What makes you dump a book?

[AuntiePam]

Any pet peeves?  I have a couple.  Maybe they're irrational, but they're mine.  One is when an author starts a sentence with the word "suddenly".  It seems so lazy, juvenile, artless.  If I see "suddenly", I stop reading, right there. 

Another is adverbs in dialogue tags.  "What are you doing?" Pam said angrily.  That also seems lazy, juvenile, artless.  If the character is angry, I should know that without the tag.  Show me that Pam is angry -- don't tell me.

Yet another peeve is unpronounceable character names.  This is especially popular in fantasy novels.  A double-peeve if the name has an apostrophe.

Share yours, so I won't feel like such a curmudgeon!

[Sandman87]

You'll hate this one then:

"Suddenly you're the expert?!", said D'varntwyg the Dwarf shortly.

I can't think offhand of any particular things that will make me close a book immediately, although I generally don't like it with the sentences get so convoluted that I have to go back and reread them more than twice.

[AuntiePam]

Good one.  You made a Swiftie! 

[Joe]

8 hours ago, AuntiePam said:

Any pet peeves?  I have a couple.  Maybe they're irrational, but they're mine.  One is when an author starts a sentence with the word "suddenly".  It seems so lazy, juvenile, artless.  If I see "suddenly", I stop reading, right there.

I see where you're going, but how do you indicate that sense of something suddenly happening?

Mine, tonal shift. I've read a few books recently that started out light and fun, but got way too serious and dark further in. That's not what I want to read. Start as you mean to go on.

[Sandman87]

3 hours ago, AuntiePam said:

Good one.  You made a Swiftie! 

I made a Taylor Swift fan? (looks it up) Oh, you mean a Tom Swiftie. Heh. I didn't know the term until now.

[AuntiePam]

1 hour ago, Joe said:

I see where you're going, but how do you indicate that sense of something suddenly happening?

 

In the book I just dumped, the word wasn't necessary.  An old man is walking along a beach.  He looks down and sees a body.   "Suddenly he saw a dead body" -- his shock becomes an issue of timing -- he saw it suddenly -- rather than the fact of finding the body.  Finding the body is what's important, not that it was found suddenly. 

It's one of those words that, when it's removed, the sentence usually reads better.  Or just as well.  It's like most adverbs -- not necessary.

It's hard to explain.  I'll work on it. 

[Joe]

I think I see what you mean, but what about in action scenes? I'm writing a book myself, and want to make it as good as I can. So you've hit on something interesting here.

[Darian]

I've got a few pet peeves, but I have put down more books over lack of quotation marks around dialog than anything else. Only a few books have grabbed me hard enough to keep me reading when there are no quotation marks around dialog. Single double, give me something. 

[Joe]

8 hours ago, Darian said:

I've got a few pet peeves, but I have put down more books over lack of quotation marks around dialog than anything else. Only a few books have grabbed me hard enough to keep me reading when there are no quotation marks around dialog. Single double, give me something. 

Absolutely! I tried to read Cormac McCarthy's The Road once. Made it maybe a page or two. There's a quote I read once but can't relocate. Forgive me for paraphrasing. 'If you have a good story, tell it plainly. If you don't, tell it any way you want.'

Edited May 19, 2016 by Joe

[AuntiePam]

9 hours ago, Joe said:

I think I see what you mean, but what about in action scenes? I'm writing a book myself, and want to make it as good as I can. So you've hit on something interesting here.

Action scenes will be fast-moving anyway, so 'suddenly' is probably a given.  My biggest issue with 'suddenly' is when it's the first word in the sentence.  That's when it seems most amateurish and lazy.  

Joe, I like that quote.  I'm a fan of plain writing. 

[psychoticstate]

I'll quit a book if the editor/proofreader was nonexistent or asleep on the job, unless the book is really phenomenal.  I can't stand errors in grammar and punctuation.

I also have little tolerance for painfully slow moving books.  If you don't grab me fairly quickly in, I'm gone.

