What are your book pet peeves?

[AlpacaTheBags]

What tropes or clichés annoy you in books?

I have so many but one is when the main character is at risk so they move far away to make a new life where no one will be able to connect them to their past. Good plan but they always go to some tiny coastal or rural village(Population 150) and buy or rent the most well known and distinctive building in the place(Usually a potter's or lobster fisherman's cottage.)

And then when the villain inevitably catches up with them, they always run towards the cliffs to have their final encounter. I don't know why because you can guarantee that at least one of them is going over the cliff.

@Stressybetty i know what you mean though, i wonder did she just love sorting people out, a sort of real life flora post! The daughter in glass lake (and the mum) were immense at sorting things out.

No no I can’t but I was pretty shocked they were so blasé about it!

Her fiction book Thursdays child seems to me very similar to her own life and reads like the life she actually wanted. Loving comfortably off parents and sister, nice Victorian house, 2 fiance's dying in the war, working as a social worker, very good dancer, meets nice Indian in social club and moves to India. But there are a lot of dragged up in poverty type books that are just depressing

Also if you wish the name and shame then you must also know there are approx eleventy billion Irish indie publishers of various types shades zines presses journals imprints chapter books collections essays experimental whatsits, all of which is very very laudable if sometimes exhausting so therefore I refuse even to narrow it down!

Just look out for those avant garde exercises ALL IN PRESENT TENSE wink wink nudge nudge.

I also don’t like present tense books.

Authors who use ‘prone’ when they mean ‘supine’.

Books called something like ‘Memories at the little cupcake cafe by the sea’.

Books where the heroine starts up an immediately successful business with no prior experience whatsoever. I read one where three women set themselves up as wedding planners and one learnt to do wedding hair and makeup by watching one tutorial video on YouTube.

Any book where the author overuses a particular phrase or saying. One of the Dan Brown books constantly repeats ‘the sea of humanity’. I’m reading a series of detective books at the moment which I’m really enjoying except I’ve noticed that the characters do like sneering at each other - can’t go more than a few pages without some sneering! Whenever I notice something like that it’s really off putting.

I hate present tense and I hate anything written in the second person. It’s always so fucking smug about how clever it is.

I also just read a book where the protagonist’s life is literally completely and utterly ruined - husband leaves her, son tried to kill himself, reputation is in tatters - over a misunderstanding that would have taken ONE SENTENCE to clear up, and was something everyone would be completely OK with you not having talked about earlier as well. Even when it’s all going to shit and she has the chance to say “hey, that’s now what happened” she just lets the husband absolutely tear into her about something she didn’t do because “that wasn’t the time to explain”. It was exactly the time to explain! Just tell them!

Agree with

a) the articifical miscommunication - though this tends to happen more on TV/movies. If you knew who the murderer is (or whatever) you would not put off telling the next victim because they had to rush to pick up a dress from the dy cleaner (or whatever).

b) nipples hardening at every single emotive event, whether sexual or not. Looking at you: younger Stephen King.

Add to this, books about real life experiences that spend the first 50% banging on about the owner pre-event. e.g. don't write a book about climbing Everest if you haven't got enough Everest material and instead pad it out with childhood memories etc.

Any book where the author overuses a particular phrase or saying

Not just one author doing this, but I keep seeing 'a beat' or 'a beat of silence' used to mean a momentary pause, and it's really beginning to grate on me.

"As you know, Philip, our mother was a red-head who hunted for treasure in the Amazon..." etc.No one speaks like this and it's lazy.

Add to this, books about real life experiences that spend the first 50% banging on about the owner pre-event. e.g. don't write a book about climbing Everest if you haven't got enough Everest material and instead pad it out with childhood memories etc.

True crime is terrible for this sort of padding. The serial killer was born in Hereford, say, so you get ten pages on the history of Hereford from 1066 to the date of publication.

I'm sick of present tense, too. Sometimes it works, but more often there is no real reason for it; it's just a trend. I think it's often used in an attempt to make events seem more important than they really are.

Stories where none of the characters have to work for a living

Yes! And stories where the character's job has not required any research - there are far too many characters who are writers, artists or who run little businesses. I'd like to see more fiction featuring people who have actual proper jobs.

I hate all those cliches like "padded", too. Any hot drink that is "steaming" ought to be banned from fiction. And I hate it when characters shake their heads to clear their thoughts - no one does that. Ever.

