I hate it when books do this

[petronella23]

• start by flinging you into the middle of a conversation or action scene where you don't know who anyone is

• keep swapping between past and present

What are your pet hates?

@MoltenLasagne

I've never related to a post more than this, and i'm sorry you're another who is waiting for a series that will never be finish.

I bought the first 2 books from a chairty shop years and years ago, and they're some of the best books i've ever read. But the wait for the 3rd book has been ridiculous, and Patrick Rothfuss has become increasingly rude and hostile towards his fans.

“When you wait a few span or month to read a finished book, the anticipation adds savor. But after a year excitement begins to sour. By now, 10 years had passed and folk were almost mad with curiosity.”

I'm laughing at some posters' comments as some of their pet hates are things I spent hours studying at university in the name of English Literature 🤣 and I share your frustration.

I remember looking at James Joyce's Ulysses and analysing his use of stream of consciousness... Essentially a chapter without any punctuation. Nearly killed me off.

@Whinge he’s clearly too defensive about it to recognise his amazing it is that anyone is still curious at this point.

Although, he’s probably reached the point where he can’t finish it and anything he does produce can only disappoint. I can understand getting overwhelmed by second guessing and perfectionism to the point you can’t do anything at all. I predict there will be no third book.

When the likes of him and George RR Martin wait so long to finish, I don't know how they could ever feel like they're at the stage to submit the finished work. Surely they're constantly finding paragraphs they wrote years ago that don't match what they would write now? And when you can see what fans are saying online, there's far too much temptation to make changes if you see someone's guessed a plot line, even it's one lucky guess out of thousands.

One of the things I admire about JKR as a writer is that not only did she finish the HP series, she did it in a relatively short period of time, while at the same time lots of other things were happening in her personal and professional life.

When the book starts off with a brilliant plot, but the author clearly can’t tie up or explain the mystery he/she created, and delivers a brief, unsatisfactory ending. This always makes me feel short changed.

When the blurb is entirely quotes about how great the book is
"Read of the year" Nigella Lawson
"ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDING" Stephen Fry
"A modern classic" Joanne Harris

Zillions of quotes and no hint of the plot.

Wonky timelines kills me (Wuthering Heights annoys me so much for this) and really poor attempts at Northern speech. Yorkshire has multiple accents and Manc isn't the same as any Yorkshire accent with our kid thrown in.

And some authors have come out and said they didn't write them, well some of them not speaking for all authors

A book I've just started reading has two characters behaving sheepishly in the space of a few pages 😬 one character is having a shower in his own home I don't see where sheep come into it? The word is misused- twice already- any more and goodbye 👋🏽

How does one shower sheepishly? Picturing more of a "dip" situation.

The "not having a conversation about it" kills me as well, if you two are too stupid to speak to each other why should I bother to read your innermost thoughts for the next 250 pages? It does make me wonder how much it's just blatant plot creation and how much it is that writers are such anxious people that if their girlfriend didn't turn up to the train station, instead of popping round in case she'd broken her leg/lost her phone, they assume she doesn't love them and go off to Guatemala for the next decade.

Amazing how unreliable mobile phones can be, too, at critical points when brief communication would sort everything out.

Although, I can think of so many novels pre-1990s where the plot wouldn't have happened had there been mobile phones - a strong argument for setting novels in a vintage era.

Wonky timelines kills me (Wuthering Heights annoys me so much for this)

What's the wonky timeline in Wuthering Heights? I thought it had been worked out properly. Jane Eyre on the other hand, is full of inconsistencies.

(Not being snarky, I'm genuinely interested).

Separate strands of story that are somehow connected by a boring protagonist who must "uncover the secret" or "understand her past". Like there will be a really interesting strand set in WWI, but then the next chapterjumps forwards to one of the character's great-grandchildren in modern-day London doing something boring or trying to "uncover the past", when the historical story is the more interesting bit. I've never read a book that does this well, because the modern parts are often excruciatingly dull.

I’m reading a much hyped on social media book right now.