Lastly, if a character does something unexplainable and/or incredibly stupid that is clearly only to move the plot along, I get stabby.  My favorite example is a book I read years ago with the main storyline being a series of murders that were happening in this small hometown.  Our heroine is upset because people she knows are getting bumped off so what does she do?  She decides going for a midnight walk to think about it and clear her head is a brilliant plan.  This was obviously done in order for her to witness a murder but come on . . . I can't relate to someone that stupid.

[AuntiePam]

psychoticstate, when that happens, I root for the serial killer. 

That reminds me of another pet peeve -- characters whose actions don't match their description.  I don't recall the title, but one clunker had a woman described and shown to be strong, independent, and smart -- until she encounters a man she knew she should fear.  Instead of leaving him alone, she initiates a meeting with him -- to "clear the air". 

[Sandman87]

Maybe we should change the title of this thread to something like "Pet Book Peeves." Make it cover a little more ground.

[AuntiePam]

That's a good idea.  Pet peeves aren't always bad enough to make us dump the book.

I don't know how to change a topic title.

[Archery]

Lack of proofreading. If an editor couldn't care enough to read the text closely, I don't see why I should.  Also, when characters are stupid for the sake of being stupid. I don't need characters to make only good decisions, but manufacturing drama by being dumb makes me not care what happens to you.

I'll dump a book if the characters have no life independent of each other: they spend all their free time together, and when they're apart, they're thinking or talking about each other.

[AuntiePam]

15 hours ago, Archery said:

Lack of proofreading. If an editor couldn't care enough to read the text closely, I don't see why I should. 

Yep.  I don't mind a few typos.  Continuity errors bug me more.  If an author is taking the trouble to write that John is driving a Ford Escape, don't change it to a Lexus in the next chapter. 

Abandoning plot points is another problem for me.  One really bad (good?) example:  A man is standing in a hallway, about to knock on a door.  He intends to kill the man who answers the door.  The potential victim walks out the door and leaves the building.  There's no further mention of the killer.  Did he see the killer?  Did the killer change his mind?  Was he whisked away by aliens?  We'll never know.

[proserpina65]

I tend to check out when a book starts meandering through tangents which obviously aren't going to have any effect on the narrative.  (I've made an exception for George R.R. Martin, but he's on borrowed time.)  I also have been known to stop reading if the book focuses on boring characters rather than more interesting minor ones.  (Zadie Smith's White Teeth is my perfect example.)  The main characters don't necessarily have to be nice or sympathetic or relatable, but they do have to be intriguing in order to keep me reading.

[AuntiePam]

proserpina65, yep.  I don't mind a tangent that adds some flavor or builds a mood though.

Something else that bugs me is filler, unnecessary description of some mundane activity, like getting dressed, or driving somewhere.  I don't need to know the route Sam is taking to Diane's house.

Some writers do a lot of "to'ing and fro'ing" -- describing characters walking up and down stairs, going in and out of rooms.  Like a lot of readers, sometimes I really like a big fat book, but the book needs to be mostly meat, not starch.

[NewDigs]

On May 23, 2016 at 4:58 PM, AuntiePam said:

proserpina65, yep.  I don't mind a tangent that adds some flavor or builds a mood though.

Something else that bugs me is filler, unnecessary description of some mundane activity, like getting dressed, or driving somewhere.  I don't need to know the route Sam is taking to Diane's house.

Some writers do a lot of "to'ing and fro'ing" -- describing characters walking up and down stairs, going in and out of rooms.  Like a lot of readers, sometimes I really like a big fat book, but the book needs to be mostly meat, not starch.

Many moons ago I swore I would quit reading any book in which a character "pads" to and fro. I think it was in response to one Dean Koontz book too many but have since found that lots and lots authors have their characters "pad" around their homes/offices etc.

To me that extraneous to-ing and fro-ing can create a narrative that reads a lot like, "And then... And then..."

[AuntiePam]

NewDigs, Koontz comes up with some great ideas for plots, but his word choices can be weird.  In From the Corner of His Eye, a husband is concerned for his wife.  She's in the kitchen baking pies, husband is watching out for her, and Koontz writes that the husband "loitered in her vicinity."   I pictured him with his fly unzipped.

