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.

@biddybird

The most ridiculous thing I have ever read in a novel was in Robertson Davies' "The Lyre of Orpheus". This is a very highly-respected author of Canadian literature. The events ensued as follows:

1. Man is staying overnight at the home of a couple/friends of his.

Being rich they all have separate bedrooms.

1. After all the lights are out, man (somehow finds and) puts on the husband's dressing gown and goes into wife's room.
2. Wife (on account of the dressing gown) assumes man is her husband. Mind-blowing sex ensues! Like she's never had it before! But she thinks she's shagging her husband.
3. WIfe gets pregnant and tells husband the good news as they are TTC.
4. But—husband has had mumps and hasn't told her yet he's infertile!

It carries on from there. But (3) is particularly unbelievable, isn't it?

I loved the Party Down farce episode set in the Lyre of Orpheus theatre - fitting tribute I thought 😂

Very interesting post! (Yes, I namechanged)

If you've never liked a particular author of series of books or author - Mills & Boon, Cecilia Ahearn etc - that's fine, they are not for you and that's ok.

But if you used to like an author and feel they've gone of- boil, that's a worry.

It's seems to happen to them all though, even the greats!

Do you think that maybe authors only have a set number of books inside them before it all becomes too 'try hard'...or even not 'try hard' enough?! Do they get complacent?
Does is feel like they just ran out of ideas and are clutching at straws?
Or do the expectations from the reader just get higher and higher, once they like an author, to the point that the author just cannot sustain them any longer?
Maybe authors should consider a change of genre or writing style after a few books and success? (ie. JK Rowling/Robert Galbraith)

So, tell me, if you used to love a particular author but think they've gone off the boil.....why do YOU think that is?

What do you want to see instead?

There is nothing worse than reading a weak book, with utter frustration and feeling that you could've written it better yourself (when you're not even an author).

Have these books turned weak?

Or has your expectation grown?

The point about modern slang/Americanisms in historical novels - it depends how far back they go. If they're earlier than the 17th Century, which was when the English language was exported to America, American English is no further away from how the characters would actually have spoken than British English. If a novel is set in medieval times, the characters would have been speaking Middle English (or Welsh, or Gaelic) which would be almost incomprehensible to a modern reader unless they'd studied those languages. So I don't have a problem with modern or American slang appearing in the dialogue of such a novel, because all the dialogue is in effect a translation.

@Mingmoo I have enjoyed the occasional police procedural - Cara Hunter's novels for instance - but even so I tend to skim-read the very procedural bits!

Ive just finished 'just my luck' it was awful, the end didn't make sense either!

The worst chiclit I've read recently is the the Cockleberry Way book by Nicola May.

It's got all the usual tripe - been left a business in a little village where everyone hates outsiders. Doesn't know what to do with it blah blah blah eventually opens a shop to fill a gap the village needs and the eccentric locals all accept her.

Except she is the most unlikeable character, with the fewest redeeming qualities that I've read in a really, really long time. Like I actually hated her. And to top it all off she opens a trendy pet store selling shit like dog clothes

Good luck in the off season, fuckwit

@SomewhatBored

The point about modern slang/Americanisms in historical novels - it depends how far back they go. If they're earlier than the 17th Century, which was when the English language was exported to America, American English is no further away from how the characters would actually have spoken than British English. If a novel is set in medieval times, the characters would have been speaking Middle English (or Welsh, or Gaelic) which would be almost incomprehensible to a modern reader unless they'd studied those languages. So I don't have a problem with modern or American slang appearing in the dialogue of such a novel, because all the dialogue is in effect a translation.

It's especially annoying when people complain about "modern" dialogue which is actually a much better representation of the playful wit of the era concerned vs tedious "forsooth verily" bollocks that pretends to be old-speak but is far less accurate in intent.

But when the book really was written in 1942 or whenever, I don't want a "translation". I want to know how they really spoke. That's one of the charms of old books.

