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 felt this with Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (or whatever it was called). A naive, alcoholic recluse turns into a fashion conscious diva with full make up and Brazilian waxing, becomes socially confident and creates a diverse and super supportive community of friends, all in about 6 weeks.

I’ve probably got the details wrong but that is the impression it left on me.

As an identical twin myself this also grinds my gears.

If Andrew was surprised, he didnt show it.

If Andrew was annoyed, he didn't show it.

If Andrew was clinically insane, he didn't show it.

I can't remember the book but this was said throughout for every single feeling imaginable. Now if I read it in another book even just once I get irrationally irked.

Neville did but tbf he was a child rather than a baby lol

Not a book but a film (sorry). Skylar in Good Will Hunting. Character played by Minnie Driver. There is no way a posh English student from a monied background attending MIT would have been called Skylar in the 90s. Annabelle, Kate, Elizabeth etc yes, Skylar absolutely not.

Not really. People were complaining about the tendency in Russian novels to use patronymics and multiple names but that's just the novelists being accurate to the naming forms of the society they're depicting. You might struggle with it, but it's not a writing fault.

And in Wuthering Heights, the entire point of the novel is the repeating names down the generations and across the two households, especially when you have things like the original Catherine Earnshaw turn into Catherine Linton while her daughter will make the opposite journey a generation on. That's different to a lazily-written novel where a bunch of barely differentiated male characters are called Killian, Kieran and Kyle and you can't remember which one is the sweet clichéd gay best friend of the heroine, which the one she's in love with, and which the villainous boss.

What you won't get is Heathcliff padding endlessly through the Heights, or Vronsky curling his lip every page or two, or Mantel's Cromwell listening to an audiobook on his airpods and giving the thumbs up to Anne Boleyns' attendants Kylie, Kloe and Kyra, though!

No, I agree. There's no excuse for bad editing. I'm only saying you're going to get a lot more lazy, clichéd prose in commercial fiction.

My siblings are boy/girl twins and get asked if they’re identical.

When there’s a handy billionaire who falls in love with the flaky heroine and fixes all her bad decisions.

jane green
Sophie Kinsella

Having a super rich love interest that seemingly clicks their fingers and gets everything within minutes.

female love interests that are written weak and feeble and need the man to bring them out of their pathetic shell 🙄

People do ask the most ridiculous questions. I’m sure that have a stock answer but I’d be very tempted to reply:

“Yeah we are! Isn’t it obvious?”

Or

”What makes you think that?”

I mean, it makes sense that more icks come from hastily produced contemporary fiction than fiction which has endured for centuries, probably. I mean, I do know and understand that Middlemarch is different from (and better than) Jill Mansell, and I've read both, but I know which I'd be reading on a plane or a beach, and to be honest, the icks can be part of the fun of the latter. That's why I and probably many others are enjoying this thread so much!

There's one I dislike that does occur in fiction of all quality though and that's 'he named a figure' or 'he named a very famous celebrity' - either make one up or just leave this out.

Also just in crap fiction: 'she punched a series of numbers into her phone'.

People who talk in a way that no one in real life would actually talk. I normally like Andrew O’Hagan’s books, but found the dialogue in Caledonian Road utterly unconvincing . No one talks like this, even arty London types. See also Rachel Cusk where people hold forth for hours with no one interrupting them and telling them to shut up.

Oh and clunky signalling of politics, pace Stephen King. 'The bad shit man stopped plotting a murder for the time it took him to climb into his car with the I LIKE DONALD TRUMP bumper sticker, as the affable private detective watched from behind his N95 covid mask as you couldn't be too careful, no siree-bob'

For some reason it really annoys me that loads of characters have alliterative names that sound really unrealistic. Dwayne Davidson or Jane Jefferson or Mark McIntosh, like the author spent 10 seconds coming up with a name.

Stickers on books, or even worse, the current trend for stickers that are part of the cover! I’ve refused to buy books before because if this!

Also, when books change to the ‘film’ cover. Ugggh. Just no.

I have an alliterative name and I find myself very convincing, so I'm not going for that one, Dopaminego!

Yes, I agree icks can absolutely be part of the fun, to a certain point, anyway.

I adore the Chalet School series, and that enjoyment is in part down to them being one long series of icks -- repetitive phrases, authorial/editorial errors (longstanding characters arbitrarily changing surname or age, so that characters who are originally in the same form as others end up aging at a completely different rate and end up school years ahead or behind them), supposedly native speakers making endless beginner errors in their French, weird addictions to descriptive phrases ('pure, choirboy voice', 'eyes that had never yet needed glasses', 'dainty' cubicles) etc etc.

Normally intelligent characters doing incredibly stupid things just because the plot requires it, e.g. the husband who leaves a very compromising letter in the makeshift filing system in the spare room rather than shredding it, burning it or tearing it into small pieces and disposing of them in someone else's bin.

I'm sure you have a great name @MonsterSister! There's just something made-uppy about a lot ones I see in fiction. Or like a pp has said, that don't fit the time period/age of the character. Makes me think of Dwayne Dibley!

YES THIS
Stickers are only acceptable if they have easy-peel glue that doesn't damage the cover. Printing them as part of the cover is so wrong

Normally intelligent characters doing incredibly stupid things

Oh yes. Dr Ruth Galloway, I'm looking at you here.

And any character who goes off to meet someone who might have information about the crime without telling someone where they're going....

It's not everyone padding, it's always women. Usually padding from the shower to the bedroom, they never seem to dry their feet.

Something that gives me the "ick" enough to stop me reading the book is where a knight or baronet is referred to by "Sir" and surname rather than their given name. Reading "Sir Bloggs" instead of "Sir Joseph" grates on me so much I can't continue.

Any UK-based crime novel where they mention "breaking and entering" or, worse, "pressing charges"