 year olds, books about rich people, any soft porn or unsavoury sex scenes, (looking at you 50 shades), any book without proper punctuation or written in slang or a type of English I can't be expected to understand (the last 3 all too common these days)

I've only ever read one Tess Gerritsen book which I had high hopes for. Beginning was very gruesome but the plot was very interesting but then it turned into a weird soppy love story with a side order of torture and dismemberment to keep it spicy. I didn't quite know what to make of it but it put me off reading any of her other books.

“She padded across the room”. What is she, a cat? It drives me nuts, I’ll instantly go off a writer who uses it.

I read Alan Davies' autobiography and it is beautifully written and he has every right to tell his story . . . but I hadn't realised that he was sexually and emotionally abused by his father as a child and was completely unprepared to read about it. It comes as a shock in the book because I guess it came as a shock - totally out of the blue - from his perspective as a child. It was just terribly dark and heart-breaking and I had anticipated a different book and it was too painful to read.

I can't bare dream scenes. I mean why? It's like they've had to pad the chapter out with more words!

It drives me mad, what is the point of dream scenes?

@SoMuchForSummerLove

I opened a book, and on page one the protagonist was fretting that she couldn't possibly attend her best friend's wedding because she weighed about 8st, and simply had to lose five pounds before anyone would agree to be her date.

Fuck off. Women need to stop doing that shit to each other.

WTF is that egg stuff about? How weird!

@SoMuchForSummerLove was that Asking for Trouble by Liz Young? Where she eats a few fruit pastilles and is a fat cow despite only being a size 12?

Books with long descriptions of nature and books that have random sci fi interludes. Yawn!

Yes. All of the 50 shades books. Such poorly written twilight fan fiction.

I hate books when the tortured soul heroine usually a young widow is petite with dark hair and eyes like a doe. Started to read Robert Webb’s latest novel but as soon as she was described I couldn’t be arsed to read any more.

When I read “the end” I kinda put it down then

@SnottyLottie

Sorry if anyone had already mentioned it already but ‘According to Yes’ by Dawn French was ghastly!

If you haven’t read it, it’s about a chubby but bubbly woman (sound familiar, Dawn?) who takes a nannying job for a very straight laced, upper class family, and gets them to lighten up (by teaching the kids to shout and swear). She proceeds to sleep with her charge’s eighteen year old brother, their father and their grandfather, gets pregnant, and destroys the poor posh grandmother’s life.

Yes, this book really was yuck. I did put it down then picked it up & finished it (misses point of thread 😏). I wanted to see how it would be resolved. Badly.

I also hated One Day by David Nichols. Dexter Mayhew was so fecking irritating, I decided life was too short to finish it.

@Angelil - I'm sorry I didn't see your post before mine, but I have now and I'm glad it's not just me!

I don't read 'easy reads' really, and although I've heard it's actually alright, I remember seeing ads for 'Goodbye, Jimmy Choo' and inwardly swearing at it.

@ballroompink

Books with long descriptions of nature and books that have random sci fi interludes. Yawn!

I think I must be an alien, because I love long descriptions of nature! One of my favourite passages of writing ever is a whole chapter describing the changing seasons in a convent garden, with no dialogue or events except description of the nuns working in the garden! It's from In This House of Brede. I find it so beautiful and moving, and I've memorised whole sections of it at this point.

Stephen King’s penchant for graphic cruelty to animals.

If I open a book and its set in a poor, difficult to read or unfamiliar type face I dont care how good the plot is. It gets put back onto the shelf

Google the dark web
Moby Dick. I couldn't hack the pages and pages of whale killing.
Ben Elton - I think it was Time and time again . Awful awful tripe. Terrible plot 'twist' which makes the whole book a nonsense. A female professor, the size of whose arse had to be mentioned EVERY time she moved, stood, sat, turned, breathed, blinked... a Scottish character whose dialogue had to be written phonetically, while all the other characters' accents remained a mystery (so South English then).

I just could not read Fifty Shades of Grey. Mind numbingly awful, Mills and Boon meets S&M. I'm sure many will hate me for this!
Could not finish American Psycho, too grim for me. Think it was a canibalistic chapter about cooking & eating a girl.

@Missillusioned

I couldn't continue with a Kate Atkinson novel because it starts with the murder of a family. The baby boy was the same age as my baby boy at the time.

I love Kate Atkinson, the books are very well written, but I couldn't read that one after that scene.

Me too. Same book and I've never gone back to it despite loving her books.

When a defiant, spirited, always beautiful and young female character “lifts her chin” to express her wilful yet oh so cute and adorable rebellious streak. Happened a lot in Eva ibbottson’s ‘The Morning Gift’ I actively starting rooting against the heroine because this description was so irritating.

Non linear time lines.
I always feel that writers think they are clever.
Mostly they are maddening.

Bad writing, of course. Unlikeable characters (The Slap is a prime example - I couldn't root for any of them, even the kids). And daft names. Temperance Deassee Brennan in Kathy Reichs' books, for example - I just couldn't get beyond Chapter 1 of the first book in the series. Especially when she was known as Tempe. Okay, so how do I pronounce that in my head? Temp, Tempay, Tempeh, Tempy?

Someone has lent me Lionel Shriver's latest. Now I thoroughly enjoyed We Need To Talk About Kevin. But even if the names are supposed to be humorous, and they must be, I can't even face starting a book about Remington Alabaster and his wife Serenata Terpsichore.