Book icks

[butimamonstersaidthemonster]

I love hearing peoples biggest book icks.

I hate when plot holes are explained by characters being so rich that they have access to technology that doesn’t exist.
I hate when a character is paralysed and then it turns out that they were faking it - you can’t fake it for months or in some books years!
I hate when books are described as ‘the next gone girl’ like it isn’t a major spoiler.

I'm sure I have loads more I can’t think of right now.

Already mentioned above but...

Anything in italics.

Anything written in a sort of phonetic "accent". The only exception to this is Stuart McBride - Roberta Steel is one of my favourite characters ever.

Also...

"A bellyful of arms and legs" - narrows eyes at Martina Cole - it's a great expression the first time you read it, but it doesn't need to be shoe-horned into every single page.

The ubiquitous "yellow legal pad" The colour of the paper isn't relevant and I still have no idea what a 'legal pad' is which distinguishes it from any other sort of pad of paper. You're just writing something down.

Oh yes! American terms for the UK fit so badly. They'll also use "blocks" as a unit of distance which really doesn't work in UK cities. Another one I've seen is a supposedly British character giving directions by saying "head north and then..." Like anyone has any idea which way north is unless you're on the M1. Our cities aren't laid out like that!

1. I hate it when the printing in paperback books is too close to the spine and you really have to prise the book open to read it.
2. Also cheap paper in colouring books, so that a page you have coloured in transfers onto a page that you have not coloured in, but where looking forward to doing it at the weekend.
3. Join the Dot books, where the 'joined up' picture ends up all angular and not at all like a real giraffe (or elephant etc.) but more like a Tesla Cybertruck.

Edited as my proof reader was not paying attention again.

When characters are assigned multiple names. I love Georgette Heyer but the titled men can be addressed by their first name, their surname, their title, maybe their military rank and a childhood nickname. That's 4 or 5 names for one person. It confuses me.

i also get confused when fantasy or sci fi novels do the same thing but it's even worse because they are not real names so they are even harder to keep track of.

In a similar vein, I’ve heard a podcast where the American narrator was describing the discovery of a crime scene in rural Wales, and apparently the first police to arrive (presumably local bobbies) ‘drew their weapons and moved carefully through to clear the house’ like the bloody FBI 😂.

Oh lord I did not know that.

Oh dear 😂
Similarly: any Uk-set book where the characters are worrying about how they're going to to pay their medical bills

Another one - I'm Scottish and often find that Scottish characters don't come across as authentically Scottish. They are often just bog standard any English speaking characters, with a bit of Scittish dialect randomly thrown in.

When the woman is introduced as having "tumbling locks of unmanageable curls". Don't get me started when they start describing her "tresses"

Russian literature is like this!

While I love that HP got kids reading, the writing itself is so bad I couldn't manage to read it. I've read better crafted (admittedly very short so easier to manage) Y11 creative stories.

Male writers will often shoehorn rock references (their own favourite ones clearly) to try to make their male protagonist look ‘cool’ but it just makes me cringe. Reminds me of Steve Coogan’s Tommy Saxondale character. Not cool.

Also these same tragic men are ALWAYS paired with an ‘achingly beautiful’ female. Never a woman who is funny, or a great character. Just always beautiful. So dull.

One of the main characters being a young male billionaire

Wuthering Heights is the worst for repeated names!

• 'Orbs' instead of 'eyes'.
• Americanisms that should have been picked up.

Some of these things would be bad enough in fanfiction.

Maybe I'm getting old(er) but I'm finding it difficult to read some paperbacks with grey print on not quite white paper. I don't want my reading to be restricted to a table with a bright light.
Printers please use BLACK.

I hate this particularly within one page e.g. 'Andrew put the book down. The sergeant then walked across,the room'. Etc. They are the same person, it's annoying and can throw you off to think they're not the same person.

Too much 'tell' and not enough 'show'.
The word grinned, winds me up so much e.g. 'Yes I agree' he grinned.

Books set in the UK but using 'sidewalk' or 'elevators' and the like....

Yes I was thinking that - don't try War and Peace...

I hate it when dialogue is completely unnatural and over-explains what is going on in a way that real people would never speak. It really jars.

I always think of that spoof of men writing from a woman's point of view where it describes her waking up in the morning and ends with "she breasted boobily down the stairs". 😁

@KitchenColourandstyle also vice versa. There is a crime writer whose plots are very good, but insists on giving contemporary characters in their twenties names like Samantha and Brenda. Really jarring.

You only pad if you’re in your dressing gown on the way to the kitchen or bathroom. Everyehere else you’re walking.

Lazy research for books set in another place or time period. I have a long rant about abook set in Bethnal Green in 1942-4 where a character sees that a shop has bananas, comments that theyhaven't seen them for a while, and casually pops in to buy a few. So many things wrong, but they had also paused a conversation because church bells were ringing loudly, so I shouldn't have been surprised.

Then there was the book where someone sheltered from an air raid in a Jubilee line station...

Yep it doesn't matter what the age group or period of the piece if a whole batch of names are 'wrong' it jolts me out of the setting. As I say I can live with one because there always are people with unusual or a-typical names but especially now when it's some easy to goggle a list of popular names in X decade or Y period there is no reason for it.

Also, using figures of speech that don't fit in the time period. If your characters are battling with swords and shields, the enemy is not going to run you down "like a juggernaut" as you wouldn't know that phrase!