What puts you off a book immediately?

[EishetChayil]

For me it's opening a book and discovering it's written in the second person. I can't bring myself to read on. It makes me squirm too much. Just about acceptable in a (very) short story, but not a whole novel.

I'm also no fan of epistolary form, if I'm perfectly honest.

I love fantasy. But I hate hate hate when we have to read pages and pages of poems (usually presented as words of a song by a gleeman or something) to get to the mythology. I want to read a story, not a poem.

@EishetChayil

For me it's opening a book and discovering it's written in the second person. I can't bring myself to read on. It makes me squirm too much. Just about acceptable in a (very) short story, but not a whole novel.

I'm also no fan of epistolary form, if I'm perfectly honest.

I’m reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson at the moment; it is partly written in the second person (which I usually hate) but it works OK because the narrator is writing to a child and lots of it is then him looking back and documenting his own life. I’ve surprised myself by liking it!

I hate when they write in an accent. It makes it illegible to me sometimes. I remember the kids Rastamouse books were like this and I hated reading them to the kids in my class.
I also hate if the format is weird and it takes the form of emails, texts or letters between the characters. Sometimes it can be good to break up pages and pages of text but in certain ways it can throw me off.

@hidetheicicles

Any book that is just the inner monologue of a middle class white man with lots of money and no real problems who feels disconnected from his life…overdone, tedious, hard to care about.

God, this. Unfortunately, I adore John Updike's prose, so I've read a fair bit of him for his writing down the years, but skip a lot of the other Big Americans.

Protagonists looking in the mirror at their painstakingly described reflections.

This, also. I write novels, and I never describe anyone's physical appearance, or at least in any way that you'd be able to use to make a witness statement.

Lengthy world-building in sci-fi or fantasy. Spare me the millennia of history of the Aeulon wars with the Toremi Ka, or whoever. (I swear this is a good part of the reason Becky Chambers' sci-fi is so popular -- she tells us that when earth was becoming uninhabitable, the richest moved to Mars and founded a posh space colony, and everyone else fled on big ships and continued to be poor, but that's pretty much all we're told.

@lazylinguist

Of course a “pink” cover is off-putting, but now Jane Austens have been given the pink treatment. They’d sneak a cocktail glass and a cupcake onto Pride and Prejudice given half a chance.

They might as well tbh. It may be old and written in beautiful prose, but it's still largely about people going to social engagements, falling in love with people and wanting to find husbands and wives. I've read plenty of 'proper literature' but I can't stand Austen.

Wise to don the hard hat.

Did you ever wonder why it was so imperative for them to be husband-hunting?

Overblown romance. I know sometimes you can tell it's coming but I hate having "You belong to me, I would die for you!" sprung on me in a book that didn't seem that way.

And anything where the male lead being abusive is excused or even justified in the name of passion and his all-consuming love for her. I am currently struggling to finish a book where the female main character gets tortured half to death and her main concern in the aftermath is that the male lead character "may not be able to cope" at seeing how hurt she is, and she's so upset for him.

Long tedious dream sequences. I find people telling me about their dreams boring in real life, I don't want it in a book.

Any messing about with tyoefa ea worries me, though potentially survivable.

Attempting to write feom a particular character's ppont of view, but describing them in clichés - possibly racist or sexist ones- that they would obviously never use about themselves? Nah. Sorry Adam Biles, lots of people said they loved your book, but not me. (See also "she gazed into the mirror at those awkward eyes that would never own up to whether they were green or blue" type bollocks as referenced above

Agree with jumpy timelines or loads of different narrators, especially with poor differentation between them.

Names that I can't pronounce!

Typefaces ffs

Characters that are constantly referred to using both their first and surname. I don't need to know their surname.

Books where chapters are alternately written by different characters, and you know the stories will converge in the end. Such a tired device. I know everyone raved about that Crawdads book but it had that structure and it pissed me right off.

Oh so many.

Books called twee names like "Jolly Hockey sticks at the Cup Cake Cafe"

Books where the protagonist is an understated beauty who splits up from her boyfriend and instead of drinking wine and moaning to her friends like the rest of us, she hares off down to Cornwall or the Cotswolds where despite no obvious funds she opens a Cafe or book shop. The Cafe / bookshop is of course a resounding success and brings her into contact with the handsome but grumpy vet / landowner and of course they fall in love

Or where the blurb says "the latest in the thrilling Detective X series" which ineviinevitably is about a flawed, almost alcoholic detective who breaks all the rules yet seems to constantly come up trumps.

When authors try and write in a different dialect/nationality so try and drop clue words in and it's so unnatural. I'm thinking in particular of The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert, where he made on of the main characters American and it was just so laboured. Constantly throwing little words and phrases to make is clear, when there was no reason why this character had to be American at all and it was sooo clear the author wasn't.

Also when authors try to refer to characters using something other than their name, when we know their name. Thinking of one horror I read a few years ago where the author insisted on frequently referring to the main character as 'the theosophist', rather than by his name. Pretty sure the book I mentioned above also used 'the American' quite often.

Oh yes @Cheeseandlobster your detective comment reminds me of another pet hate - reading a book in a detective series where impossible to understand without having read the rest of the series. It wasn't necessary for Poirot so what makes Cormorant Strike so special? In the interest of understanding I've gone back to the first book ( they had it in the charity shop) and he still comes across as shambolic and likely smelly in real life.

Agreed, @Bideshi. Jane Austen's novels are entirely hard-headed about the economics of marriage, and male-female power relations.

Or where the blurb says "the latest in the thrilling Detective X series" which ineviinevitably is about a flawed, almost alcoholic detective who breaks all the rules yet seems to constantly come up trumps.

Loool yes, a chuck in a completely gratuitous romance with a suspect/relative of the victim too.

When the main characters are all old uni friends.

Always married to their school/uni sweethearts too, unless they are divorced or widowed.

Graphic descriptions of violence leading to 'sexy dead women'.

And by way of contrast anything involving women finding love in bakeries, cup cake shops or in the snow.

Any book whose title contains the word “Girl” unless it is about a female child (under 18). See: Gone Girl; Girl, Interrupted, The Girl who Played with Fire etc etc

Flatly refuse to be complicit in the misogynistic infantilisation of adult women. ‘Girl’ may sound more literary seductive than ‘Woman’ to some people, but not to me ta v much!

Bad sex scenes. Shaun Hutson, I'm looking at you.

The ones with the fake (or is it?) diary written by a wife who is either in vegetative state or deceased and subsequently discovered by woman living in house because [insert non credible reason here]. There was a rash of them and they were all as annoying as each other.

@highlandcoo

I am detesting the - increasingly prevalent - use of the continuous present tense. Or any present tense in fact. It is never satisfactorily conveying tension, immediacy or whatever else the author is presumably aiming for. It is usually just jarring terribly and is preventing me from enjoying the book.

This is exactly what I was going to say. It just doesn't read comfortably, it feels awkward and I can never get past it and settle into the book.