Annoying Stuff

[Novilia]

I think it'd be kind of cool if people would just list some things that really annoy them when they are reading a book and sort of help each other out so we get an idea of stuff that we should maybe stay away from. Here are some things that annoy me:

* People who put characters in their books and then give them nothing more than a name and a few meaningless interactions just so that they have someone they can kill becasuse they don't have the guts to kill a main character.

* Books that put all the technical information first. Example: Helen of Branchwood was the supreme Queen of Geek Wood. Her father had been having an affair with an elf. The council was meeting today.... And on and on and on with no emotion MAKE IT STOP. MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!

* Characters that spend an excessive amount of time talking about things like pimpels when they aren't supposed to be shallow.

* People whose books are obviously coping off books like the Lord of the Rings.

[underthecity]

The one thing that comes to mind is when I'm reading a highly-anticipated new novel and really want to get into the meat of the story, but for the first several chapters the author goes on and on and on and on with character introspection and reminisces. And then spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the culture and background and motivations of the secondary characters. I find my eyes glazing over as I start to skim over all that stuff to try to figure out where the story begins.

It's reasons like this why I don't finish some books.

allen

[LightShadow]

Excessive characterization like Michener

Excessive technical detail like Clancy

Excessive meandering like Herbert

Excessive colorful description like Tolkien

Bouncing around chronologically like Wallace

Changing POV with poor timing like LeGuin

Using sex to sell like Krantz

Trying to be funny in a non-comical way like Heller

[underthecity]

Excessive technical detail like Clancy

How about Michael Crichton? I love his books, but how many pages did he discuss Chaos Theory in Jurassic Park? One was enough.

allen

[Julie Worth]

Trying to be funny in a non-comical way like Heller

I thought he was funny...a long time ago...when I was a child.

Anyway, I was going to say the same thing. I threw The DV Code against the wall when he trotted out some academic humor. The HORROR!

[LightShadow]

Da Vinci Code just pissed me off. I thought it was crap. His book, Digital Fortress, was much better. DV Code did well because of the controversy, so that adds one more to the list:

Writers that use controversy to sell their material like Brown.

then again, sometimes bad publicity is good publicity.

[FolkloreFanatic]

* fantasy books that try so hard NOT to be LotR or HP that they eliminate the reasons I read fantasy in the first place (elves, magic, wizards, new civilizations...did I mention elves?). I don't care what book is like another book. I just care if the story is a good story.

* when authors like Crichton get fanatical, stupid ideas in their heads and claim their fiction is fact (State Of Fear, trying to prove that global warming doesn't exist...O.o). Dan Brown did this, too. Oi vey.

* authors who lobotomize their characters--and their story--more than halfway into the series (ala Hermione Granger, among other things, in Half Blood Prince).

* not being able to tell the difference between seduction and rape (why I can't read romance novels).

* Blonde bombshells, bimbos, ditzes and other horrible female stereotypes.

* Terminator-meets-Law & Order-cop who's supposed to be attractive and other male stereotypes.

* 1st-person fiction that oozes narcissism (read: Anne Rice narrating from the POV of Jesus. HELLO!). Actually, I dislike most 1st-person fiction, period.

I'm sure I can add more to this when I'm half-conscious.

[clara bow]

Boring scenes (as in, the author clearly thought the subject matter was riveting, but it's really just boring, boring, boring). So boring as in I can't get past the third sentence. I mean, good to great writing can elevate even the most mundane of scenes. It's surreal to see that some (published) writers can do it and others can't.

Insanely complicated names that seem cobbled together from about three or four different languages

Excessive tags, or ones that don't let the dialogue speak for itself

Poor sentence construction

Insipid plots

Plots that are clearly derivative, but not in a clever or fresh way (e.g., clones of Harry Potter)

[DamaNegra]

The things that annoy me the most in a book (or a movie, for that fact) is when the book is supposedly realistical; but then the main character finds himself surrounded by a hundred armed soldiers trained to kill, and to top it off he has his hands tied behind his back... and he manages a miraculous escape in which he kills all the bad guys. I mean, come on!!!