A lot of authors seem to have favorite words.  If the word isn't common, they should be careful about over-use. 

[BookWoman56]

On 5/21/2016 at 11:25 PM, Archery said:

Lack of proofreading. If an editor couldn't care enough to read the text closely, I don't see why I should.  Also, when characters are stupid for the sake of being stupid. I don't need characters to make only good decisions, but manufacturing drama by being dumb makes me not care what happens to you.

I can handle an occasional typo or minor grammar mistake. After years of being a tech writer, which generally means I spend half my time writing and half my time editing stuff other people wrote, along with years of grading college essays, I've built up some tolerance for minor mistakes. Key word though is "occasional." If the mistakes are so frequent that I find myself wondering if there even was an editor involved, I'm out. I just can't with ongoing grammar mistakes and typos; that makes me stabby and I end up composing snarky letters in my head to the author/publisher.

I also dislike it when characters are temporarily stupid to advance the plot. That is, they show intelligence and good sense most of the time, but to advance the plot, they do something so stupid that a typical 12-year-old would know better. I understand that even the smartest person will occasionally make bad choices, but there's a difference between occasional bad judgment and outright stupidity that makes you wonder how the person performs everyday functions. I also have zero interest in reading about consistently stupid people.

I will dump a book if the author clearly has some agenda/prejudice that manifests itself as characters who are only stereotypes. The only Kindle book I have ever returned to amazon was described as a post-apocalyptic thriller, which is a genre I usually enjoy, but this one was some guy's machismo masquerading as a book. Female characters who did exactly what the male protagonist told them = good women who survive. Female characters who dared to disagree with him = total bitches who die horrible deaths.  Male characters were treated slightly differently, but for the same cause: male characters who got tough and started threatening or shooting anyone who disagreed with them = good men who survive, while those men who tried to actually think things through instead of becoming violent = weak men who also die horrible deaths.

Finally, I will stop reading books that are too predictable, especially if the book is a mystery or something similar. If three or four chapters in, I am 99% sure I know what's going to happen at the end, I read the last two chapters to confirm my theory. If I was able to predict the ending correctly and the ending chapters do not reveal something compelling that would make me want to read the rest of the book, then it's gone. It's not that I want there to be a sudden twist or reveal at the end, where some random character turns out to be the killer and kills because ... reasons. Instead, I want it to be somewhat challenging but possible to figure out the murderer's identity and motive, but with plausible alternatives that keep me wondering until the end.

[Archery]

I'm reading a book by Tracy Chevalier, The Virgin Blue.  It's set in France, in two time periods.  My peeve:  lines and dialogue in French without translation.  I don't speak or read French.  And it may be that the line isn't vital to the story.  But it bugs me. Once or twice I was able to figure it out, eventually (halfway through the Lord's Prayer, the penny dropped; the other was a Psalm I could look up).  Even so, it took me out of the story, and I resented it.

[AuntiePam]

Archery, I gave up on The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco partly for that reason.  Every page or two, I had to consult a dictionary.  This was in the days before e-readers, when we could click and get a definition. 

I don't remember now if the words were foreign -- Latin -- or if they were just arcane.  It may well have been that he used the best word -- but it made for a difficult read, all the interruptions. 

[benteen]

The lack of good editing is driving me crazy.  It seems to me editors put a book through a spell check now instead of actually READING the book and finding the errors.  Even books I've loved have had a ton of grammatical errors in them.  It's lazy as hell and off-putting.

[NewDigs]

Richard Russo's latest, Everybody's Fool, misused "reign". Huge pet peeve.

And I think that the editor could have used an X-acto knife to pare out a couple hundred pages. Really "Wdy".

[AuntiePam]

Was the misuse a case of free "rein" or free "reign"?  I've seen that both ways, in lots of books and have always thought it kinda works, either way. 

[NewDigs]

14 hours ago, AuntiePam said:

Was the misuse a case of free "rein" or free "reign"?  I've seen that both ways, in lots of books and have always thought it kinda works, either way. 

"Free reign" to wander the land, or something. Not exact words but same intent.

