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.

How do you know that is it based on the author? Do you Google the authors?

On Kindle Unlimited on holiday I got a book which was utter drivel and saw that the author was a YouTuber and influencer when I looked at the reviews. From what I read about her online, it was a thinly veiled bit of wish fulfilment largely based on her own life, although I didn't know that before I read it.

I've read a number of 'decent' books that I wasn't impressed with
Georgette Heyer - loveable rigues, chaste maidens and a lot of not a lot happens
Mobile Dick - went on for ages describing whales and whaling (skipped most of it) film was good
Hemmingway - another who creates pages and pages of background description
Most of the authors from school, perhaps its the dufference in Times but they drag.

Apologies if already mentioned but ‘fake diary’. Gone girl sported an entire shitstorm of crappy copycats. I actually read two so similar I thought I’d read the same book twice.

plot line: random skint girl goes to be carer for vegetative wife. Finds fake ( or is it?) diary that implicates husband in accident, who by now random girl is shagging. Ends badly.

Lovable rogues
Moby Dick

Sometimes auto correct is a pain

I find Georgette Heyer absolutely hilarious. One of my go-to comfort authors.

Heyer was one of my comfort reads, too!

Heroine is shy and adores books and believes her (always green) eyes and lips are too big to be attractive 🙄

Heroine is very clumsy yet turns out to be great at martial arts later.

Hero is rude to everyone at first. Not attractive.

Hero is kind and mega rich and gorgeous but has a tiny flaw (usually obsessed by a past trauma) which the heroine easily fixes and then she gets to enjoy this perfect man who somehow no other woman had thought to fix.

Rape / child abduction as a plot point.

Heyer is the best comfort read

Heyer is also problematic

😂😂 fair point

For some reason I don't notice it that much in Heyer, maybe its because I grew up with Heyer so my love of her books comes more from my mum keeping me in bed if I had a stomach ache with one of her Heyer books than the actual quality of the writing 😁

I always have this concept of Heyer readers looking down on Cookson or Mary Stuart readers, like times readers looking down on Sun or mail readers.

Well, I think 'Mobile Dick' might be one of my favourite autocorrects ever...

I shall always think of it as Mobile Dick from now on 🐳

Heyer readers look down on Julia Quinn.

This is a really nerdy post but I studied literature and anthropology/cultural studies, and part of the reason the Ian Fleming James Bond novels were so popular is because they were the first novel series that included brand names and really embrace the contemporary consumer culture (which was starting in the 1950s - the first book was published in 1953 - and massively took off in the 1960s).

Fleming was the first writer who utilised brand names so adeptly to create an atmosphere of aspirational luxury, which was very appealing in the drab post-war years. Fleming also mainly used British brands for the character (though not exclusively) which helped to create a picture of the quintessentially British hero. Fleming also said those brands were a way of rooting Bond in the everyday and giving him personal characteristics while still letting his fundamental personality remain a silhouette.

There are whole essays and journal articles that have been written on the link between literature and consumer culture and how Fleming in particular used brand names as a key part of his work.

Sorry that's probably really boring and not what anyone was talking about. Modern novels do brands in a way that's much more boring (Plum Sykes' novels constantly drip luxury brand names in a way that's either obnoxious or satirical, depending on how you view them).

Again what book does this?

It was chick lit of the 90s/00s I was thinking about (possibly current chick lit too but I haven't read any in years). Jane Green is one example.

The "children haven't aged a day" one is a Sophie Hannah book and the reveal to why they haven't aged is the most purely bonkers thing I've ever read, and I've read a lot of pre-1960s scifi.

“Any book with "laugh out loud funny" or "funniest book of the year" on the front or back cover. Always utterly unfunny”

Unless they are children’s books by Jeremy Strong. Chapter 1 of I’m Telling You They’re Aliens gave me hiccups from
laug when I read it at bedtime to my kids.

I assume this is not the Succession actor who went viral after the mad article about how extremely method he is, but I am going to pretend it is the same Jeremy Strong, and that he relaxes after a long day tear-gassing himself for a role by writing light-hearted children's books about aliens.

Not a trope but why is every book title

The [insert random profession] of [insert random city]

Go away and get a more original title

Don't know what happened there lol, I meant...

"The - Insert obscure profession - of -Insert obscure city/town/place" 🙃

It sounds as if many of these issues stem from reading very poor quality literature?

I can't speak for others in the thread but I have a very open mind about books - commercial, middle-brow, high-brow - I will give it a try if a cursory flick-through suggests it has potential. There are some brilliant 'commercial' novels and some downright awful (in my opinion) 'literary' novels - and, of course, vice-versa.

But you can't judge whether a book is good or poor quality until you've given it a reasonable chance, so, inevitably in my quest for books that I love and want to read again, I have to 'kiss a lot of frogs' and my pile for the charity shop is usually bigger than my pile to add to my shelves.

I buy 95% of my books from charity shops, so the wastage doesn't bother me too much as the money is going to a good cause and there's a good chance the charity will get it back afterwards to sell again, plus my gift-aid!

Verity?

Sophie Kinsella's shopaholic series is chronic for it - perhaps unsurprisingly!