Another thing I hate is the overuse of suspense. Like:
"Oh my god!" Lindsay couldn't believe her eyes.
Cut scene. Then the next scene goes and blah blah blah and then:
"What did you saw, Lindsay?"
"You'll never believe what I saw..." Lindsay replied.
Cut scene. Use it once, it's great. But overusing that just gets me tired and wanting to murder someone. Really, as in drinking, using writing elements must be done with MODERATION.

Another thing is, as mentioned above, the use of sex or controversy to sell. I mean, the story sucks, it's poorly written, but you just throw in some controversy and voila!!

On that same category fall the authors who, having become internationally famous with millionary sales, stop producing quality work and just write to sell. That applies to musicians to. A good example is JK Rowling with the last Harry Potter book; it's obvious she only wrote it because people were going to buy it, it sucked until the last fifty or so pages.

That's all... I think. Grrr I get mad just thinking about it, lol.

[goatpiper]

-Excessive adverb usage - drives me nuts.

-Using words other than 'said' or 'replied' to qualify dialogue - example: "You couldn't pull that off in a million years," Elijah snorted.

-Sci-fi and fantasy character names that use apostrophes and/or are impossible to pronounce.

-Flowery laundry-list description - example: The embers still glowed beneath the ash of the fire from the night before. The sun crept up from beyond the horizon to shed the first rays of light into the valley, and the morning dew glistened on the leaves. Birds sang in the distance, and the mountains looked down like sentinels onto blah blah blah blah blah.

-Deus ex machina

There's probably plenty more, but that's the main stuff.

[blisswriter]

I hate it when I fall in love with the characters, I finish the book, and there is no sequel.

[Jamesaritchie]

Excessive characterization like Michener

Excessive technical detail like Clancy

Excessive meandering like Herbert

Excessive colorful description like Tolkien

Bouncing around chronologically like Wallace

Changing POV with poor timing like LeGuin

Using sex to sell like Krantz

Trying to be funny in a non-comical way like Heller

Jeeze, you just shot down some incredibly good writers.

[Tish Davidson]

Jeeze, you just shot down some incredibly good writers.

The point is that if you have a great story, readers will stick with you despite the annoying list above. If you have a mediocre story, they'll use flaws on the list as a reason to stop reading. Regardless of what you think of the writing style, its story that carries the reader along.

[Vuligora]

Authors that make their name cover 75% of the book cover in giant shiny read letters and then the title is really tiny at the bottom. Come on! The story, not you, is important. If it is any good, people will remember your name, I mean, I can't even find the title!

[blacbird]

Jeeze, you just shot down some incredibly good writers.

I sense a bit of irony, James.

caw.

[victoriastrauss]

Authors that make their name cover 75% of the book cover in giant shiny read letters and then the title is really tiny at the bottom. Come on! The story, not you, is important. If it is any good, people will remember your name, I mean, I can't even find the title!People who blame authors for things that publishers do.

- Victoria

[PattiTheWicked]

I hate it when I fall in love with the characters, I finish the book, and there is no sequel.

Oh, no doubt. I was so happy when Diana Gabaldon turned Outlander into an entire series. I need more Claire and Jamie. Of course, she takes three years to write each book, so the waiting kills me, but it's worth it in the end.

One character I always adored was Sydney Carton of A Tale of Two Cities. Shame he was beheaded, would have made an interesting story all by himself.

[Jenny]

Present tense.

This is a real hatred, so I'll leave the two words just sitting there.

[Berry]

Authors that make their name cover 75% of the book cover in giant shiny read letters and then the title is really tiny at the bottom.


You know, authors have very very little control over what goes on the cover. In your example, the most likely thing that happened is the marketing department decided that this person's name appealed to buyers and therefore it should be prominent.

I admit there are a few writers whose books I will just buy without doing more than making sure I don't already have this one.

But what really ticked me off was one shared world novel series a few years ago where the name of the series and the famous creator was prominent on the cover, but the poor guy who had actually written this particular book wasn't on the cover, OR the title page; he was relegated to the half-title.

[ANNIE]

When well known writers rest on their names and previous works and publish a really crappy book.- Patterson.