[Blergh]

For me , I dump books when there's more than one extremely detailed blow-by-blow account of abuse and/or violence. I know that abuse and violence happens in real life all-too-often. However; when this gets detailed more than once (rather than having subsequent accounts being summarized), it gets me wondering whether the author actually is identifying with the perpetrator instead of the victim and whether they may even be getting cheap thrills depicting it despite any subsequent protests. Yes, I've dumped works that turned out to be what I call 'perp porn'.

[nodorothyparker]

The problem with the lack of editing is real and it's probably not going to get any better.  Speaking as someone who used to do it for a living, I know it's one of the first things to go when the powers that be at any media or publishing company are looking to save a buck.  Because "it'll be fine if you just run it through spell check."  Throw in that a lot of authors and writers as they get more successful have the star power to say no, they don't want to cut that whole section that doesn't really go anywhere or add anything to the story because they like it, and you get where we are now.  Because a 1,400 page monster from George R.R. Martin that's fully one-third food porn and repetitiveness still makes money while losing him to another publisher doesn't.

It used to be that a book had to be pretty bad for me to give up, and even moreso if the book was hugely popular or a classic because then I had to try to suss out why it was famous in the first place and what I was missing.  As I'm getting older, I'm finding that I care less and less.  If the writing is bad, if it bores me, or if it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere after having had plenty of pages to do so, I'm out.

[AuntiePam]

Quote

It used to be that a book had to be pretty bad for me to give up, and even moreso if the book was hugely popular or a classic because then I had to try to suss out why it was famous in the first place and what I was missing.  As I'm getting older, I'm finding that I care less and less.  If the writing is bad, if it bores me, or if it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere after having had plenty of pages to do so, I'm out.

This is where I am too. 

When I was young, I believed that any book was worth reading because, well, it got published.  It had to be worthwhile, right?  If I didn't like the book, I figured the problem was with me -- I just didn't get it.  Especially if the book was a best seller. 

[Steph619]

My biggest pet peeve when reading a book is usually when a book spends way too much time especially more than a paragraph being too descriptive about minute details about a place or what a character is wearing or doing. Right now, I'm reading Stephen King's "It" and although, I'm really enjoying it because of the intriguing plot and the characters, I find myself bored at times when he gives too many details for example, about the location the characters are in or the path a character takes when going somewhere. I just feel like it takes away from the flow of the book and doesn't add anything of importance to the story.

[ratgirlagogo]

1 hour ago, Steph619 said:

Right now, I'm reading Stephen King's "It" 

Obviously I won't spoil it for you, but "It" was the book that made me give up on Stephen King.  The payoff at the end was just so bad for a book that is twice as long as War and Peace.

[potatoradio]

Books with no fewer than 1000000000 character points of view, including the sun's, the sidewalk's, the ant munching on Iowa corn....ugh. I like omniscient narrators, but that's different. Slapping together so many points of view reads as either lazy or the author's hope that s/he produced a ready-to-go screenplay conversion. Which...no.

Books where I can sense the author isn't pushing h/herself and has little invested. Please give a crap about what you write or I won't care to read it.

On the flip side, books where the author is clearly in love with a character but has failed to develop them. Double minus if the character is a cliche or stereotype (no  male authors in love with their tender Lotus flower Asian girls/fiercely independent raven haired elfin warriors or women authors drooling over their sardonic, hip detectives, please. I want to keep some food in my stomach). 

No chapters. Just section breaks. Gee, thanks for that effort.

Books that just try too hard to be quirky or innovative. 

[Sandman87]

16 hours ago, potatoradio said:

Books with no fewer than 1000000000 character points of view, including the sun's, the sidewalk's, the ant munching on Iowa corn....ugh. I like omniscient narrators, but that's different. Slapping together so many points of view reads as either lazy or the author's hope that s/he produced a ready-to-go screenplay conversion. Which...no.

I don't mind multiple points of view, but I can guarantee you that any book or series with more than about 5 POV characters is going to have one or more who I just don't give a rat's ass about, and the more of them there are, the more of them I won't care about (*cough* GRRMartin *cough*).

