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.

I don’t think the poster was denying that lots of authors do it - hence mentioning it as a general annoyance. I assume Sally Rooney was merely an example she gave for illustrative purposes. That sort of thing personally doesn’t bother me at all; I find those sorts of authorial decisions very interesting.

But I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding the point of ‘icks’. They can’t really be argued with; they’re innate irritations that people can’t help feeling. Telling someone their ‘ick’ is wrong or irrational is like telling someone they’re wrong not to like a certain colour.

Different fonts for different narrators - how dumb do you think we are that we won't be able to remember it's Lizzie now not Paul unless Lizzie writes in Arial?

And teenage slang - read an appalling one by Adelle Parks whose 20 year old narrator kept saying things like 'literally all the fam were in the pub, no cap' and described her mother's response to a younger sister being in a coma as 'having a full-on menty b'. Yuck - and dates so quickly!

When the amount of money/beauty/ figure of the character is expected to increase their likability/importance.
When the villain is revealed anew it’s either-
a background character that bears no relevance to the story
or
it requires that the character has been lying to the readers and themselves throughout the book.
When police work with amateur detectives and have nothing else to do but chat the small stuff.
When consultants behave like health care assistants.

I know what you mean but ‘juggernaut’ specifically isn’t a modern word. It used to mean anything huge and unstoppable - it’s only recently started to be used for motor vehicles. Centuries ago, I think it originally referred to some kind of massive chariot.

But yes, anachronisms are annoying. I once read something where a character’s POV mentioned ‘time ticking away’ in a book set before anyone would have heard of clocks, for example.

I also read an otherwise excellent fantasy series where a character quoted Shakespeare a couple of times. Famous quotations, too, not the kind that have entered the English language in a way that means we don’t recognise them as Shakespeare any more. I’m talking along the lines of “Alas poor Yorick” or “What light from yonder window breaks” Unclear how Shakespeare was supposed to be familiar to people in a world where he didn’t exist.

When they have much more money than they should have. So a young couple who are a teacher and a paramedic are about to buy a garden flat in Holland Park. No they are not! They are about to buy in Upminster and they will feel very pleased with themselves with the purchase.

I hate having a central female protagonist who had post natal depression at some point in the past and as a result she isn't believed by anyone in her life. It seems to be weirdly common in crime books. It simultaneously tells the reader that this is something in the past and only related to having a baby, you can trust the narrator, but it also assumes the entire British public, her family, partner, police, doctors etc think it is permanent and she's completely mad. You can't have both these things at the same time, it's so lazy.

Mine is when everything in the book is written in the present tense - the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel is a culprit.

Anyone remember the ‘F* off Molly’ thread where people posted their dislikes?

Ie. Molly inherited a cafe in Cornwall from Great Aunt Esther, and she fled down there after discovering her fiancé Tarquin cheating on her, and runs into the mysterious brooding Brad…

Urghhhhh - just reading those made me shiver, @CreativeGreen!

Exactly. How can everything be happening at the same time!

Also when female characters in old cosy crime novels toss their heads during questioning or after being told they can't do something or other. Head-tossers usually aren't the heroine so are likely, if young, to be a Bit Above Themselves and have an attitude towards the patient noble chief inspector or his painstaking constable. Never seen anyone toss their head in real life.

Also shrugging. If they do it once they usually do it several times. "She shrugged again". Who are these serial shruggers, as I don't know any.

When an author writes that a character's "lip curled". I've seen it in soo many books but never heard anyone use that expression irl and I have no idea what facial expression it's even trying to describe. I'm guessing some sort of sneer from the context - but why not effing say so?

I've also recently read a book which was otherwise good but had a character travel on the train to "Birmingham station"

I'm not telling anyone their icks are wrong! (I could list my own SR icks, which would begin with her decision that women who are not thin are not deserving of heroine status, and that disordered eating is cool and heroine-like as long as you're interestingly thin. Pretty much the first thing we see Marianne do in Normal People is sit on a table eating Nutella out of a jar with a spoon, and Frances in Conversations With Friends at one point buys a big chocolate cake and eats it all at one go out of the box while talking to her married lover's wife on the phone, but these would both code completely differently if M and F had double chins and muffin-tops bulging over their low-rise jeans.)