[DamaNegra]

I hate books that make homenage to the saying: "the world is a tissue" I mean, medieval-style in the sense that everyone is related to everyone somehow. Everyone knows each other.

Another thing I hate, and I'm sorry for picking on the author, was "La Hermandad de la Sábana Santa", by Julia Navarro. The story was exciting, it immediately drew me in and had me excited all along. I enjoyed reading it immensely, one of the best books I read. And then, it ended. The worst possible ending. The author had (in my opinion) run out of ideas and thus killed most of the characters in a stupid (IMO) and unbelievable way. I lost all respect for the book and haven't read it ever since.

I hate when excellent books have horrible endings.

[September skies]

When well known writers rest on their names and previous works and publish a really crappy book.- Patterson.

Makes you wonder if they may have been ghost-written. I love reading Danielle Steel and have ALL her books - but when "The Clone and I" came out, I thought it was awful and so un-Danielle. I wanted to stop reading but kept on reading, just in case it got better. I finally came to the conclusion that she couldn't have written it. (not to say that ghost writers can't be good ones, but that particular one sure didn't fit the standards)

[blackbird]

Books that begin with a complete head-to-toe physical description of the main character before we even begin to get a hint of scene or what is actually driving the character.


I also don't like books that begin with excessive descriptions of settings, landscapes, etc. Basically, too much description of ANY kind at the begining of the book marks it for me as either the work of an amateur, or a writer who hasn't read anything written past 1940.

[September skies]

Da Vinci Code just pissed me off. I thought it was crap.

Not for me! I loved it! And I couldn't put it down - read it in three days. I read a lot and I have to say that it is one of my all-time favorite books and definitely up there in my top ten books I've ever read. I'm looking forward to the movie but know it will be disappointing compared to the book. (then again, I love Tom Hanks and I feel he'll give it justice.)

[Mistook]

Books that the author wrote and the publisher published just to get another book out there.

"Me too" books written by fans of whatever catagory, in order to show you just how well they know that category.

Books about people who live in New York.

Books about writers trying to write books.

Fantasy novels that take place in the fantasy equivalent of New York... i.e. a place we've all heard about a million times before, and know like the back of our freeking hands even if we've never been there.

Bloated tomes by bestselling authors who are so busy writing, they forgot how to be good.

stories with a gaping lack of any relevance to real world controversy.

Any time a hero makes use of pure luck to get out of a tough spot. I don't mind if he/she prevails against overwhelming odds, but show me how they used their brains and their skills to do so, and make it vaguely believable.

Purposely building up a loveable character so that his/her death will bite the reader's *** and thereby prove the author has the "guts" to kill a main character.

Lack of genuine levity or humor. In other words, a story that takes itself too seriously, written by an author who does the same.

Gender stereotypes.

Stylistic writing, pretending to be hip and modern, and delving into unusual subjects, but having absolutely nothing to say about anything.

[Shadow_Ferret]

Mee-oow!

You guys are just catty. ;)

[Jamesaritchie]

The point is that if you have a great story, readers will stick with you despite the annoying list above. If you have a mediocre story, they'll use flaws on the list as a reason to stop reading. Regardless of what you think of the writing style, its story that carries the reader along.

Well, those things don't annoy nme. Clancy, for instance, is a writer I read presisely because of the technical details. Maybe it's a guy thing.

But other than LeGuin, I think these writers are hits because of these things, not despite them. It is, of course, a matter of taste, but Tolkien wouldn;t read nearly as well without the colorful description. That's largely what makes his books such a pleasure. And I don't think Herbert "meanders," he just tells the full story.

Don't know about Krantz. I think I've only read two Krantz novels. LeGuin only bugs me because I don't find her male characters believable.

The list may be annoying to some, but I say it's also the very thing that brings so many readers to these writers. There's no way of pleasing everyone, but I read these writers because of the way they write, and because they do these things, not despite them. I mean, really, Clancy without all the technical details would still be an unknown writer. It's called "techno-thriller" for a reason.

[Jamesaritchie]

Not for me! I loved it! And I couldn't put it down - read it in three days. I read a lot and I have to say that it is one of my all-time favorite books and definitely up there in my top ten books I've ever read. I'm looking forward to the movie but know it will be disappointing compared to the book. (then again, I love Tom Hanks and I feel he'll give it justice.)