[AuntiePam]

5 hours ago, Sandman87 said:

I don't mind multiple points of view, but I can guarantee you that any book or series with more than about 5 POV characters is going to have one or more who I just don't give a rat's ass about, and the more of them there are, the more of them I won't care about (*cough* GRRMartin *cough*).

My problem with Martin -- and it was likely MY problem -- is that I wasn't able to discern which characters deserved my close attention.  I ignored Theon Greyjoy and was surprised that he became so important later on.

Same thing happened with Interview with the Vampire.  The focus was on the little girl?  Really?  I didn't pick up on that until I saw the movie, years later.

[annzeepark914]

At my book club, we find ourselves complaining about the lack of good editing.  The Goldfinch just about wore us out (e.g., two pages to describe a walk down the street on a rainy autumn day).  We often find ourselves skimming pages of books.

But the thing that really makes me slam a book closed (for good) is when I cannot envision the town/area in which the story is taking place. Usually there is too much description or it's confusing.

[candall]

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 7:33 PM, AuntiePam said:

My problem with Martin -- and it was likely MY problem -- is that I wasn't able to discern which characters deserved my close attention.  I ignored Theon Greyjoy and was surprised that he became so important later on.

Not your problem--his.  I think that deliberately being vague about the significance of the characters is part of Martin's "hook."

Pre-television show, I bought the first book and snuggled in.  Right off the bat, there were ten or twelve men who were all identified by name.  I thought, "Okay, I'm in this for the long haul so I'm prepared to do the groundwork."  I paused, checked the map, familiarized myself with the names, doped out the connections.

Five minutes later, half of them were dead.

Naming your cannon fodder felt somewhat manipulative to me, but it gets worse in the later books; many people complain about "major" characters who get a big introduction and serve no purpose except to surprise the reader by being killed.

[candall]

On ‎5‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 3:01 PM, AuntiePam said:

Abandoning plot points is another problem for me.  One really bad (good?) example:  A man is standing in a hallway, about to knock on a door.  He intends to kill the man who answers the door.  The potential victim walks out the door and leaves the building.  There's no further mention of the killer.  Did he see the killer?  Did the killer change his mind?  Was he whisked away by aliens?  We'll never know.

The inverse:

I've read exactly one Dean Koontz book and I was extremely impressed because I had NO idea which character was the villain.  Turned out--surprise ending--it was supernatural creatures all along.

Slam!   Book hits wall (right next to the mark left by Shutter Island.)

[Captain Carrot]

All this talk of editorial issues reminds me of something that Roger Zelazney said in 'A Burnt Out Case'. (I'll try to not quote the entire thing)

Quote

I don't know whether anyone who specializes in these matters might notice, but in my book Lord of Light, nowhere in it will you find the work "which", because an editor decided to scratch out "which" everywhere it occurred and substitute "that". Which is all right: it doesn't make anything incorrect. But I do know the difference. Doubleday, perhaps, had a style sheet which requires this sort of thing...that sort of thing. I let it go. This was my first hardcover sale.

 

Quote

 

This was interesting, but did not help me to find anyone who could tell me whether I had become a burnt out case. I was growing worried about this, because I had been talking with a writer I respected about another writer, who shall remain nameless (a big name writer whose books sell quite well) and we pretty much agreed that this fellows last few books had not been up to snuff. He said, "You know, his last few books were very flabby. They could have been cut quite severely and they probably would have been better books as a result. I think that what he really needs is a good editor. They're afraid to tell him to do anything about it, because his books are going to sell well, whether this is done or not. They don't want to lose him as a writer, so no one has the guts to tell him what's wrong with his stuff. He's become a victim of the Great Writer Syndrome.

At the time, it struck me as possibly true. But my experience with good editors is that they are very few and far between. I've me a few people I consider good editors. It is difficult. I can see the nameless writer's position: probably he doesn't know who to trust.

I don't know that there is an answer to this.

 

I think this speaks to the issue popular writers face. They deal with less than stellar editors when they start out, and learn not to trust them. This keeps the writers from listening to good editorial advise when they have the clout to say NO.