I was trying to understand why I’ve gone off reading the past 10 years

This thread helped me understand

I thought it was me having become old and cynical and hard to impress

@GeordieGreigsButtButtZoom

But when the book really was written in 1942 or whenever, I don't want a "translation". I want to know how they really spoke. That's one of the charms of old books.

If it's set in what would linguistically be termed a modern period, the author should be able to make a reasonable stab at authentic-sounding dialogue. If it was actually written then we should have no difficulty understanding it.

I was talking about books set much earlier. As thecatsthecats says, using modern English is far less annoying than peppering a book with faux 'old world' dialogue.

While we're gunning for the popular, am I really the only one who loathed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society? So much twee, so many eccentric locals opening their hearts to the plucky outsider, so much appropriation of Nazi atrocities to add 'grit' to the story. I don't understand how anyone managed to read it without immediately getting diabetes.

I've had to start another thread now to help me pick books that are good! This one has me avoiding so many that I'm concerned I may never read a good book again 😂
Help me out!

The best books you've ever read http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/4137369-the-best-books-you-ve-ever-read

@OnceIWasAnApe

I read a terrible, terrible novel by Dawn French. It was set in NYC I think. I was so surprised by how bad and how shallow it was, because I do really like Dawn French.

I hated that book. The plot revolved around the heroine getting a nanny job without experience and shagging three generations of men in the same house and the family finding out and thinking that she'd done them a favour. Apparently it made them less uptight to sleep with the jolly, plump English woman.

@JimmyJabs

While we're gunning for the popular, am I really the only one who loathed The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society? So much twee, so many eccentric locals opening their hearts to the plucky outsider, so much appropriation of Nazi atrocities to add 'grit' to the story. I don't understand how anyone managed to read it without immediately getting diabetes.

Yes! Grim and utterly implausible.

@FellowFlipFlop

The worst chiclit I've read recently is the the Cockleberry Way book by Nicola May.

It's got all the usual tripe - been left a business in a little village where everyone hates outsiders. Doesn't know what to do with it blah blah blah eventually opens a shop to fill a gap the village needs and the eccentric locals all accept her.

Except she is the most unlikeable character, with the fewest redeeming qualities that I've read in a really, really long time. Like I actually hated her. And to top it all off she opens a trendy pet store selling shit like dog clothes

Good luck in the off season, fuckwit

Ahahahaaa!

I started this as an audiobook and had to dump it - absolute rubbish!

I haven't read "Haven't they grown" but it's reminding me of an episode of Eerie Indiana (if anyone remembers that) where the whole family were sleeping in giant Tupperware boxes so they never got older. It worked in that context because the whole premise was that it was a bizarre town where the normal laws of physics were suspended.

Yes I remember That! There was a dog pound with No Barking signs, and a poodle with a French accent trying to persuade the other dogs to mount a revolution.

Re twins. I was really into Victoria Holt as a teen (and still have a stash for comfort reading). In Bride of Pendorric the heroine lives on Capri with her sculptor father. One day a man comes in to her father’s studio, whirlwind romance ensues, but she doesn’t want to leave her father, who is ill, father conveniently commits suicide. They get married and go home to the stately home in Cornwall he happens to have. Husband’s mother was a twin. She died tragically after falling (or was she pushed?) from a gallery at Pendorric. To cut a long story short it was the sister who fell off the gallery.

Any Susan Howatch fans? I really loved her early stuff, the family sagas and the Starbridge novels, but thought the later St Benet novels not as good.

Elenor Oliphant - she's an alcoholic but it all gets solved with a mangey cat and a friend giving her a stern telling off.

As if!!

I can't believe it's as popular as it is.

The Dilemma. Husband finds out their daughter might be dead, and doesn't tell his wife as it might spoil her 50th birthday party! Which she is massively precious about because she didn't have a a huge white wedding.

Great thread.