So far it has deeply irritated me in various ways. It’s just trying so hard to be diverse. The foreground bits of that are fine. They’re important to the context and characterisation. But the bits where I have to read ‘they is…’ in relation to a minor character who has literally no distinguishing characteristics beyond being an ‘they/them’ are annoying. It’s not adding anything to the book at all. It feels shoe-horned in by diversity reading committee.

What is even more annoying is that it’s obvious that the main character just isn’t going to communicate key information with other characters and her rationale for this just does not make sense. It’s clearly just to drive the plot. Argh.

Add to that a rapidly escalating scenario that makes no sense. Within 24 hours of meeting, the male is doing something he swore not to do (at great cost to himself) all to help the female main character. He’s actively helping her - potentially putting himself and his family in danger. Why? Why risk any of this for a girl you literally just met, and who wasn’t particularly nice to you?

Ah yes, the blank slate/every-person narrator, trying so hard to be all things to all readers that she/he (usually she) ends up being nothing and blending into the walls.

In historical, time-travel or fantasy fiction, the key moment is the crossing from one world to another. Usually it’s the very ordinariness of the present day or non-magic world that provides the impetus to carry on reading to reach the other world. Skilled writers get beyond this binary and make the ordinary look like it could hold extraordinary secrets. Penelope Lively was very good at this and JK Rowling (imperfect writer though she can be) had her moments in Harry Potter.

I hate books where whole chapters or even volumes are effectively written in reported speech, so you lose track of who the main characters are and what the narrative POV is. Wuthering Heights is tricky like this, and I got thoroughly put off a Rebecca West novel by quotation marks that kept appearing at the start of paragraphs or changing from single to double. It was no doubt technically correct, but so distracting. Also, massive chunks appeared to be narrated during an unfeasibly long and quiet train journey.

Actually, I was thinking of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which I think had no quotation marks.

But, yes, I totally agree that it's so irritating when characters have similar names or, worse, different characters with the same name.

I hate where an author gives a character a 'quirk' in place of a personality and repeats this over and over. There was a book I read recently where the main character loved cinnamon buns and it was mentioned on Every. Bloody. Page.

I also had to stop reading the Roy Grace books because of perfect Cleo. The final straw was when she was described as purring. I stopped myself from vomiting and walked away.

Conversations not being realistically timed. I just read a crap Jodi Picoult who thinks because it yook hours to write a conversation it must be that long. It took me about 90 to 100 seconds to read a fully written out conversation which was supposed to cover a 2nd couple arriving at a restaurant, them ordering a pizza, the food arriving, them eating it, paying and leaving. No gaps or pauses in the conversation. If it takes 100 seconds to read, at most, it takes 4 minutes to speak. It really annoys me.

Oh god. Characters who have a quirk/hobby or a past traumatic event in place of a personality. It’s just boring.

I can’t stand books written about a foreign place where every single vaguely un English concept is written in italics. ‘She nibbled a croissant’.
Drives me INSANE.

God yes. I tried to like her. I just read The Pact. 450 pages of what happened to his girlfriend if he didn't kill her? Turns out he killed her. Also utterly implausible that he did it because he loved her. She was suicidal. Get her help. Don't shoot her. So stupid

Dear God, just why would an author do that? Thank duck I haven't read any nonsense or book would be headed straight for recycling.

Can't stand first person singular, it's my absolute pet hate, unless it's written as a diary or autobiography why can't authors understand 'I' can never bloody die, unless they are writing from beyond the grave, ergo no suspense.

I love golden age detective fiction but this is constantly happening. Someone arrives at 10pm, asks 3 or 4 questions (maybe a page or two of dialogue) and then leaves at 1.30am. WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN DOING FOR THE OTHER THREE HOURS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES? A little dance?

It doesn't add anything to the plot either, so I don't understand why it happens.

I mean, maybe if you've been writing for hours and hours you might miss it, but I don't multiple people read through before it prints? Why doesn't anyway say that's ridiculous pacing? Incidentally there were also at least 3 spelling and grammar mistakes in the book too.