Absolutely Ridiculous Things in Books

[SmidgenofaPigeon]

I’m reading (it’s painful and I will use it for kindling when I’m finished) Just My Luck by Adele Parks. I actually used to enjoy her books back in the day for a bit of mindless escapism and the characters were well-written but they’ve slid into lunacy over the last few years. Think twins pretending to be the same person and getting married to one guy (or something like that) and a mum’s glamorous 45 year old mate shagging her 17 year old son and getting pregnant while they all live under the same roof.

The latest one they win the lottery and calamity ensues in the most implausible ways possible.

The daughter in this one is musing over the fact that her boyfriend has turned into a bit of cad and she’s moping about, and musing over missing ‘the musty smell of his balls’

THE MUSTY SMELL OF HIS BALLS.

The character in question is FIFTEEN. She was ONLY FIFTEEN YEARS OLD (in the voice of Micheal Caine)

Please add, there must be loads, and we can have a laugh on this horrible wet January afternoon.

All the female writers I used to enjoy seem to have gone off piste lately. Sheila O'Flanaghan, Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Theresa Driscoll have all stopped writing gripping readable books and started writing utter twaddle.

Yes, I’ve noticed it with others too- what is going on? Where are the editors?

Maeve Binchy died in 2012 which might explain why her stuff is a bit off lately!

@CounsellorTroi
🤣🤣🤣

I read a book called the French Gardener by Santa Montefiore. This French guy turns up in an English village where he used to work in the gardens of the local big house 25 years ago. Nobody recognised him.

I'm still smarting from reading 48 Beast Quest books out loud to DS and at no point do they go to the toilet or clean their teeth. Seriously unhealthy.

The Jack Reacher books, I used to love them but the last one was so arrogant. He literally runs round this town killing everyone is sight and there isn't the single whiff of law enforcement, no consequence whatsoever! And of course, the fit, younger girl finds him utterly irresistible and shags him for the brief period of time he stays in said small town! Around 25 books with the exact same plot line.... come Lee, twist it up a bit!!

Huge coincidences really wind me up. I seem to see them more in "chick lit" type books. Can't remember what it was called or who it was by but something like female journalist meets totally normal bloke in course of every day life. Very obvious they will end up together. She goes to another country to interview some member of the aristocracy and lo! It is him.

And also the amount of people who run away from home/relationship/move to another city/country and on the same day find kindly person willing to offer them job with accommodation.

I read a lot of crime fiction and discovered several series written now but set in the 1920s/30s. Some pull off the writing style better than others.

I started a new Daisy Thurbin series where the father had gone missing and the mother and daughter were unable to answer basic questions about him - how does he get to work? He gets the train but mother and daughter would never dream of sharing public space with the great unwashed, they get driven into town. What does he do for work? The daughter sniffed, ‘One doesn’t like to ask such questions of ones parents.’ A few pages later and someone has a mobile phone and I realise that this is not set in the past but the mother and daughter characters just didn’t work in present day.

Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Theresa Driscoll have all stopped writing gripping readable books and started writing utter twaddle.

Maeve Binchy has been dead for 9 years

@MaelyssQ

All the female writers I used to enjoy seem to have gone off piste lately. Sheila O'Flanaghan, Maeve Binchy, Marian Keyes, Theresa Driscoll have all stopped writing gripping readable books

Maeve Binchy has an excuse though, she's been dead for about 8 years.

@Terracottasaur gmta!

The plot of every Mills & Boon book. So bad I wrote a poem about it (which was published in an anthology thingy).

She boobed boobily down the stairs whilst thinking about how beautiful she wasn’t.

AKA most male writers who are trying to write female characters.

And also the male love interest in these books does things that would be huge red flags in real life. Like flying halfway across the world to give the female back something she left behind on their first chance meeting.

Yes!! I can't cope with most books these days, massively disappointing as I used to love reading.

I think it's something to do with the way books are marketed, it's like the equivalent of clickbait, but in the book world. It doesn't matter whether the actual content is any good as long as they can get you to buy it in the first place and there are probably more effective ways to get people to buy books than making sure the content is good and recommendable.

Unfortunately I can't remember any examples but I will have a nose through my kindle.

@EsmesRedPetticoat This always made me laugh, thinking along similar lines: the-toast.net/2014/04/29/protagonist-flaws/

I read (or rather half read) a supposedly 'amusing' novel about a MC family trying to get their child into private secondary school (so child was 10/11).
When the couple started trying to use the child's Bronze Duke of Edinburgh as a reason I gave up. You can't even start that until you are 13/14.
Never have I read a book so obviously poorly researched.

Actually checking my bookcase it wasn't Maeve Binchy at all (apologies Maeve, wherever you may be now) it was Cecilia Aherne. She used to write really interesting and readable books and now they are just drivel.

I remembered something wise that was ridiculous in an Adele Parks book

Firstly most of the characters in this story live in Holland Park, which is stupid because they are not millionaires and fanny about in jobs that involve taking wanky black and white photos or making cabinets.

SPOILERS

The really awful bit is a female character that has a daughter with her husband but later the husband finds out he was infertile all along and it couldn’t be his. Instead of having a chat about this revelation he just turns overnight into an alcoholic and pisses the bed and breaks an antique lamp and ends up in prison. At the end it’s revealed that the wife, desperate to get pregnant, STOLE HER BEST FRIEND’S HUSBAND’S sperm out of a condom when she heard them having sex in a bathroom at a party. She then pounced on the condone and voila, a much longed-for baby. At the end the husband gets over it and doesn’t drink anymore and they go on with their lives.

Ooh actually there was one I read a few years ago where the character had a perfectly nice date with this bloke only to discover that at the end of sex, he tied a knot in the used condom and this was so offputting, she dumped him and kept referencing it with her best friend until the end of the book

Oh bugger, never read any Adele Parks and saw the write up for the book you are talking about SmidgenofaPigeon and thought that sounded like something I could while away a couple of hours with. I shall cross it off the list now as it sounds dire, a 15 year old missing the musty smell of his balls - ugh, thanks but no thanks.

Cheers for saving me money and time SmidgenofaPigeon.

I read a crime novel recently (or what I thought was a crime novel.) It turned out people's clothes were killing them. It was absolutely ridic, needlessly and distasteful gruesome and full of clunky, crappy narrative. At one point the male copper rings his Indian colleague and when she doesn't answer he muses to himself that she may have gone out for a curry. Right.
Literally the stupidest book I have ever wasted my time and money on and as the OP mentions, it ended up as kindling.

:o How exactly do you steal sperm from a condom? Sounds messy... did she have a handy calpol syringe?

Oh also, Rose Madder by Stephen King. Had the potential to be terrifyingly brilliant with the abusive husband and Rose's escape, but instead went into some nonsensical headfuck whereby she jumps into a picture and there's some kind of bull involved. Yeah, I've forgotten most of it now but still remember the disappointment!