Nothing could possibly be disappointing in comparison with the book.

[maestrowork]

Cliches. And I don't mean phrases like "she swore like a sailor." I mean cliches such as "she has cancer, and he is a bad boy, then her heart of gold changes him, but he dies, and she bears him a child..." Gag. Puke. Gag.

Overdone descriptions or narrative. Please, do we need 57 different adjectives and nouns to describe the friggin' sunset?

Slow opening. I don't mind some exposition and back stories, etc. But please, if after 4 chapters I still don't care about the characters or the story, it's time to toss the book away (there are some exceptions, of course, if the writing style is engaging enough...)

Everything is simplistic and glossed over... even good writers do that sometimes. For example, in the KITE RUNNER (I like the book very much), in mid-book, everything just seems so easy... the guy writes a book, and 2 months later, he got a big contract, then a few years later, he's a successful novelist, blah blah blah. OK, it happens that way in real life, but for fiction that's just silly. YAWN.

Stereotypes.

[aruna]

People who blame authors for things that publishers do.

- Victoria

Exactly! I was going to reply the same - you got there before me!
I HATED the paperback cover of mny first book for that very reason: a huge embossed author's name, when nobody knew the hell who I was.

[aruna]

Present tense.

This is a real hatred, so I'll leave the two words just sitting there.

I'm with you there all the way.

[zeprosnepsid]

As other people have mentioned and as I have mentioned in other threads, I really hate exposition. Especially up front. I want to discover your characters, not memorize facts about them.

[gp101]

Too many adverbs.

A story that opens with the weather.

An entire novel of 2 to 5-page chapters (like Parker and Patterson). Do you really need 97 chap's?

Ridiculous substitutions for "he said". Especially when the verb has nothing to do with speech. "You're cute," he winked.

Too many adverbs.

The gigolo male lead who always has time for a quickie between fights, and whom every woman lusts after. Only James Bond can get away with it.

Too many adverbs.

Breaking the third wall halfway into the story. Do it at the beginning or leave me out of it.

Too much description. Especially, describing every damn character in minute detail.

Flowery language for the sake of flowery language.

Dirk Pitt.

Characters that laugh at lines that aren't funny.

[Flapdoodle]

Jeeze, you just shot down some incredibly good writers.

I wouldn't say James Hebert is a good writer. Most of his books in the last 20 years have been diabolical.

I once read that he sits at his desk, comes up with 40 ideas, then links them all to form a novel. It shows.

[Flapdoodle]

Dirk Pitt.

Characters that laugh at lines that aren't funny.

Don't diss "A Dirk Pitt(tm) Novel!".

I once spent a holiday in Madeira reading Dirk Pitt(tm) novels by the pool, most of the time laughing aloud. They're absolutely terrible, but when that grizzled bloke appears and Pitt says, "I recognise you, what's your name?"
"Clive Cussler."

Ho ho ho ho. If there was any justice in the world, this garbage would be laughed out of the publisher's office. (In one of the novels, they're all stuck in the middle of the ocean on a raft, and Clive Cussler appears to rescue them!)

[zornhau]

Novels where much of the action takes place off stage, but is recounted in committee rooms. (Are you reading this David Weber?)

[underthecity]

Present tense.

This is a real hatred, so I'll leave the two words just sitting there.

Yes. I can't handle present tense unless it's a playscript.

If I'm reading something in present tense then the story is happening as I read it. Anything that comes after the words my eyes are on right now doesn't exist yet. Therefore, all pages that follow should be blank, and the words should form as I read them.

It's that reason why I can't handle present tense. I prefer to read a book where the story happened some time ago.

If you want me to read your book, don't write it in present tense.

allen

[triceretops]

Eight pages of characterization with interior monologue, then moving the character across the kitchen, to give me 10 more pages of exposition, walking him outside to the car, then giving me six pages of exposition on the kind of car it is, then motoring down the street, only to give me 12-pages of the neighborhood and its history....

Ala...Stephen frikin' King.

