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.

Yes, I’ve noticed it with others too- what is going on? Where are the editors?
I'm an editorial freelancer and I think editorial standards have slipped hugely over the past decade or so I remember when this were all fields.
Too many freelancers who can't keep a plot in their heads and patently don't know about spelling/grammar/checking how to spell easily google-able brand names etc, and too many in-house 'editorial' people without a clue who keep using them.

The thing is Adele Parks wrote some blinding chick lit back in the day. Playing Away, Larger than Life, Game over, they really good, I don’t know what happened.

Im not sure how you get the Sperm from a used conform inside you 🤔 or why most of it hadn’t spilled out in the bin. Maybe he tied a handy knot in it

Another thing when men write woman (apart from all the pert breasts and luscious hair) they PAD everywhere. ‘I padded into the bedroom’ ‘I padded across the floor’

WHY? have you got an Always Ultra stuck on the bottom of each foot?

@SmidgenofaPigeon

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.

I read this one recently and was like WTF with that ending!

Reading Just my Luck at the moment - easy read but again was WTF at the 'musty balls comment' and the book in general to be honest 😂

I was irritated by a scene in a book recently where the characters plan a shepherds pie but don't have potatoes, so decide to make chilli instead - to do this they have to look up a recipe in a book. Struck me as implausible that anyone who cooks regularly would need a recipe for such a basic dish!

😂😂 I’m still laughing about the clothes killing people

Do you think the balls were supposed to be musky? At least that would suggest sexiness rather than a lack of bathing.

@Teenplustwenties Was that May Contain Nuts? And the mother planned to sit the entry exam disguised as her daughter?

Or indeed putting on boxers too soon after bathing, keeping the balls moist for too long and allowing a must to develop :o

My absolute favourite was a Tom Clancy Jack Ryan book that in the end I just read for the laughs. Two highlights - Jack Ryan's wife working for NHS and they stop an operation halfway through for all the surgeons to head to the pub for lunch leaving the patient on the table. Couple of pints, head back, finish the op. Because its 'socialised medicine' so that happens!!!

But the highlight was Jack Ryan and wife having to escape down a cliff I think it was with Prince Charles and Diana. Jack and Prince Charles start using machine guns against the baddies and Diana and Jack's wife have a touching moment hiding behind a rock where Diana reveals she is pregnant. I still think I must have imagined parts of this because nothing else I have read matches the insanity - and it was all written utterly straight-faced.

Laughing at the Michael Caine voice!

I fume at writers/screenwriters trying to be all realistic about state secondary schools and then a character says "I'm really tired, had an awful lesson with 5B."

The new system of school year numbering has been in place for nearly 30 years!!!

The writers of Outnumbered are guilty of this, as is JK Rowling (I will let her off re HP as obviously Hogwarts doesn't come under Ofsted, but she does it in The Casual Vacancy as well).

It definitely says musty, not musky! WTF was she thinking. Unwashed festering balls.

I think the stupidest book I ever read was called Zelda’s Cut by Philippa Gregory, about a bestselling trashy female novelist and her shenanigans and then at the end her editor (male), has surgery and takes her identity. Just suddenly, no drugs, no transition period. It all takes about a week.

Sorry if that’s a spoiler

Really bad geography gets me every time - where the author has just made stuff up without even thinking about whether it makes any sense. I don't mean fictional places, but where they've set a story in a place they clearly know next to nothing about.

I read a book about a couple who meet in St Pancras when their trains are delayed. He's getting a train to Scotland - those don't go from St Pancras. He's later worried about it being dark when he gets to his aunt's house, in the Hebrides, in summer. The author also has a different character who is a teacher in Scotland, who decides to tour with his musician friends in the summer holidays. Except that it's August in the story, and Scottish schools go back in early August. The rest of the book was utter fluffy trash as well, but the fact the author didn't appear to ever have been to Scotland, where a major part of it was set, was particularly irritating. (It's called "The Day We Meet Again", don't read it).

Some of these are hilarious! I used to love a bit of chick lit escapism but it all annoys me now.

Sorry I can't remember which book it was but one I read many years ago had main characters with deadlocks in their hair and sideboards on their faces.....

I think it's a combination of falling editorial standards and the ever-hungry sales machine of publishing houses. If a Marian Keyes or an Adele Parks does well that makes a massive difference to a publisher's bottom line, so the authors are pushed and prodded for their next two books, whether they're ready or not, and whether they've even got two more books in them (or should retire until they've got some fresh new ideas).

Then the publishing house has to whip up their Sales and Marketing teams to sing the praises of this latest from the bestselling author, even if everyone knows it's total horseshit.

Re. Lee Child - I reckon he's realised he was recycling, as he's handed over to his brother now?

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.

@IntermittentParps

Yes, I’ve noticed it with others too- what is going on? Where are the editors? I'm an editorial freelancer and I think editorial standards have slipped hugely over the past decade or so I remember when this were all fields. Too many freelancers who can't keep a plot in their heads and patently don't know about spelling/grammar/checking how to spell easily google-able brand names etc, and too many in-house 'editorial' people without a clue who keep using them.

I noticed that with a couple of Jane Green novels. Her books have become ludicrous - full of plot holes/contradictions and non-sequiturs - and the editing is horrendous. I was tempted to send my copy back to Penguin covered in red pen.

Also, to the OP for the Michael Caine voice.

Yes, bad geography is the worst, I read one where they ‘jumped on the central line and emerged to the splendid grandeur of the Royal Albert Hall’

No you fucking didn’t, South Ken is not on the central line and even then, you would ‘emerge to the splendid grandeur’ of Bens Cookies.

Everyone said Gone Girl was amazing but I thought it all seemed a bit implausible. I don't mind implausible, necessarily, but I kind of got the feeling I was meant to take this one seriously.

@MaelyssQ

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.

Cecilia Aherne was always shit, her first book was P.S. I Love You, ffs.

I can't even remember the author of this particular book or the title but they commit the unforgivable historical crime of having the Americans liberate Auschwitz.
Just what the actual fuck.
The Americans never went further East than Berlin!!

I hate it when authors get fundamental aspects of history so wrong, particularly regarding the Holocaust.

@CriticalWoman I can't remember what it was. I have managed to wipe it from my memory it was so dire. Reading the description it could easily be though.

'Musty balls' sounds like a slip of the key for 'musky' but because 'musty' is a word, it's not been picked up by a spellcheck; the copyeditor hasn't queried it because... who knows, maybe musty balls was what the author meant, and the proofreader's checked the proofs against the ms and thought, yup, says musty on there so it's not a typo, and let it through.

I read Mill Point Road, a Kindle book about a serial killer by JK Ellem and it was utter rubbish. A really interesting and gripping tale , completely ruined by gratuitous sex scenes and then no explanation whatsoever for the killer's behaviour!!