What's your pet hate in books?

[deweydell]

Mine is when the writer foreshadows the action to come like when they say 'she crossed the road carrying her little dog who will get run over by a car in two years time'.

Anyone?

Dean Koontz is another one who does that Bewilderbeast. Annoying.

I hate badly written sex scenes - especially where they have been built up to be something passionate or romantic and the writer uses terms or phrases (like err c&nt) that you just would not want to read when you're trying to be sexy (take note Iain Banks!).

I also can't bear holes in the plot - can't bear it. I've been known to stop reading a book when I've figured out that something in the plot was just not feasible.

ellbell - Daisy Meadows is a committee! I know one of them. Sorry if this punctures any illusions! Those of us with DDs had better keep it from them.... (but yes, I agreee, Jack sodding Frost is the most annoying and least convincing villain ever...)

moondog - come on, it's ALL made up! It's fiction! I've read books set in modern-day London which bear less relation to reality than those set in the Forest of Doom or the Lands of Desolation ruled over by the Evil Overlord Kssdgh'hagtrkl...

Think you will enjoy this though!

My DD1 (aged 5) is sooooo in love with the Daisy Meadows books. I personally make sure its DH's turn to read if it's going to be a "fairy blah blah" story. Has anyone else noticed how often the word 'dismay' is used in those books?
I should give her some Judy Blume to read, but maybe she is a bit young for that yet.

Ah, that explains a lot!

Thankfully, dd (6) has just started reading them to herself, rather than wanting me to do so (after the first zillion I just refused to read any more). She loves them, as she can read one a night with minimal effort. I keep trying to steer her towards something a bit less crap....

Unquiet Dad - lol at that exam!! so true.....
I have been known to read absolute sh*te but generally, as Moondog says, on long flights or on a beach......my highly discerning (usually) partner's only criteria for a holiday read is how thick is it (the thicker - I mean pageswise - the better....). His pet hate would be any book with a map in the front (back to fantasy I think )

Not read this but I've had it recommended for anyone suffering Fairy Overkill!

Brill Unquiet.
psml at fantasy exam

Crime novels where

a) the 'perp' is painfully obvious from the beginning only to be "revealed" at the end in the weakest twist imaginable; or

b) the 'perp' is wheeled out at the end and didn't feature at all, thus not enabling reader to guess their identity despite being encouraged to think it was someone already mentioned.

Yuk.

I don't read chicklit because i know I won't like it - read 'Bookends' by Jane Green and assume they are all like that. Nothing beats Gone With The Wind or Jane Austen for romance anyway so re-reads are always best!

Also novels where the author is showing how clever he (usually a he) is. Eg Julian Barnes (apart from Arthur & George) and Umberto Eco (Foucault's Pendulum is the first book I ever willingly got rid of).

BTW am I a Bad Person for judging my sister-in-law? - she was moving house and threw away most of her books. THREW AWAY!! Not even gave to charity! Travesty! You can't just throw away the written word! And it's the ultimate recyclable commodity - so much potential joy to another reader. (Having said that, they were probably chick-lits).

missing words, that the author and the editor seem to have missed.

I can't forget for at least 2 chapters!

Anne - at "probably chicklit". In that case they were already recycled!

AJ - I'm the same - I can't throw a book away - ends up in the charity shop instead....I am also incapable of buying one book at a time. I had a friend who used to use the excuse that 'they get lonely in the bag on the way home'

Writers who do not know the meaning of crescendo.

Lines from other writers at the start of the book in a foreign language and not translated.

I really don't like finding a dried bogey from the previous reader's nose squashed in between pages.

Amazing how often that happens in second hand books.

Jeffrey Archer - it's hard to stop turning the pages, but at the end you think 'that was a waste of time - what a load of bollocks'.

Undigested research annoys me, where it feels like they have just copied something straight out of a book - Jean M. Auel's 'Clan of the Cavebear' books are terrible for this - they these have long lists of Ice Age flora and fauna which she has clearly got from some academic and then copied directly into the text.

My biggest hate, however, is when the author was writing some contemporary book and wasn't quite sure how to end it, and then some big historical event happened, like 911 or the outbreak of WW2, (or even worse, one which merely felt big at the time, like the death of Diana) so they decide to stick it on the end of the book because it felt so momentous at the time, but in retrospect it just looks naff.
There's a David Lodge novella where he does that, and I just finished a Libby Purves one ( I know, but actually they are quite good) which wraps everything up with everyone getting emotional over 911.
Writers are supposed to have detachment FFS!

Oh yeah and I hate hate hate badly written children's books - I always think 'We are going to have to read this hundreds of times, you bastards, how could you do this to us?'

Oh and 'That's not my....' books (if you have toddlers you will know what I mean) where the touchy bit doesn't really fit the word it's meant to. ('That's not my snowman, his arms are so wavy' - corrugated cardboard does NOT represent waviness you moron!)

Ooh didn't realise I was carrying around so much suppressed rage.

"That's not my digger its front loader is too bumpy" oh God, yes...

I mean, there aren't many words in the 'That's not my' books, so it would only have taken them, what, 2 mins to get it right.
Lazy sods.

Can't bear dream sequences, almost always skip past them. Also really dislike books with unlikeable characters (Morvern Callar and Money are two that spring to mind). I also think Sebastian Faulkes is overrated and I found Birdsong really quite boring.

Books by Olympic gold medallists with titles like "Run for your life" or "Running Wild" or "Running Free" or bollocks like that. They win when they're 20, and have their autobiography out before they're 21, like they've lived a long and fascinating life which we can't wait to read about.

phrases like "her hair shone like an advertisement for shampoo" - Maeve Binchy. Sorry dear if you're reading this, otherwise I love you but this phrase comes up in nearly every book. Promise me you won't use it next time round, ok?

After browsing in Waterstones yesterday I have some more.

a) Books with "mother" in the title, brought out near Mother's Day in the hope that people will buy them for their mums. Because, of course, that's all they will read. If the book is actually called "Mother's Day", even worse.

b) Books with a Chapter Zero. Oh, how post-modern.

c) Books which have chapters beginning at 30 (or 40, or 50) and descending towards 1 (or, worse, zero).

d) Even worse - random chapter numbering. Chapter 11 then chapter 5 then chapter 32, etc. Like that is really clever.

'(Having said that, they were probably chick-lits). '

They still could have done for a good campfire, Anne . I hate chick-lit because the heroine is always a doormat and a neurotic any stable person would only find attractive in a book.

Another pet-hate. London-centricity.

Don't live in London. Never have. Never will. Couldn't care less about London neighbourhoods and what that means if you live in this one v. that one.

Move on.

And SO many books are London-centric.

Publishing is - and I can sort of see why it has to be - but there's no reason for all books to have London settings. With areas mentioned casually as if we should KNOW where they are. Crouch End. Camden Lock. Notting Hill. So what?