Get the hell on with it and give me some action!

Tri

[Flapdoodle]

Eight pages of characterization with interior monologue, then moving the character across the kitchen, to give me 10 more pages of exposition, walking him outside to the car, then giving me six pages of exposition on the kind of car it is, then motoring down the street, only to give me 12-pages of the neighborhood and its history....

Ala...Stephen frikin' King.

Get the hell on with it and give me some action!

Tri

I've lost count of the number of times I've got 200 pages into a King novel and got bored! I love his short stories and shorter novels, though.

Everyone seems to love them. Never quite worked out why. Once lived in a house with someone who would ONLY read King. He claimed that there was no point reading anyone else, as King had done it all. I threw a Jonathan Carroll book at him.

[IggytheDestroyer]

As much as I loved Tad Williams' Otherland series, there was no reason for the story to have to run for four books. He spent about half of the fourth describing gray nothingness. I had to really fight the urge to skip to the end just to see if something happened.

Great books, but a little tedious at times.

[maestrowork]

Bad dialogue. If there is more than a page or two of that stuff, I close the book.

Characters that speak like the same person -- the author. Um, when they cast the movie version of the book, can you cast Tom Hanks to play all the characters, to be faithful to the book?

Ridiculous plot. C'mon, the guy fell 100 feet and there was not a scratch on him?

The hero is all good and the villain is all bad. Hmmm, I like good vs. evil stuff, but still, I am not 8 anymore. I need complex, 3D characters.

[illiterwrite]

I hated The Da Vinci Code as well. Dan Brown's writing is bad and obvious, particularly near the end. I also hate Danielle Steele and the like, but I'm not into formulaic writing (and isn't DS actually a panel of ghostwriters now?).

maestro, I'm reading The Kite Runner right now and found the same thing with that section about his book. He's also used the whole "the events of the next few years/months/days are vague and come to me in bits" thing at least twice. But the story is simply...GAH. So good.

The WORST book I ever read was "written" by a model (can't remember who). Her characters were based on real people and only slightly changed (for example, River Phoenix became something like Stream Arizona). It was truly, utterly terrible.

I hate formulaic writing of any kind. I hate predictability, where I can see what's coming a mile off. I hate it when characters die and then reappear in an effort to fool the reader. And books that are flowery and beautifully written but carry no plot or emotional appeal and are essentially boring -- bah.

[cleoauthor]

Oh, dear, I like most of the writers on that list. And I like them because they have a unique voice. Even if you don't like the genre in which they are writing, they are definitely not cookie cutter writers. And I think Joseph Heller is VERY funny. Still. Yet.

What I don't like about certain writers is they are so incredibly derivative -- of people like Clancy and Herbert and Heller and Krantz.

Michener writes a big sprawling novel like HAWAII, which becomes a best-seller, and then everyone is writing big sprawling novels, but just not as well.

[underthecity]

I've lost count of the number of times I've got 200 pages into a King novel and got bored! I love his short stories and shorter novels, though.


Partially for this reason, I never did finish Bag of Bones. To this day I still wonder what finally happened in the end. I could finish reading it but. . . I'd rather not.

And Tommyknockers was so bloated. And depressing. I only read this one once. Never cared to look at it again.

It's like what the emperor said about one of Mozart's operas in the movie Amadeus: "two many notes." Sometimes I think King uses too many words.

But who can argue? He's way more successful than I.

allen

[MattW]

- Dialogue exchanges between two or more characters with too few tags. Who said what to whom?

- Unbroken paragraphs that take the majority of a page (or more!)

- Chapter openings that take a page and a half before you can figure out which story arc you are reading about

- Whiners.

[JerseyGirl1962]

Ho ho ho ho. If there was any justice in the world, this garbage would be laughed out of the publisher's office. (In one of the novels, they're all stuck in the middle of the ocean on a raft, and Clive Cussler appears to rescue them!)

:roll:

At least Alfred Hitchcock just floated by - that was a newspaper photo - and he wouldn't rescue any of his characters, knowing no one would buy that (Lifeboat).


