Bookish peeves

What do you really hate in books? What drives you right up the wall?

Me? I hate bad accents, and if they're typed phonetically I'll give up on the book. Language is for communication, not <mod edit>really annoying</mod> your readers.

Edit by Bookangel: Language, outside the Dive? Tut.

 

Spelling mistakes and bad grammar. If you want your book read, at least have enough regard for your readers to use spellcheck.

 

Mostly, when a book's not what it says? You know, great cover, wonderful blurb about a romance and inside it there's plague and horror and so on? Hate it when I open a book and have to check the cover to make sure it really is what I bought.

 

You're thinking of that one Reader was talking about, that kid's book where it was supposed to be a fairy story and then everyone important drops dead of the plague in the first chapter.

 

I wasn't but I am now. Thanks porridge.

 

That was not a reminder I wanted, although mis-representation really does annoy me in any form. Don't tell me your book is a touching and true-to-life memoir, because when I discover it is instead a thinly veiled 20,000 word advert that I wasted a day on giving a sensitive critique to, the claws will come out.

In so many cases, books would do better if they were pointed at the right audience, but as it is their readers will never find them. Seriously, please try to find the right genre. Books do so much better when they have readers.

 

If you're talking about Children's books, my pet peeve is being patronising.

 

My personal pet peeve is currently the Idiot Ball. When a character decides to do something so montrously stupid and there is no reason for it other than lazy writing.

I don't have problems with characters doing stupid things because they are stupid or maybe ill-informed. But I loathe it when for no reason other than plot convenience, a character just has to act in a random way in order to move the story on or cover some vital plot point that can only be given out thusly.

 

Current one. The main bloke is not a hero just cos he's
a) a bloke
b) white
c) American
He has to act like a hero before I'll call him one, right?

 

The "Show, don't tell" problem, or informed ability. The author can tell readers a hundred times how good the character is, but if the only time we see them use the skill they fail horribly, it is not credible.

 

I'll go one better on show, don't tell. If the character is a ruthless killer, it would be useful for them to actually perform that action at some point in the story instead of wussing out each and every time.

 

I hate those books which are padded out with loads of pages that are usually adverts, author notes, the first chapter of the next book and so on. Especially when the story is cut really short.

 

I have a new one: ellipsis. For some reason the last books either have four dots, or a full-stop, space and another two like this ". ..". Ellipsis should always have three dots

(Start rant at 4:12)

 

"And they were all really dead all along."

This is turning into the twenty-first century's equivalent of "it was all a dream". It was hacky but daring the first time, but by the thirtieth it looks like the author just can't write endings.

 

Random Bolding and capitalisation of WORDS. Do they know how hard it MAKES it To read pages of this?

 

Ah, NaNoWriMo. A project about the joy of writing with results from a breakout author smashing through writer's block to manuscripts that sound like a cat walked on the keyboard for fifty thousand words. All these authors, the good and the bad think that their work is a perfect celebration of literary technique.

And in the last month and this one, all these authors, good and the bad, seem to have discovered KDP and from there my review queue.

I love the concept. The results? Vary.