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.

I read one recently (which actually was a really good book) but the mother of the family got sick of being taken for granted and buggered off for a holiday. But before she left, she put a cooked lasagne on the table and the next day her family when they discovered it reheated it and ate it.

I was like WTF!!!! Food poisoning!!!! Your need to refrigerate things lik that overnight!

@SarahAndQuack

He has 'a small well-clipped tortoiseshell moustache' when he sits with Katherine in the hospital cafe after visiting Jane (that's the bit with the hair clipped poodle-style, both of which details make me seriously question BT's taste in men, though I do admit I 'get' Jonathan in this respect).

I would say tortoiseshell implies pale hair, doesn't it?

Though, I will check to see if there's anything else to indicate.

Oh, to me tortoiseshell implies sort of brindled dark reddish, like the colour of old ornaments and inlaid furniture using tortoise shell, which would fit with some dark-haired men having redder facial hair than their head hair.

And I'm sorry, I cannot write 'blond' -- while recognising that 'blonde' is incorrect, 'blond' makes me think of the kind of terrible Harry Potter fanfiction that envisages Harry and Draco desperately in love and gets terribly confused by having to say 'he' and 'his' for both people in sex scenes, so continually refers to Draco as 'the blond'.

I agree that Katherine has incredibly dubious taste in men in a variety of ways, from neurotic but pretty Roger, Italian fascist Michele (can we really be supposed to find him charming??) and belligerent Jonathan with his 'bold charisma' and Greek child bride, and tendency to say stuff like 'Do you not know that if I can't unzip my bloody flies and climb into you, I shall go mad?'

Have a look on Twitter at ‘men write women’ one of the best ones was a crime novel where the corpse had small purse inside her vagina with cards and money in it. It’s not a handbag down there and ow!

@CupboardOfJoy

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've read that one as well but can't remember the name

This thread has made me laugh. Done books I've read have repeated phrases in figment like the 'padding' all over. And I've of my favourites 'her mouth fell open.
A list of some of the worst culprits for this absolute drivel;
C L Taylor
Claire Allan
Ruth Ware
Cass Green
Lucy Dawson
Lucy Clarke
Lisa Jewell, as well as others mentioned.

[quote Littlelapwing]@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.[/quote]
Also in The Hunting Party, the mum of the baby has a Muslim name but the baby has a Hindu name. Looked like someone had just googled "Asian names" and plonked them together.

I agree to a point that we, the reader, have grown older, wiser (?) and more jaded. But even allowing for that, I still think there is a marked decline in most of the authors already mentioned later work.

Look at the wonder that is Riders, Rivals and Polo, compared to Jilly Cooper’s later work. I love love love Marian Keyes Rachel’s Holiday, and the other Walsh sisters, but her last few books have been ‘meh’. I know my tastes haven’t changed that much in my middle age as I still enjoy the previous work.

It was Cleo giving Roy Grace the anatomically improbable BJ, as it happens, fact fans.

Italian fascist Michele

Hmm @Cluas things like that immediately put me off- I don't know how to pronounce Michele in Italian, and would get too frustrated I'd stop reading. I mean, why not at least choose an Italian name that most English-speaking people can guess at- Marco, Leo, Enzo etc?

Hmm @Cluas things like that immediately put me off- I don't know how to pronounce Michele in Italian, and would get too frustrated I'd stop reading. I mean, why not at least choose an Italian name that most English-speaking people can guess at- Marco, Leo, Enzo etc?

But you could always google them if you wanted to actually know the correct pronunciation? I expect most non-Italian speakers anglicize alI those names anyway. I saw on Twitter that the author of The Mercies said that she didn't know how to pronounce the names of her characters before she heard the audio book.

Prior to the advent of the railways, which allowed people to move around en masse, West Yorkshire had a fairly small population that lived in small towns and hillside villages, and had been in place in the area for hundreds of years.

But Jane comes from Gateshead, not Thornfield:

'If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two'
'What to do? Where to go?'
'To see a sick lady who has sent for me.'
'What sick lady? Where does she live?'
'At Gateshead in -shire.'
'-shire? That is a hundred miles off ...'

Interesting that a 45 yo old woman can seduce a 17 yo boy and it's considered a suitable topic for light hearted, titillating chick lit.

If that were a man and a 17 yo girl most women would be yelling about grooming and inappropriate exploitation of someone who was practically still a child.

Which reminds me....not a book, (although maybe it was a book first?)

Emily In Paris. Total nonsense from start to finish but especially the episode where she goes to stay for a couple of days in a French chateau to pitch her PR business to the family who make Champagne. She ends up having a one night stand with the son of the family, who unbeknownst to her turns out to be only 17.

And then he comes down to breakfast the following morning and kisses her at the table in front of his parents and it becomes apparent that they shagged the night before. HER FIRST NIGHT ON A TRIP TO SCHMOOZE A POTENTIAL CLIENT WHO OFFERED HER A WEEKEND OF HOSPITALITY IN THEIR HOME AND THIS IS HOW SHE BEHAVES? SHAGS THEIR SON?

But that was never even mentioned. The only issue seemed to be his age, and even that only alarmed Emily. The rest of the family all thought it was hilarous.

Mind you, this is France. Macron...just sayin....

@Cluas - oh, interesting! That would certainly make better sense (esp. in light of Jonathan's musings about Stella's hair and the 'intricacies of my dear late father's part-Sephardic DNA').

I had visualised it as tortoiseshell like the cats, which are predominantly pale with reddish/dark blotches.

Thank you! I feel a great sense of all being right in the world.

Absolutely agree about 'the blond' in that context. Blee.

