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've remembered a book I read in the 80s / 90s - can't remember what it was called. A young, working class girl from Liverpool becomes an international supermodel. That's fine, stuff like that does happen but the sex scenes were awful:

His sperm smelled as fragrant as that of a young man
He leapt inside her like a spawning salmon
She was so beautiful she would drive the satyrs to a frenzy

@SomewhatBored

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

Ugh, Sandra Dee syndrome

@JamesMiddletonsMarshmallows

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.

OMG - I felt exactly the same! And we we are meant to feel some sympathy for the selfish bastard husband!!!

Raging!

I thought it was me. I didn't understand The Break at all. You'd tell him to fuck off and stay fucked off, wouldn't you, then if required find someone hotter to fuck. Watermelon Mark II, I guess. I kept it on the shelf because I do like to re-read a bit of Marian, but not that one.

[quote iklboo]**@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 . [/quote]
I’m a copy editor and proofreader. On truly awful texts, I could be making that number of corrections per page.

The ones you see are the ones that got away.

Yes @Arrivederla he's meant to come across as this handsome charming prince and they're a solid couple - but it was all "it's very hard for a man not to go round the world fucking other women". And very unlike Marian Keyes who usually write about strong and weak, prick men are hung out to dry

Oh HOW could I have forgotten The Dilemma??

Yes, perfectly reasonable solution to finding out your daughter has persisted in a plane crash is to crack on with your wife’s very important garden party, and if anyone asks why you’re a bit off, say you have a migraine.

A year on, after everyone has completed the grief process (WTAF) they have another party.

*PERISHED, not persisted!

A year on, after everyone has completed the grief process (WTAF) they have another party.

Which, because the author set this in 2020 but was obviously writing earlier, apparently took place during lockdown!

[quote SmidgenofaPigeon]@Whoateallthechocolate that made me laugh. Honestly, your version of pitching up in Cornwall was far more readable than the fleeing from London, meeting a mysterious but gorgeous local fisherman and opening a little beachside bar tripe.[/quote]
Read this as “little beachside tripe bar” and wondered whether the demand for tripe would really sustain a whole establishment.

@KittiesInsane - blimey. The ones I saw weren't just punctuation & small issues either. Glaring great plot holes / errors, half repeated sentences, garbled sayings 'it was a communal garden family car'

It;s one of my favourite books, Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher.

But Oscar's wife and child die after a fireworks party in November. Then by the end of the book it is Christmas eve. In that time probate happened, his step sons took over the family home and kicked him out. he went to scotland to stay in a half owned house with a friend who became his partner, her heartbroken niece arrived with a neglected child in tow, another person turned up from the states and got over his dovorce and hooked up with the heartbroken niece and Oscar got over his grief enough to start, make and sustain a bunch of relationships, inherited an entirely different house and was healed enough to return to being a church organist.

That was a busy 6 weeks

Currently reading the Bridgerton series....

The TV show was wildly inaccurate with costumes and the customs of the time etc and the books no better.
I’m on book three (I think) and the author has essentially re written Cinderella replacing a shoe with a glove.

It’s bloody awful however I’ve found myself looking forward to curling up in bed at night and reading it. Perhaps there is something to be said for awful books you don’t need to think too much about after all.

My biggest disappointment was after A Quiet Belief in Angels was one of my favourite books of the year. Went to read other books by RJ Ellory absolute rubbish. I still can't believe they were by the same writer

I have read a few books where the protagonist has broken up with long term partner/job down the pan so goes to stay in a pretty Cornish village taking a job as a librarian/historian/art dealer/cafe worker... discovers a mystery/old diary? Letters from 100 years ago, mysterious female with a tragic backstory.
The historic character always ends up being a long lost relative who has left her country estate to the heroine. It's literally the same story every time.

On another note when I download a promoted/cheap book on kindle, it's always painfully and clearly obvious those books that have been self published. Poor editing, poor grammar and plots that lose their half way through. Whilst I really applaud those authors who take that risk and put themselves out there, at the same time, it must be so frustrating gut established published authors and editors to have to compete with the sheer amount of drivel on offer these days.

There are thousands and thousands of really good books out there, not the stuffy ones, not the stupid ones, that will give you a good read and make sense!

Is there a mums net book club out there?

When gorgeous attractive people romantically pursue plain people!

My favourite M&B moment was when a hero managed to ‘rouse her to the fullest delights of womanhood’.

@redpencil77

You mean, the Gloucestershire born and educated JKR, who trained as a French teacher in the early 9ps when shevreturned from her divorce from Portugal who moved to Edinburgh to be near her sister for support with Jessica is Scottish?

If school years changed in the mid 90s, JK would have experienced her own schooling under the ‘oldsystem’. I did too and, despite teaching for many years in the ‘new system’ my instinct remained for a long time to think about 1st year etc.

@Dodithedog

When gorgeous attractive people romantically pursue plain people!

Ah, but are they really plain?

As in the quote above, how long does the heroine spend 'thinking about how beautiful she isn't'?

Is she, perhaps, 'too thin'? Is her hair too long and unruly, and, horror of horrors, red? Are her eyes a 'weird' green colour and 'too large for her face'?

Is she, in other words, model-gorgeous but the writer wants to make it sound as though she's vulnerable and insecure, so transplants her to some parallel universe where short, fat women* with cropped hair usually get all the men?

(I say this as a short, fat woman! )

But an author should be checking on current terms if they want their work to ring true? Otherwise it’s hard to buy into believing a character is a teacher if they are using words twenty years out of date.

Often women have ‘wild curls’ that they think make them deeply unattractive.

I’m sure I once read a book where a female detective had been murdered, her (married) cop boyfriend came under suspicion but it turned out his wife had found out about their affair, saved the used condom after they (husband and wife) had sex, then killed the girlfriend and syringed the semen into her to frame the husband. IIRC, the husband worked this out but let her get away with it as he’d deserved it for having an affair.

There was an early Lisa Jewell which had a heroine who was tall, slim and blonde. However, she lived somewhere rural. Naturally, outside the M25, no one knows what's currently considered attractive because it takes so long for fashion to filter down to the provincials. So they thought being tall, slim and blonde was really ugly and she was always being told how unattractive she was. Happily, she moved to London and because they're so much more up to date with current fashions in the city, all the men really fancied her and she even got approached by a modelling scout.