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.

Books where random words are written in the language of the place they are set. I know where the characters are - I can assume they're speaking their own language without it being written in that language. I don't want to have to translate random words while I'm reading

Glaring anachronisms. I don't mean in historical narratives, but in contemporary writing set back in time 50 years or less.

Is it lazy research, obliviousness or a device calculated to draw in younger readers?

Detectives again. Especially detective series where the detective is flawed / alcoholic / has suffered tragic loss. Poirot and Miss Marple didn't need extensive back stories and could be read as standalone books.

Also so-billed 'psychological drama' where the woman (and it's always a woman) has been very seriously abused & traumatised and may have memory loss. Misery fiction, all of it.

A smouldering arrogant arsehole, who ends up being the feisty misunderstood female leads soulmate

Some books I call “movie books”. The characters will be cliches, and it’s all about the plot. I’ve been forced to read these for book club. I hate them, I’ve given myself over to the plot, while you could list the details of their “character” on the back of a postage stamp (cliche!!! )

The 15 year old with eternal legs
The pudgy cop that has never left his home town
The untamed and very beautiful 35 year old with a tendency for suicide attempts and self sabotage

Blah blah

Love the comment and books with maps at the front

Not too keen on books that switch perspectives to new characters throughout, like Girl, Woman, Other or David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. So one chapter will be from one POV, then the next someone else entirely.

Also don't like it when we personally encounter real historical figures in novels which aren't about them.

Poems or songs in the middle of a chapter, I always skip them, I hate poetry

@LittleMysSister

Not too keen on books that switch perspectives to new characters throughout, like Girl, Woman, Other or David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. So one chapter will be from one POV, then the next someone else entirely.

Also don't like it when we personally encounter real historical figures in novels which aren't about them.

Oh yes - Sarah J Maas ACOTAR *A Court of Thorns and Roses series did this, weirdly on about the 3rd or 4th book... and then on the 5th(?) she added in other characters doing it! FFS - Did Not Finish!

@beastlyslumber

I love Jane Austen, sorry! Social satire, the skewering of personalities, the subversion of romance... It's brilliant. I mean, yes, there is "romance" and people latch onto that, but for me it's the way the game is all set out, the characters all put in their places. It's wicked and brilliant.

Has anyone read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall? I'm reading that at the minute. Over the past couple of years I've stopped reading contemporary fiction because of all the issues mentioned above, but luckily there are still hundreds of novels from the last couple of centuries to enjoy.

This. Yes to Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Surprisingly modern. Love George Eliot too and Mrs Gaskell. Totally agree with your point on novels from past centuries.

I'm a bit fed up with the historic present. H. Mantel did it well but it now seems ubiquitous and I'm weary of it (looking at you 'Hamnet'.)
Hate it when the reader's made to work too hard (see lack of punctuation which generally equals lack of sense and clear narrative). Also books like 'Lincon in the Bardo): wtf!

@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.

Are many books written like this? I think the only one I've come across is 'You', so aptly titled. I didn't finish it to be fair.

When I was younger I HATED reading books written in the first person, that I couldn't read them. Now I'm so used to it that I find it strange if it isn't written that way!

@BonesInTheOcean

Poems or songs in the middle of a chapter, I always skip them, I hate poetry

Hate this too!!! Even as a kid I remember not liking it in Roald Dahl books!

@CheeseMmmm

Map of imaginary area at front.

Especially if it serves no purpose. Like it's never relevant that Ornstown in Ardiaa is by a scraggly line of triangles labelled Deep Horn Mountains..... Because Ornstown isn't even mentioned in the novel... And the mountains are just a passing comment from a minor character etc.

@BonesInTheOcean

Poems or songs in the middle of a chapter, I always skip them, I hate poetry

Yes!

Oh and I skip too much description that has nothing to do with the plot. I'm not interested in the creaminess of the coffee or the way the waves roll and crash. A sentence or two will suffice.

I also get distracted when an author sets the story in a known place and spends too much time mentioning places and parks. We get it, you're from Camberwell. On to the killer

I feel robbed of the indulgence of the story when the writer tries to interact with you as the reader. Roddy Doyle did it in either Smile, or The Guts maybe - I mean when suddenly the narrative changes to something like…

“And what happened to our protagonist, dear reader? I realised I had only one real choice with how this was going to end, I’d like to have given him an easier outcome, but come in! Let’s be realistic, you know there is only one way this ends…” etc etc

(Hope I’m explaining myself)

I need the author to remain invisible.

Definitely overuse of similes- just too try hard and irritating.

Diary entries. I find they very rarely ring true. Put me right off "The Thursday Murder Club". Also first person narrators who often seem to write "ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself" - seems to be just a lazy way of getting background information in and then abruptly stopping because you don't know how to introduce the main story.

Heroine with a hobby-type business who can still afford a delightful sounding house.

Heroine whose flaw is that she is 'too skinny' (but not through illness or ED) so she can't get a bloke.

Another off-putting thing - the discovery of a diary or a letter revealing the mysterious past of Gt Aunt Gwendoline, which could shake the foundations of the whole family - YAWN. There are about a million variations on this theme - and none of them any good.

A map
Too many characters on the back cover

"If you only read one book this year make sure it's this one". No.

• Names including a lot of consonants and apostrophes, eg Zz’gs’trymz’n.

• High-falutin’ bollocks like “The dragonmage Zz’gs’trymz’n strode forth, his sky-forged sword Hg’grin’dyr the Ever Silent at his side, to join battle with the foe”.

• Historical fiction where the author gets details wrong – looking at you, tight-laced corsets (most weren’t) and women running down the street not wearing hats and gloves.

• Authors making up swear words. (You've imported names and offensive gestures from our English-speaking world: why make up some new word and use it exclusively when we have many, many excellent words that would do the job, especially as context indicates that the well-known and often-used “fuck” is what you mean?)

• Fantasy books that are not internally consistent. If you mention that magic can’t, for example, create fire, magic should not create fire later in the book/series.

• Books set in English towns (I’m sure this applies to other countries) that are obviously written by an American whose closest contact with said town is a cursory glance at Google Earth.
• Books set in England (again, I’m sure this applies to other countries) that are obviously written by an American and use American vocabulary – it’s a car park not a parking lot, a pavement not a sidewalk.

• Stilted vocabulary. This is supposed to be a modern 16 year old girl speaking to her boyfriend: "The landscape had changed. The paths I remembered were no longer there. The hills and valleys almost seemed to have been reordered." "I became excited and he looked more than a little sad... Of course, I didn't heed his warnings".

• Hard science fiction that's just bang-bang-shoot-'em-up set in space with a little spaceship maintenance for the people who like tinkering under the hood of the car.

I like police procedurals, but if the opening section is in italics, from either the victim or the perpetrator's point of view, with identifying details carefully concealed, I close the book and do not go any further.

Wise to don the hard hat. Did you ever wonder why it was so imperative for them to be husband-hunting?

Unfortunately, I don't find that understanding why it was imperative for them to find a husband makes it any more interesting to read about the process of them doing so.

@lazylinguist

Wise to don the hard hat. Did you ever wonder why it was so imperative for them to be husband-hunting?

Unfortunately, I don't find that understanding why it was imperative for them to find a husband makes it any more interesting to read about the process of them doing so.

That's one of the most Jane Austen things I've ever read. Are you really not a fan?