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.

People keep complaining that you can't make a living as a writer any more. Maybe it is because so much of what is published is absolute horse-shit.

@MyfanwyMontez

I want to know about the book where clothes kill people. It sounds intriguing. What’s the name of the book please?

It's by Graham Masterson called Ghost Virus. There is an awful lot of casual racism though, it's also absolutely ridiculous and full of gore. Of course I finished it just to torture myself. I actually used to love his books as a teen. They're all stupidly weird.

If you want real WTF! moments old Science Fiction Books are a gold mine.

I read on a few years ago where the evil villain's plan for taking over the planet Mars involved everyone on the planet smoking drugged cigarettes simultaneously.

The air on Mars was very thin and oxygen was precious but, after years of work, they got enough O2 in the atmosphere for everyone to light up at last. He would have gotten away with it too if the hero hadn't been a robot and was only pretending to inhale.

In lockdown I read a lot of Rankin's Rebus novels. I like the plotting & funny bits & some characters.

• Siobhan was raised entirely in Nottingham but very fervently supports Hibs. WTAF.

-Rebus is still alive, really. I mean 90% of his calories many days are alcohol. This goes on for decades.

• He's obviously a smelly pudgy poorly washed Alkie, but still pulls easily. How desperate would Scottish women have to be?
• Lots of other far-fetched nonsense.

I love me a bit of trash fiction, but I gave up on Adele Parks after I read her attempt at an Australian character (I think the book was "Husbands", could be wrong). She just threw together a bunch of lazy stereotypes and outdated slang, which I found so jarring (being an actual Australian) that I've avoided her work since.

@IncludeWomenInTheSequel oh I really liked The Post Birthday World, I've read it about three times. But I do agree about the very misplaced accent.

There is a passage in a dreadful Faye Kellerman book where a teenage girl who is torn between two boys decides to offer the one she isn't officially with something she's never given her boyfriend, to prove how much she loves him. Gets on all fours for anal sex.

[quote SmidgenofaPigeon]@shinynewapple2021 I had the misfortune to get a copy of The Hunting Party, also by Lucy Foley. Bunch of horrid late thirties wankers getting off their tits in a remote Scottish lodge and going on and on about when they were at uni. No one cares. Someone was killed but I couldn’t be bothered to find out who. I wanted them to all to drown in the loch, since they spent so much time being twatty braying oafs and and quaffing champagne next to it. DEFINITELY the kind of people who are insufferable to be sat near in a train or restaurant.[/quote]
I read this one as well. The main characters were all so dislikable, including the murdered party, and they didn't have any personalities besides "dislikable oxford educated city snob". One of the couples had a 6 month old baby who was never mentioned. They went out hunting, where was the baby? They all had a long dinner and drinking session while the baby slept unattended in a separate building and so on. Why introduce a baby to the plot if you're just going to pretend they arent there?
SPOILER - The only character with a semblance of humanity turned out to be the killer and was a crazy psychopath stalker

This is the book I meant upthread - not The Island! Utter crap.

I was going to say, isn’t The Island about leprosy?? 😂

I was just about to start The Guest List. No idea why I bought it, as I read The Hunting Party, realised who the murderer was straight away, and thought it was just terrible.

I’ve just read The Foundling. It’s about a girl who sells shrimps in Victorian (I think, maybe earlier) London. Goes about with a bucket of shrimps on her head dripping shrimp juice all over her so she stinks.
Anyway regardless of this a lovely middle class man shags her and she has a child which she gives up to the orphanage. Saves for 7 years to buy the child back, but finds out someone else took her as a baby.
Finds the kid (of course) then gets a job as her nanny (natch). Steals the kid and runs away. Gets caught and the adoptive mother (the MC father’s wife - he died without knowing but she somehow did??) instead of going nuts, tells her to keep the kid and buys her a nice cottage in the country to facilitate this. Despite being previously so obsessed with the kid that she’d never let her leave the house.

Sooo many other annoying things. Including a woman called Ambrosia who had bountiful breasts and hair and was covered in milk and honey or something.

@ChocOrange1 yes that annoyed me SO much! I was constantly like ‘wheres the baby!? How are you all here without the baby!?’

Most unlikeable characters ever.

I listened to In A Kingdom By The Sea by Sara Macdonald on audiobook.

Mostly it was dull with unlikeable characters but when the ‘action’ moved to Pakistan the writer became obsessed with ‘shalwar kameez’ and used the phrase repeatedly.
In one chapter she used it 15 times (yes I also became obsessed!) and once TWICE IN THE SAME SENTENCE 😲

Imagine if a writer wrote ‘shirt & trousers’ over and over again.
I was on edge, waiting for the reader of the audio to say it again.
Do editors not notice this sort of thing?!
Anyway, I gave up listening in the end.

@BertieBotts

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

I know someone who’s husband accused her of doing this

A book where the whole plot revolves around a couple getting married on a whim, literally just decide to get married that day, in England.
The bride's sister spends the rest of the novel trying to prevent the couple from consummating the marriage, "so it's not legal".
Except the marriage wouldn't be legal anyway as the couple did not give the required 29 days notice.