Re. Lee Child- he has handed off the series and the latest book was co-written with his brother. You can tell almost within two sentences where one stops and the other starts

Half the book is almost painful to read. I can't remember exact words but it's a bit like..... ' He walked across the street using his legs. There were feet on the end of his legs, one right and one left...'

At one point there is a description of the doorman's phone in the lobby of an apartment building as 'bristling with all kinds of lights and buttons' . Fucking hell it's not the cockpit of a space ship it's a bloody office phone!

I made a mental note as I presumed it would be material to the plot further along.

It wasn't.

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows

Elenor Oliphant - she's an alcoholic but it all gets solved with a mangey cat and a friend giving her a stern telling off.

As if!!

I can't believe it's as popular as it is.

That book is an embarrassment. The main character’s ‘quirks’ read as though the author once read a bad magazine quiz called, jokily. ‘So, do YOU have Asperger’s Lite?’ and written by an idiot, and despite the fact that the character lived for years with a foster family and went to university, she appears completely unacquainted with utterly ordinary facets of life, as if she’s a recently-arrived Martian.

[quote BalloonSlayer]@Wearethetwirl it's a cat and Jackson is horrified by its name! The fact that he won't call it out himself saves his life.[/quote]
Sorry is a cat!

No don't remember any horror at the name just his mate calling it "hilarious". And it being played for laughs.

Eleanor Oliphant is just another makeover book dressed up as something deeper. I hate that idea - a woman isn't allowed to be happy or successful until she's got the right hair cut, make up and clothes

Oh and Marian Keyes can duck right off after writing The Break

SPOILER COMING UP IN CASE YOU ARE READING IT

Prick mid life crisis husband decides he's too good for normal life with their DD, niece (who they've essentially adopted despite her parents actually being around) and step daughter and wants to travel round the world alone to fuck other women. Leaving his lovely wife at home to deal with t he we kids, on of whom she has to sneak into the U.K. to get her an abortion (takes place in Ireland pre-8th amendment).

Wife reluctantly agrees because "he needs this". He's very clear he's gonna fuck other women.

Meanwhile lovely wife deals with shit at home along with a high pressure job, whilst her husband's intercontinental flings pop up on Facebook. Lovely wife starts a sexual relationship with a bloke she mildly flirted with the year before. Then lo and behold prick husband returns early from his shag-fest because he's "realised what matters in life".

And she takes him back!!!!!! What's more, she takes him back because "well I did flirt with someone last year which is no different to abandoning my family to fuck other people", "he used to look after the girls when they were small, 2 of whom weren't his, so I could go on the occasional work trip" and "he comes to dinner at my mum's once a week". And the ONE person around her , her lovely friend, who sees prick husband for who he is and advises she doesn't take him back - gets cut out lovely wife's life for having that good sense.

Lovely wife becomes stupid wife, and they all live happily ever after

I was furious - it really congratulated itself as a novel of female empowerment but actually what it was was a cheating bastard gets taken back by his simpering wife and everyone around them thinks this is great.

I've actually for re-angry now that I wasted a week and 550 pages on my life reading The Break.

@Furbylicious

Another one who is thoroughly enjoying the thread.

I haven't read "Haven't they grown" but it's reminding me of an episode of Eerie Indiana (if anyone remembers that) where the whole family were sleeping in giant Tupperware boxes so they never got older. It worked in that context because the whole premise was that it was a bizarre town where the normal laws of physics were suspended.

Kindle unlimited has also led me to some bad places. The Darklight books were appalling. Feisty teenage girl in the military fighting against the ridiculously named redbills- huge vicious murder birds.

Then of course there were vampires, and one kidnapped her and convinced her they weren't all evil and could help humanity tame the murder birds as they were psychically linked. But they'd only help if they were given sanctuary from another plane of existence where they were being tortured. So they were kept on some military base but of course there was a conspiracy. All against the backdrop of some weird love story where the vampire was basically controlling and dishonest and it wasn't presented as romantic. I finished the first one through gritted teeth. I shouldn't have bothered!

Ooohh I used to love Eerie Indiana!