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.

Stacey Abrams of Georgia elections fame is a romance writer! She's published a bunch of novels as Selena Montgomery.

@BlairWaldorfLovesShopping

I too loved Louise Bagshawe's books, in my teens, but what blew my mind later on was that she had written Peter Mensch into one of her books as a character (can't remember the name but it was about 2 girls who were rivals after being at Oxford University) and then years later she married him?! Anyone else find that crazy? Maybe she already knew him but I'm sure at least he was married to someone else before. Possibly even she was the OW? I might need to read back into it now!

I think this was Career Girls. Peter was the arsehole popular rich guy who was going out with brash American Topaz but ended up either kissing or sleeping with her upper class rich best friend Rowena who was much more his class. This is why they fell out and were rivals for years.

Are you sure it was this Peter though. Peter is not an uncommon name. You would think she would have modelled Michael, or Nathan on her husband who were the sexy good guys?

And more to the point, how on earth did i remember all that? Its been decades since I read this

@LaMarschallin
So did you write any in the end?! I feel I read some of yours...

In fact I am sure one of Louise Bagshawes other characters was actually based on her husband. I cant remember the name of the book but it featured Diana who was married to a rich tycoon called Ernie and she ends up working for a small book publisher who hates Ernie and together they take over his business. The guy she works for - I think he may also have been called Michael - it was him she said was developed as a character based on her husband. Unless she was married twice? Unfair to speculate on being the OW on a light hearted thread though

@burritofan

I read the Jack Reacher books to my husband. They're contrived at the best of time and SO badly written. Oh, god, they’re my weakness, though. My absolute favourite was reading two back to back and in one, his fists were described as “the size of roast chickens”. In the next one: “he put his fists on the table. The size of frozen turkeys”. They’d grown! What implausible poultry will come next?!

This made made me laugh so bad!!!!

Scarby9

LaMarschallin
So did you write any in the end?!

Sadly, no.
I never got past a plot outline, which I divided up into chapters, and the first couple of pages.
Obviously, I wrote out the heavy petting scene a few times: I was a curious teenager and they were more innocent times.

I feel I read some of yours...

However rubbish the ones you read seemed, they were brilliant compared with the very small amount of rubbish I produced, I'm afraid.

@BlairWaldorfLovesShopping

I too loved Louise Bagshawe's books, in my teens, but what blew my mind later on was that she had written Peter Mensch into one of her books as a character (can't remember the name but it was about 2 girls who were rivals after being at Oxford University) and then years later she married him?! Anyone else find that crazy? Maybe she already knew him but I'm sure at least he was married to someone else before. Possibly even she was the OW? I might need to read back into it now!

Weirdly, Zadie Smith does this too. In White Teeth there's a bit where some Irish schoolgirls are talking about attractive boys and they refer to 'your man Nicky Laird' as a 'ride'. White Teeth came out in 2000 but she wrote a lot of it before that; she married Laird in 2004 and has talked about how she met him at university but they were with other people, then they got together. Unless that line was a very late drop-in, I think she must have written it as a bit of a come-on while they were separately coupled-up.

Or maybe it was just an in-joke with her friends, who knows? But it makes me smile.

Few years back I read a book that was advertised as must read. Still has a lot of stars on goodreads "Behind Closed Doors" by B. A. Paris. It is such a bad book on so many levels.

I never finished it, as the story line was getting more bizzare by the page.

The thing that really felt like a slap in a face was moment when the protagonist is trying to run away from hotel from her husband (as it appears she married a psycho) and when she finally gets to reception, gets her passport etc, instead of doing a runner she decides, yes, I do want to take a shower. Which results in him imprisoning her. That was the very begining, but I was trying to give it a chance... My mistake.

I do however feel that a lot of times we as readers grow, get life experience and the plots that long time ago sound entrtaining or funny now bring slap in a face offence. I tried re-reading few old favourites and stopped as they were so bad, and I never remember them being so cringy.

@Cheeseandlobster Career Girls yes! So glad someone else remembers it. The music producer that slept with Rowena wasn't Peter Mensch, I think he was called Peter (?) Krebs (how do I remember this?!). Peter Mensch was only mentioned in passing in the book as a music producer. I had a google and found this:
www.theawl.com/2012/08/the-unavoidable-louise-mensch/
So yes she did know PM before she wrote the book, which is what I've always wondered.
(Re the speculation about there being an affair, that is not my own speculation but that of his ex-wife's family - I remember reading it in the papers at the time of LB/PM's secret wedding. But will leave it there!)