I read a crime thriller years ago in which the solution was "unknown evil twin did it".

Oh I read one of hers about this Anglo Irish aristocratic family of the past and a modern day cousin who was identical one of them bla bla.
Utter tosh but I loved it!
Thank you for reminding me to look up some more of hers

Yes the Castle Deverill books are great fun. There’s a trilogy tracing the family from the first war. I think the book you read was The Secret Hours? About the relative who ran away to America and then her daughter returns to Ireland?

I just found out Santa Montefiore is Tara Palmer Tompkinson’s sister!

As a random fact, Santa Mf is not named after the jolly old gift-giver, but a type of wheat.

I read the Jenny Colgan Scottish laird one!
Just before the end there was a throwaway sentence about how the heroine and her friends had all accidentally done keto eating sausages and eggs and so looked ravishing in their gowns for the party.

I hate it when you enjoy a book - the story is good, etc and then the ‘twist’ at the end is as thought the author thought ‘oh shit, I need to finish the book in the next chapter. Let’s pick a random villain without giving any nods to them earlier in the book’.

Jane Harper is an Australian author who wrote The Dry which is a great story. Federal police officer returns to the drought-devastated farming town of his youth after his best friend is thought to have killed his family and then himself. Not too heavy but well-written and genuinely gripping. Everyone should read it so I won’t give spoilers but when it comes to the big reveal at the end there are sufficient, well-placed clues along the way to make it a satisfying ending. It’s been made into a movie which is also great.

However her latest one, The Survivors isn’t as well crafted and feels more like what the pp noted. Still a reasonable read, but I felt like she reached the end of the novel and then randomly picked a character to create a back-story for.

I tried to read 'Patriot Games' it was clear Clancy had never been to the UK and had done no research.

Hospital insisting of taking Ryan to the door in a wheel chair because the rule were the same as the US. I've been in hospital a number of times and always walked out.

The queen and Prince Phillip dropping everything to have his family to stay as guests in Buck house having dinner with them every night.

All the bakeries open on Xmas day with people queuing outside them.

Isle of Wight ferry working on Xmas day, I know there is the odd crossing now but I don't think there were in the 1980s and I doubt the prison service would be moving prisoners that day.

That's when I stopped reading.

@ChestnutStuffing

People keep complaining that you can't make a living as a writer any more. Maybe it is because so much of what is published is absolute horse-shit.

Or that if you primarily read (a) stuff that’s free on Kindle or (b) dopey chicklit, you’re going to wade through a load of thoughtless, implausible, disposable nonsense?

"She was so upset she couldn't eat a morsel"
"The beautiful food turned to ashes in her mouth at the sight before her"

If I'm upset I drink & I eat, so never really understand the need for women to starve themselves into a faint in novels x

@Disfordarkchocolate

I was enjoying the Ruth Galloway series but her recent move from to a job at Cambridge University on the strength of publishing a couple of books. No mention of the regular publication articles, chapters etc. No wonder she ends up going back to her old university.

I really like these books, though I do think they went a bit 'off' in the middle of the series.

But why is publishing a couple of books an unlikely reason to move? I thought it was much more realistic about academia than most books - at least 90% of what she does at North Norfolk is teach, prepare to teach, do some admin, listen to Phil asking her to do more service, do a bit more admin, not get promoted ... most books about academia are all 'She swanned into the elegant lecture theatre with her doctoral gown floating behind her, stepped up to the lecturn and removed her mortarboard. "Plato asks us what is the meaning of life," she began.'

At least books (rather than book chapters) actually sound like a REF submission.

Otherwise, not chick lit which seems to dominate, but there's a big in Barbara Trapido that really bugs me. In one book Jonathan is described as having blond hair; in the next it's 'coarse black spirals'. I really like her writing but that jars me every time.

I remember reading some chicklit book with a pun on 'choos' in its title, which was weak in plot, but what got to me later on was realising that the heroine considered herself to be woefully unable to get on with the local rural smart set because ... she had moved from a house in Stoke Newington. Not Islington. At the time when I read it I didn't really understand the reference and was none the wiser; I had an image of her moving from some shithole, but ... FFS, lady, cop on.

@Jayne35

*I used to love Martina Cole books her first few were brilliant ,but after a while she just started writing the same book over and over again even using the same phrases, Belly full of arms and legs,split arse etc🙄*

This is the same reason I gave up on Martina Cole. It’s a shame as I used to really enjoy them, even in one book she repeated herself over and over.

I only read one, sounds like it could’ve been one of the later ones. Just couldn’t get past her otherwise stereotypical East End gangsters saying things like ‘Do you think I am a cunt?’ or ‘I am going to go around there and I am going to smash his face in’ 🤷🏻‍♀️

I was tempted to send my copy back to Penguin covered in red pen.

Do it!

South Ken is not on the central line and even then, you would ‘emerge to the splendid grandeur’ of Bens Cookies.
This really makes me yearn for the South Ken (and High St Ken) Ben's Cookies I dream about the Dark Chocolate Chunk.

They never used to in the "Swallows And Amazons" books either
@sueelleker

They certainly mention toothbrushes and teeth cleaning, and washing themselves. No mention of lavatorial matters though, no.