Things that really wind you up in novels

[IntrinsicFieldSubtractor]

I just finished reading a 'chick-lit' book (not how it was marketed but it most definitely was, IMO) where the heroine starts out as an ambitious, independent professional who seems like she might be an interesting character for once, then as soon as A Man appears she turns to mush and reveals that all this strong exterior is just a facade she's putting up to stop her heart being broken again. Sigh. To make things worse you could tell she was going to fall for him from about page 20 because a) they hated each other and b) his wife was conveniently dead, AND it had one of those 'quirky' The Quaintly-Named Suburban Avenue Ladies' Flower Arranging Society type titles. It was a shame because otherwise it wasn't a badly written book, it was just ruined for me by too many cliches... What things in a novel make you sigh and think 'Oh God, it's one of those books'?

The terrifying thing about Dan Brown is that The Da Vinci Code is what he wrote once he'd had lots of practice and learned his craft. The earliest books are horrendously badly written, but by the Da Vinci Code he'd ascended to the dizzy heights of just crap. Like Tom Clancy above he can do loads of research (or in Brown's case, get his wife to do the research and precis it for him, which is fatal) but he can't research the things he doesn't know he needs to research - he's got no feel for the context of the infodump. Digital Fortress has a big chunk of semi-digested particle physics in its denouement, and it's correct, for what it's worth. But because he had to ask Mrs B to look it up he assumes that it's superspecialist knowledge shared only by him and the late Albert Einstein. So he has four genius level computer nerds standing round asking each other "What is this thing called an atomic number? If only we knew an atomic particle physicist who can help us solve this impossible puzzle!" As opposed to saying "yeah I did it in junior high school chemistry: it's 92"

I don't read chicklit, and frankly you're all making me grateful for that. My personal pet hates in male-written books are detectives/spies who shag literally every single woman they encounter, and the late great Philip K Dick who was a geniusways in many , but started every description of every female character with her tits.

TheEnduringMoment - yes, I noticed that in Dan Brown too, particularly Digital Fortress. So much of the "specialised" information is well known and it annoys me so much!

Thanks for the recommendations SGB, will check them out. I do think he is such a one off really. Some Iain Banks remind me a little of him but it's probably just the Scottish connection tbh.

I haven't rtft but can I just say Angel Clare. What a cunt.

Trills: Yes, that sounds about right (I love TV tropes but have sternly resisted looking at more than just the one entry you linked to as would otherwise be on there all afternoon).
For Lauren H I would recommend Freeze My Margarita, it';s in the middle of the series but works well enough as a standalone, and because it's set among actors in a theatre, the then-hipness isn't quite so jarring as in the earlier ones.
For Phil Rickman the Merrily Watkins books are the best and TBH it's probably better to read them in order even though he's quite good at not overdumping the backstory or ignoring it.

TheEnduringMoment, to be fair on Philip K. Dick I don't think he's sexist so much as shit at writing characters in general. His romances in particular are appallingly bad, he writes characters who seem to vaguely dislike each other then expects you to believe that they've been madly in love this whole time and that explains all their actions to date I don't know if you've read A Scanner Darkly but it's the only full-length novel of his where I cared at all the characters, which turned out to be because he'd based them all on people he knew in real life. You're right that he's otherwise a genius.

I didn't realise this thread was still going(ish)! It's being moved to Adult Fiction, so everyone can carry on sniping

"This thread brings joy to my heart" she said huskily, "we're going to move it to Adult Fiction, providing I'm not too clumsy and girlish to fuck it up. Oh if only there was a man to help me".

Thanks Kate :)

You know how much I appreciate a properly-filed thread.

Aaaaaagh I am so glad you noticed this padded nonsense!!!!

"...pressed his/her head against the cool tiles" is another.

In the novel I am reading, the main character has just moved from Oregon to Cardiff for a year to study at Cardiff University.

All of the characters she meets are described as speaking in 'clipped English accents'. No Welsh people? In Cardiff?

These British students use 'semester' instead of 'term' and refer to 'math', 'seniors' and 'underclassmen'. Their undergraduate courses all seem to be four years long. They speak in a strange mix of colloquial American vocabulary with archaic English sentence structure.

If the author couldn't be bothered to do the research, why should I take the time to read it?

I really hate reading anything that is told entirely in the present tense. I think it works well for short passages to make a jolting impact, but when it is the entire novel, I find it very tiring and annoying to read.

Just read thrillers / crime, early Ruth Rendall instead! Gah, write that book. It will sell, i am sure. Those type of books do seem very popular, even if they are all the same!

Anything with descriptions such as, "her breasts heaved like a student after a 50p-a-pint night".

Speaking of Dan Brown, have you noticed how frequently his characters "chuckle"? This usually happens when his male characters are explaining weighty concepts to his female characters. They chuckle at their naivety, and it's enough to make me want to throw the book across the room.

TheFirst: I used to read the slush pile for a publisher and remember being rather put out with one submission that was set in Jamaica. WIth no mention of a single black person, not even as a waiter or jolly grinning tourist guide...

(Mind you, that was also one of my gripes with Notting Hill (ie the Richard Curtis film). I don't think there was a single non-white person in that, either...

Authors who try to set a scene with local "colour" and get it wrong, one that annoyed me recently was a good read but every 10 pages or so it broke the spell. The author is an American who has obviously visited London but not for long. For example he has a man in a pub drinking a pint of "bitters". The protagonist tells the taxi driver "Just pull up at Fulham". And a supposed London prostitute in the 19th century when asked for directions tells the requester to "Hang a left".

Another thing that annoys me - most often in TV but sometimes in books is the inappropriate pause. It happened in Atlantis last night, the heroes are fleeing with the cure for the dying queen, the two most powerful witches after them along with an army, so time is of the essence and they stop for a 5 minute chat about what has just happened - it isn't a device for plot reasons, because we all just saw it, so why!

Love this thread! Chicklit by numbers does my head in!

SandraWood: "Speaking of Dan Brown, have you noticed how frequently his characters "chuckle"?"

Fortunately, have never read Dan Brown, but one of my pet hates is writers who use synonyms for "said", such as "laughed", "screamed", "muttered" etc.

There's a lovely bit in David Lodge's Small World where a novelist has his books analysed by computer, and finds that whereas he usually uses "said" for male characters, he uses "gasped", "groaned", "sighed" and a variety of other synonyms for female characters. Once he knows about that (and various other idiosyncrasies of his writing style), he is unable to write another novel.