But we will have an international colony on Mars before SR (whose writing has many things about it I do like, I should say and who has a following that means she can write literally anything) writes a fat heroine.

My only point is that lots of the icks people have listed here are from hastily-written commercial fiction. You can avoid virtually all of them by expanding your reading horizons beyond that.

Lists of Dramatis Personae at the beginning of a novel. I can understand it for some great, sweeping opus (and even then,put it at the back) but in a 100 page bit of light reading it's unnecessary if you introduce your characters properly.

Non-fiction books where they don't put the references in a footnote and you have to look up the chapter and number at the back while keeping your place in the text.

Badly written "Scottish" accents that make Groundskeeper Willie sound authentic. "Weel ye be wuntin me ter serve tea, yer leddyship"? Urgh!

Americanisms, gotten instead of got or dove instead of dived.

A character quoting French or Latin and not translated. Also Latin quotes as chapter headings. In fact any chapter heading other than Chapter number. I don't want to read half a Shakespeare sonnet before I can carry on with the story.

Poor research generally. I remember the early Outlander books had quite a few basic errors like Claire going to the Scotrail station years before Scotrail existed. One I've mentioned before was a book by another American author set in Victorian Scotland in a castle on the "Perthshire coast" just look at a map for goodness sake.

Book covers at the moment! Every other psychological thriller has a photo on the front of a house which is dark with one light on in the window

A while ago every other thriller had a woman in a red coat walking or running away from the camera position.

When the villain is revealed anew it’s either-
a background character that bears no relevance to the story
or
it requires that the character has been lying to the readers and themselves throughout the book.

The Detection Club, brainchild of Dorothy L Sayers, had rules about this sort of thing. Fairly lighthearted and even DLS herself broke them at times, but the underlying principle that you must be fair to your readers was generally followed by Golden Age authors.

Non-fiction books where they don't put the references in a footnote and you have to look up the chapter and number at the back while keeping your place in the text.

Oh I hate that. I suppose it makes formatting easier, but still.

Then so many books have the chapter title at the top of each page (If they have anything at all), then when you get to the back it says Notes to Chapter One, Chapter Two etc, so you have to go to the front of the book, or back to the beginning of the chapter, to find out what number chapter you're on.

Best academic book I ever read in that respect had 'Notes to pages 100-120, Notes to pages 121-135' at the head of each double page of notes, so you knew exactly where you were.

My only point is that lots of the icks people have listed here are from hastily-written commercial fiction.

While that may be true to an extent, pps have referenced Wuthering Heights, War and Peace and Wolf Hall so it's a bit of a stretch to say

You can avoid virtually all of them by expanding your reading horizons beyond that.

I agree with this. In The Safekeep I couldn’t believe in the central character’s sudden transformation from a repressed buttoned-up type to a wanton lesbian sex goddess. The twist in the middle is well done though.

See aso Francis Crawford of Lymond and/or Sevigny, previously Master of Culter and quite possibly currently Ambassador/Marshal/Voevoda of all Russia depending on the book.

But I love those books, so not really an ick. Sorry.

I was going to say this !! And I book I read recently everyone stared at each other a lot instead of answering.

References to current social media apps, I don’t mind vague ‘posting’ or texting references but someone scrolling through instagram completely puts me off as I feel it badly dates the book

While I don't disagree with you, sometimes I just want something very easy to read but without being irritated by all the usual icks

I love literary fiction and weighty classics. But this week I have been unwell in hospital and just wanted to read something fluffy. But I don't see that means it should also be poorly written and barely edited.

I read that. I hated it but read to the end - like watching a car crash. All the characters were horrible.

I like mindless, fun, easy “chick lit” as much as the next person, but the rise of some objectively bad books baffles me. Lazy plot, lazy characters, lazy everything.

This is specifically aimed at The Pumpkin Spice Cafe and relatives. I still hold a grudge I finished that thing.

Men Ive Loved Before by Adele Parks. Its about a married couple who dont want kids but the man changes his mind. Towards the end of the book he pokes a hole in the condom so she gets pregnant and this is dressed up as romance