Completely agree with this! I now avoid anything that has the tag 'With a twist you won't see coming' - well, now I'm looking for the twist aren't I?! And the twist is normally blindingly obvious anyway 😆

Mine is simple. Padded. As she padded into the bathroom. It makes my teeth itch. Not really sure why but it appears in more books than you think.

Yes! Why are they always making women pad all over the place? I've never heard someone in real life say it at all.

Also agree with the PP who mentioned changing geographical details to suit the local translation. It's such a disrespect to the reader's intelligence.

I will not hear a word against Maeve Binchy, however.

Oh god yes! Any nipple stiffening.

Below Stairs and books like that show why people were anxious to have their twelve year old girls go to work as maids 6.5 days a week, because they were ensured food, shelter, heat and financial security!

I've read Below Stairs 🤣

It starts off fairly sensibly, but it takes a strange turn toward the end. I've deleted it off my kindle (funnily enough) but there was some nonsense about her husband and something she did to him (I think she kicked him - it was something physical but it was all done 'comically') and the way she got the money out of her old employer. Cue lots of reviews saying 'this is made up!'

Wait what I don’t remember that! Going to investigate. I thought she was a very good example of a clever woman with few options, the fact she got into the girls high school and had to not go and work in the laundry instead is so stark about social mobility!

Any book where the author overuses a particular phrase or saying. One of the Dan Brown books constantly repeats ‘the sea of humanity’.

Yes. Once you notice a particular stand out word or phrase being repeated it becomes irritating, especially when different, unconnected /unrelated characters use the same word or phrase.

In mysteries, when a minor thing is emphasised very very heavily, then the main character just completely forgets about it. Agatha Christie is bad for this. I'm reading an Agatha Christie that opens with the detective buying and exploring a new house and there's a whole chapter on her finding two china storage stools in dark blue and light blue, and her nicknaming them Oxford and Cambridge. Even a line where she breaks one and thinks "Oh no Oxford is beyond repair, I'll have to make do with just Cambridge" then the next day she's told the secret spy papers are hidden in "Oxford and Cambridge" and is really confused how the papers can be hidden in two cities, when it's obvious to the reader that it means the china stools, which she herself calls Oxford and Cambridge!

Also, backstory and pointless biographical details delivered as straight text not worked in as dialogue. Elly Griffith is bad for this. I don't need a paragraph every time a new character appears naming all their children, grandchildren and pet budgies and what all their grandchildren do for a living when none of the children or grandchildren even appear or are even mentioned again.

I was ranting to DH the other day about the Inspector Lynley novels by Elizabeth George. He’s reeeeeeeaaaaaallllly posh - he’s an earl who improbably works for the Met or similar - so his sidekick is a proper cor blimey guv salt of the earth cockney woman who is short and overweight and hopelessly unfashionable and frumpy and had no social graces whatsoever. And in each novel she gets worse and worse - can barely dress herself or speak in sentences, spills food down herself - oh, she smokes of course as well - and I just hate the way she is characterised! All to make him - the long-suffering bloke - appear more elegant, gracious, intelligent, competent and above all such a wonderful man to keep giving her a chance when the rest of the police force thinks she’s a useless waste of space 🙄

I should probably stop reading these novels 🤣🤣🤣

I find novels written in the present tense very tedious to read. I usually can't get past it.

@sorbetseason @Stressybetty and @Antarcticant Oh no! I was thinking "I'd quite like to read a book about a busybody who comes to a village and sorts everybody out" - but not if she comes to a dark or sticky end!

Can't seem to @ anyone but the memoir by Helen Forrester's son is good if you've read her books. I actually remember thinking her mother was a lot like mine when I first read them!

I hate the heroine being described by looking in the mirror, usually at her freckles and small boobs. And any book where there's a description of someone's life being nice and contented and then they either die or the man they love dies.
And anything where the token non-white person dies!

Those steamy romances where they use pet names. Some bloke calling his partner baby every single time, never her name just gives me the ick. Like the whole book becomes sleazy straight away. Hate those sort of books. Also graphic sex scenes, always someone humming happily around a cock. 🤢

No proper ending.

We know the ending is the hardest part to write so it's just lazy and I feel like I've been cheated investing my time in reading it if the author doesn't have the decency and decisiveness to finish the story. It leaves the book with no "shape".

Not really the fault of book itself but I cannot stand the word "unputdownable" in Amazon reviews.

Also I do like a good crime caper but why must the detective protagonist always be a tortured soul with a history of alcohol abuse?