Book Pet Peeves?

[ezio]

What are you pet peeves with regards to books/reading?

Mine are:
1. Mary Sue/Larry Stu characters: The "perfect" MCs. They are attractive, perfect at everything they try/do, and never make a mistake.
2. Repetitious plots: Books where it seems that the same things keep happening (ex: someone is murdered, police investigate, someone is murdered, rinse and repeat). I once read a generational saga that made me feel deja vu at times.
3. Too flowery/descriptive text: I don't need 500 words to tell me what an article of clothing/animal/person or room looks like.
6. Romance takes over the plot in a non romance book. This gets really bad in historical fiction.

 

[JanaDee]

E books.

 

[Andtototoo]

The first one that comes to mind are anachronisms. Now, I don't expect dialogue in a book set in the Elizabethan era to be in iambic pentameter (or the actual language of the time), but when the author has people using modern slang? Stop it now. Right now. I put down the book immediately.

A big pet peeve of mine seen all too often in ebooks are typos, misspellings, major grammatical errors. If you can't hire a professional editor, don't you know someone who knows basic English who can check it over for you? Does your word processing program not include Spell Check?

When the author has characters using language that I am sure no one actually uses. For example, I was reading a book about rock musicians and they kept referring to one of them as an "imp". Seriously? Seriously? And I swear, the word was used at least once per page. I have never heard anyone use that word in my entire life and I just don't see that modern American rock stars are walking around referring to one of their bandmates as an "imp".

 

[zoemurr]

Kids having no parents. It is a big joke here. Whenever I try to find my daughter a book I read the inside jacket. It always seems to start with "Right after John's parents died.." Guess you can't have family to have adventure.

 

[PollyannaMom]

Dead dogs!

After years of being assigned sad reads in school, my DS is leary of any book with a dog and an award on the cover.

 

[RitaE]

At the moment can I just say

Diana Gabaldon I really don't need to know about every single blasted gory medical procedure Claire ~might~ perform on a parade of characters who are only brought in so that we can have another 35 pages of 18th Century Medicine, and are then just sent away never to be mentioned again.

 

[StephMK]

A big pet peeve of mine seen all too often in ebooks are typos, misspellings, major grammatical errors. If you can't hire a professional editor, don't you know someone who knows basic English who can check it over for you? Does your word processing program not include Spell Check?

That is my absolute biggest pet peeve too! My eyes naturally get drawn to those, I would love to work for some of these people. Even a quick spell check would correct certain errors I've seen.

My other pet peeve is when an author pulls a character out of absolute nowhere at the last minute and makes them the murderer/killer/person of interest.

 

[diznygirl]

At the moment can I just say

Diana Gabaldon I really don't need to know about every single blasted gory medical procedure Claire ~might~ perform on a parade of characters who are only brought in so that we can have another 35 pages of 18th Century Medicine, and are then just sent away never to be mentioned again.

This is a problem I have with a lot of historical fiction. I get that the author did some research in order to write the book. However, the author doesn't need to PROVE they did the research by including every little detail.

 

[chiisai]

Hundreds (ok, well, a ton) of characters. Maybe pre kids I could do that, but with the small window of time to read, and sometimes over a week between reading, just can't remember all the different plot lines.

Oh, and this always bugged me, but books changing the perspective/ storyline after each chapter. I know why it's done, but I just find it crazy making to get so into a story and then POOF I'm now reading a completely different thing happening to a different character/ set of characters. Gah. One of my favorite authors does this, so I guess it doesn't bother me that much...

 

[Jennasis]

Bad guys who only wish to burn the world down to rule upon a pile of ashes.

Bad guys who become good guys and then become bad guys...no wait, he's good! Woops, bad again...

Character names that are too on the nose or so ridiculous as to pull me out of the story, like a hero named Johnny Whitelight and the bad guy is Damian Blackheart. It drove me batty in Harry Potter.

A hundred pages to describe the forest or what everyone's armor looks like.

Plain, awkward, unremarkable girl (who is obviously the author) who has all the boys falling over themselves to be with her.

Unsatisfying endings.

 

[Pixiedustaway]

Know it all main characters.

Repeating the same story over and over again. Like, we know he is a professor of symbology. It does not need to be repeated every chapter.

 

[superme80]

Too many details. Ugh!

 

[MrsDuck]

Bad writing... That's just the worst.

 

[dawnhaze]

Love triangles. I hate them in TV shows too. Especially when the focus of the story isn't even the romance and it's just thrown in for 'drama' because the author/writers can't think of anything better.

 

[Ginny Favers]

My pet peeve is readers who buy self-published books for 99 cents on Amazon and expect quality. IT COST LESS THAN A DOLLAR, people. You tip that much to the lady who made your coffee in Starbucks, and that took all of 3 minutes.

 

[Flight]

The price of books, especially audio books which are more expensive than the actual books. Way more expensive.

 

[NotUrsula]

Sentence fragments used to imply tension. I don't mind them showing up once or twice in a book when they are in dialogue, people do trail off now and again, or get interrupted. However, using them in the narrative as a technique to imply tension just implies that you think your readers are illiterate.

I also hate anachronisms in speech. Unless the book is deliberately time-shifted, don't have someone in the 19th century say, "no problem." By the same token, don't use 19th century narrative style for a modern book; very few readers will have the patience for the verbosity of that.

As to run-on narrative and over-detailed description, I think that is more a function of bad editing than the fault of the author. Most authors tend to blather at times; it is the role of editors to find and remove that. Which brings me to my third peeve: books without editors. They exist for a reason. Letting authors out of the box without the input of a skilled second opinion is just wrong in so many ways. If you are going to self-publish, fine, but do your readers a favor: join a group and hand out red pencils before you decide that your manuscript has actually become a book.

 

[cluvsdisney]

My biggest pet peeve not already mentioned is page long paragraphs.

 

[BuzzinDownToDisney]

I can't stand plot predictability. I hate when I have a moment in a book when I suddenly realize I know exactly how it's gonna end. Me being the sucker, I finish it anyway only to kick myself afterwards.

 

[NotUrsula]

The price of books, especially audio books which are more expensive than the actual books. Way more expensive.

Of course audiobooks are more expensive: the production costs for them are huge. They are normally made in recording studios, and studio time isn't cheap. Add in the cost of paying voice actors, and the reason for the price becomes clear.

You can get classic books in audio format for free at Librivox, but they are read by volunteers outside of a studio, and it sometimes shows in the quality. They try to weed out folks who are not good at it, but the slightest background noise can get in there and drive you nuts.