[Joe]

Interesting. Is the whole thing online anywhere?

[ratgirlagogo]

28 minutes ago, Captain Carrot said:

I think this speaks to the issue popular writers face

I think it's the issue all writers face - popular, unpopular, literary prize winners, etc.  Great editors have always been a rarity even when publishers were still willing to pay for them.  And no matter how good they are - let's just take Raymond Carver as an example since his stories in both the pre and post editing versions are available in one volume.  It's easy to see that he would never have become the big deal he became if Gordon Lish hadn't basically rewritten all of his stories.  But what did that do to him, to know that?

Edited June 26, 2016 by ratgirlagogo

[Captain Carrot]

Quote

Interesting. Is the whole thing online anywhere?

I couldn't find a copy of it online. I found 'A Burnt out Case' in volume three of 'The Collected stories of Roger Zelazny'. Each one has essays and transcripts of speeches at the end of the volume. The six volumes contain every Zelazny short story that hasn't been lost. (Including some from his HS newspaper).

[Joe]

Thanks, though I might give it a miss.

[Browncoat]

I had to quit reading a book because the main character kept "baling" the water out of his boat.  For five pages.  I still haven't figured out how you bale water.

It will also take me out of the book if a natural behavior is inaccurately described, or if there's bad science.  For example, a character watched an eagle swooping down to catch fish in its beak.  Nope.  Eagles catch their prey with their talons. 

[benteen]

I've noticed a lot more typos now in books.  I'm fine with the occasional typo but it's become increasingly clear now that a lot of editors just put a book through spell check instead of actually checking it for typos.  When there are a dozen or more grammatical mistakes, that is absolutely inexcusable. 

[bmasters9]

On 7/25/2016 at 9:33 PM, Browncoat said:

I had to quit reading a book because the main character kept "baling" the water out of his boat.  For five pages.  I still haven't figured out how you bale water.

I think the writer meant "bail" on that one. "Bale" is what you do with hay. 

[Browncoat]

Yes, I know. And to have had the error once probably wouldn't have bothered me nearly as much as it did to have it page after page after page. There are times when spell-check is not your friend, and this was definitely one of them. 

[topanga]

On 5/23/2016 at 4:58 PM, AuntiePam said:

proserpina65, yep.  I don't mind a tangent that adds some flavor or builds a mood though.

Something else that bugs me is filler, unnecessary description of some mundane activity, like getting dressed, or driving somewhere.  I don't need to know the route Sam is taking to Diane's house.

Some writers do a lot of "to'ing and fro'ing" -- describing characters walking up and down stairs, going in and out of rooms.  Like a lot of readers, sometimes I really like a big fat book, but the book needs to be mostly meat, not starch.

Similarly, I don't mind descriptions of weather if weather is relevant to the plot. Same thing with clothing descriptions--only if it's important to characterization. Or if a character is dressed markedly different than usual. But a several paragraph description for a field of flowers? If I'm liking the book, I'll just skip the paragraphs. If I'm so-so about the book, I'll probably stop reading entirely. Or a character's dream? Blech. Unless the character is clairvoyant, or I'm reading a sci-fi/fantasy novel about life imitating dreams, I couldn't care less about a character's subconscious thoughts. 

[Mabinogia]

I just gave up a book series because the main characters love interest kept calling her "kiddo" and treating her as such, like a child he needs to protect. I wouldn't have given the series up (which was actually kind of interesting) except that I feel like the writer thought the whole kiddo thing was cute while I saw a passive aggressive (he would manipulate her insecurities if she disagreed with him on anything), controlling jerk.

When I am seeing things so utterly differently than what seems to be the intent, I have to bail, or bale if you prefer hay to water.

[Blergh]

Mabinogia,

 

Your call, of course, what's worth sticking around for and what to bail/bale on. However; IMO, 'kiddo' seems FAR less hostile  than some of the other 'terms of endearment' I've seen in books, movies, tv, etc. in recent decades. If anything, IMO it sounds like something used by a 1920's speakeasy maître d' to a busboy. Was this story supposed to be set in the last 80 years?