I mean Michael Krebs! And yes you're right Peter was the one at Oxford. I clearly need to read it again

You guys have ruined all books for me! I'm stood in my local supermarket looking for a book for Dh and all I can see are titles you've rubbished 😂😂

GeordieGreigsButtButtZoom
I've never read any James Bond books...are they as enjoyably daft as the films?

I’ve never read any of Ian Fleming’s but I did enjoy Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks.

@BlairWaldorfLovesShopping

I mean Michael Krebs! And yes you're right Peter was the one at Oxford. I clearly need to read it again

She has written a sequel to this book you know in case you are interested set years and years later when their children are all grown up too. I found it in the library once. I might be wrong but I think it opens either at Michael Krebs funeral or talking about his death. I want to re read now too. That and The Movie and the one with dodgy Diana

@Cheeseandlobster wow thank you I am definitely interested! Will have to check if all her books are on kindle unlimited.

"He moved/smiled imperceptibly". Just think about that one. How does that happen?

Reminds me of a novelisation of the Upstairs Downstairs series I read in the 70s.

“Lady Marjorie was clearly distressed, but like a true patrician she showed no sign of it.”

Er what?

[quote BlairWaldorfLovesShopping]**@Cheeseandlobster* Career Girls yes! So glad someone else remembers it. The music producer that slept with Rowena wasn't Peter Mensch, I think he was called Peter (?) Krebs (how do I* remember this?!). Peter Mensch was only mentioned in passing in the book as a music producer. I had a google and found this:
www.theawl.com/2012/08/the-unavoidable-louise-mensch/
So yes she did know PM before she wrote the book, which is what I've always wondered.
(Re the speculation about there being an affair, that is not my own speculation but that of his ex-wife's family - I remember reading it in the papers at the time of LB/PM's secret wedding. But will leave it there!)[/quote]
That link was interesting reading by the way I remember her saying she had actively toned down her sex scenes now she was married. Her characters always had the most amazing sex but again unrealistic. Lots of women whimpering in desire and having to say please before the hero would do the deed

[quote BlairWaldorfLovesShopping]@Cheeseandlobster wow thank you I am definitely interested! Will have to check if all her books are on kindle unlimited.[/quote]
The new books are under Mensch by the way

What I do find a bit revolting in that book is Caroline making delicious deserts out of the leftovers from the dons' champagne flutes. That is just grim, isn't it?

(Besides which, snaffling a couple of bottles would surely not have been beneath her abilities.)

I must have blanked that bit out! Yes, that's truly grim. I can forgive her though, because she also managed to make a ball gown out of a festoon blind, and was generally just brilliant.

Talking of ridiculous books, I'm just remembering Flowers in the Attic, with the sadist grandma, the mum who tries to poison the children (with salt?), and the incestuous siblings. So entertaining as a 14 year old though.

Just to add to LaMarschallin's excellent post, M&B actually also used to send notes with their free books if you wanted to write for them, and the notes were on a cassette tape...which was called a 'kissette'!
I did submit a couple of drafts and they were very encouraging, while totally saying no chance,love!

Wasn't it just arsenic, Collidascope? On their daily doughnuts?

Collidascope

What I do find a bit revolting in that book is Caroline making delicious deserts out of the leftovers from the dons' champagne flutes. That is just grim, isn't it?

Went to a wine tasting evening years ago at exPiLs' house.
FiL was very generous with his tasting samples and quite a lot of wine got left in both bottles and glasses (not in my glasses, I'm afraid).
MiL gathered up all the leftover wine and made punch with it the next day.

Mind you, having seen her make stock from the leftover chicken carcass and the picked bones from people's plates on an earlier visit, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised.

I remember when staying in a holiday cottage I found a book in the bookcase called Meet Me in Manhattan by Claudia Carroll. The heroine is Irish and lives in Dublin. She meets a guy on line, a dishy American airline pilot apparently. They strike up a friendship, to the point that they arrange to meet in a pub in Dublin next time he flies there. But when she goes to the pub he’s not there. Later he says he was. Anyway after getting increasingly suspicious she tracks his ISP to a New York address, like you would, and flies there to check him out, like you would, and it turns out her attractive pilot is a 14 year old boy. BUT he has an attractive older brother and you can guess the rest.

@PhilODox

Wasn't it just arsenic, Collidascope? On their daily doughnuts?

Yeah, I think you're right.

It was arsenic on their donuts!
I thought Flowers in the Attic was so beautiful when I was 14!

pippitysqueakity

I thought I'd read an article in a magazine about the requirements for M&B but it may well have been something sent with the books - it was a very long time ago

Definitely didn't get a kissette and I'm very jealous of yours

I did submit a couple of drafts and they were very encouraging, while totally saying no chance,love!

Genuine respect; I never got within a million miles of that stage.