And yes, I struggle with bits of Jonathan now, so try not to revisit him too much. I agree with whoever it was first suggested that books change as you age. It's funny - I didn't find him appealing at all when I first read the books aged about 16 (I thought Roger was clearly far more attractive, which is right on cue given Trapido later says he had the sort of delicate looks teenage girls go for). Then I thought Jonathan was great, and now I admit I skim past the sex bits.

I think Trapido has man issues in general (but in a nice, and relatable way). Noah in Noah's Ark is a bit of a dick on the whole, and I find it slightly suss how constantly she sends up her own attraction to Jewish men. I've got to admit that if she were a male writer writing like that about women, we would probably call it objectifying and possibly very slightly racist.

But there we go, I'm ruining my own favourite books!

@CrochetOrBust

I hate it when authors throw in random bits of completely extraneous detail. It’s even more irritating when the extraneous detail turns out to be wrong.

I read one book where someone was travelling from Paddington to Bristol (fine), except for some reason the author thought that the train stopped at Didcot before Reading. There was no need to mention either station in terms of the plot - and it’s actually the other way round anyway!

And so annoying for something like this which would be so easy to check - 30 seconds on National Rail Enquiries will give you the calling points for trains on any line.

@PhilODox

Italian fascist Michele

Hmm @Cluas things like that immediately put me off- I don't know how to pronounce Michele in Italian, and would get too frustrated I'd stop reading. I mean, why not at least choose an Italian name that most English-speaking people can guess at- Marco, Leo, Enzo etc?

To be fair, I think if you're bothered by a name in Italian you're going to find Trapido really irritating, because she quotes quite a lot of untranslated Italian (and German).

TBH I liked it. I don't speak German in the slightest, and when we did Brecht (in translation) at university I got bonus points from my supervisor for being able to say, in what I'm sure was a shit accent, 'erst kommt das fressen, dan kommt die Moral,' purely because Jacob says it and explains it to Katharine. I never let on I got it from middlebrow women's lit, he wouldn't have been at all impressed by that, but it amused me.

@TwoHundredThousandTimes

I read one recently (which actually was a really good book) but the mother of the family got sick of being taken for granted and buggered off for a holiday. But before she left, she put a cooked lasagne on the table and the next day her family when they discovered it reheated it and ate it.

I was like WTF!!!! Food poisoning!!!! Your need to refrigerate things lik that overnight!

Ladder of Years? That was a bit implausible, especially the finding a home and job at once part, but I let it go because, as you say, it's good. Artistic licence.

@SlatternIsMyMiddleName

I agree to a point that we, the reader, have grown older, wiser (?) and more jaded. But even allowing for that, I still think there is a marked decline in most of the authors already mentioned later work.

Look at the wonder that is Riders, Rivals and Polo, compared to Jilly Cooper’s later work. I love love love Marian Keyes Rachel’s Holiday, and the other Walsh sisters, but her last few books have been ‘meh’. I know my tastes haven’t changed that much in my middle age as I still enjoy the previous work.

I agree about Marian Keyes but she went through a period of depression that greatly affected her writing. Her last book about the Walsh sisters was a thinly disguised story about herself I feel, and I think it would have been completely different book otherwise.

On the other hand, I can understand so called 'chick lit' writers moving away from the tropes as they get older and they want to write about families and older women. My problem with that is they tend to follow other stereotypes. They tend to be about women heading for middle age, struggling with kids but they all have well paid jobs where they can still spend money on expensive shoes and don't have to worry about paying the mortgage. See MK's recent book 'Grown Ups' or the last Bridget Jones' book where spoiler Mark has died but left Bridget with a massive insurance policy so she doesn't have to think about money ever again. It would never do to have Bridget left high and dry working in the local Tesco's so she can fit her hours round the kids schooling, would it?

I get annoyed when timelines don't work out in a believable way. This happens a lot in chick lit. Someone married their husband right after university but they've been married 20 years and are still only 39, their children are 6 and 3, but their parents got married during WWII or something daft. There is always some implausible gap in the detail that just doesn't ring true or add up.

I'm a tickler for small detail and it annoys me when we are taken for stupid. It's not like it's a massively hard thing to get right, when those details are not even relevant to the plot.

stickler, not tickler

It would never do to have Bridget left high and dry working in the local Tesco's so she can fit her hours round the kids schooling, would it?

I take your point, but to be fair Mark was a high flying lawyer so the chances of him leaving her ever needing to work in Tesco was always highly unlikely.

I often find it strange when the reverse it true and the likes of someone like Mark does leave her penniless and working in Tesco. I know it's the basis for a more interesting story but it isn't terribly realistic.

@notafanoftheman

It was Cleo giving Roy Grace the anatomically improbable BJ, as it happens, fact fans.

James' sex scenes are TERRIBLE. He really needs to learn to fade to black.

Has anyone mentioned Rupert Campbell-Black's 'buttercunt' exclamations?

Possibly the single worst thing I've ever read and I LOVE July Cooper!

@IntermittentParps - I agree. I'm a beta reader for an author and read one before publication that had allegedly been through copy-editing. I found 39 errors. Some minor but a couple of glaring ones that would have spoiled the plot. I think I've missed my calling .

I take your point, but to be fair Mark was a high flying lawyer so the chances of him leaving her ever needing to work in Tesco was always highly unlikely

Oh, I totally agree in that respect, but the reason BJ was so popular in the first place is that it was relatable, I think. Now, she's some super rich person who doesn't need to worry about how she's going to feed the kids so she can concentrate her efforts on thinking about the next shag.

I really think Fielding missed a trick with that book. I can't even remember much about it except for the bare bones and one incident where her kids got nits. And even then Bridget just threw money at the problem by taking them to one of those nit places.

Ah,now German names I have no problem with @SarahAndQuack