What's annoying to me is when I'm reading a story, enjoying it, and then the ending comes...and I want to throw the book across the room. It's only happened to me with one book, and it was the last Dick Francis mystery I ever read (and I enjoyed all of his books up until that one; the name of it escapes me).

Can't stand present tense. It gets on my nerves.

Too much product placement. Although it's not the main reason why I ended up not reading the entire book, American Gods invoked a ton of them. I mean, do I have to know every last little friggin' car, drink, whatever? Sheesh. I'm reading through the Stephanie Plum novels now, and although there's some product placement in there (mainly the cars, which is absolutely hilarious), it's kept to a minimum.

Characters with tics that the author brings up again and again and again because he can't think of anything else for that character to do or say (think Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time with Nynaeve (sp?) tugging on her braid). Made me give up on that series, Book 4 specifically.

~Nancy

[teraflop]

The problem is context, in my opinion. Reading Tom Robbins' Still Life with Woodpecker can be painful if you're expecting resolution without dense introspection. But I read it again and ended up appreciating it the second time. Some of what and how popular authors write can fit many of the beefs I've seen listed here.

Ok, some of my beefs that I haven't seen listed here yet:

Holding to the genre too tightly. A fantasy story that is only about fantasy and nothing about relationships, for example.
Characters that don't change even if the story spans years and what should have been life-changing experiences. I've given up on Bartle Bull, his Shanghai Station may have been exotic & enigmatic but it wasn't worth the price.

[underthecity]

Characters that don't change even if the story spans years and what should have been life-changing experiences.


On the flipside is a character who does a complete 180 right at the end of the book. I'll give an example: most of the Myth Adventures series by Robert Asprin. Now, I wouldn't have read all of them if I didn't like them, but at the end of each one, Skeeve, the main character, always steps in and explains (to the other characters) why everything turned out the way it did. In spite of the fact that he was dense all the way through the book, at the end he's suddenly Poirot from Agatha Christie who's figured it all out--and is completely right. If he had figured out the mystery six chapters ago, why didn't he tell us, the readers, that he knew what was going on?

Arg, it drove me so crazy I wrote a letter about it to the author.

Didn't hear back.

allen

[Vuligora]

Okay, publishers who make the author's name huge. Sorry about that, not your fault if that happened to you.

[Saanen]

1. Series where the author can't come up with anything new and seems to be getting tired of the characters. I stopped reading "The Cat Who" books when I realized I couldn't tell if I'd read any particular one by reading the back OR the first chapter.
2. Books where a main character is a writer of the same genre as the book itself (the sole exception to this is Dorothy Sayers' character Harriet Vane, who writes mysteries. Sayers, of course, is perfect and can do no wrong.)

3. Writers who think they're great poets and work their poetry into their books. Sometimes it's good (like the poetry in Watership Down), but most of the time it's horrible.

Oh, and about the horrible endings mentioned above, Richard Adams' Watership Down is one of my favorite books, but I was so furious at him over the ending for The Plague Dogs (which wasn't all that great anyway, frankly) that I've never read anything else by him. Which brings me to...

4. Authors who write one outstanding book and then rewrite it over and over as other books, badly.

[stace001]

When well known writers rest on their names and previous works and publish a really crappy book.- Patterson.

I totally agree. I used to love reading Patterson, but stopped about 6 or 8 books ago. Just kill Alex Cross off and let the poor guy rest in peace, for crying out loud.

[Scribhneoir]

Most annoying things to me:

Present tense. Just can't abide it in a novel and can barely tolerate it in a short story.

Character names that are inappropriate for the era in which the story is set or for the age of the character. For instance, the 28-year-old romance heroine christened with today's hot, trendy name rather than the hot, trendy name of 28 years ago.

[MattW]

1. Series where the author can't come up with anything new and seems to be getting tired of the characters. I stopped reading "The Cat Who" books when I realized I couldn't tell if I'd read any particular one by reading the back OR the first chapter. .
As fun as they are, the same thing happened with me and the Flashman books. I know I've read about uprisings in India before, and Abe Lincoln, but are they the same book or not?

[MattW]

Character names that are inappropriate for the era in which the story is set or for the age of the character. For instance, the 28-year-old romance heroine christened with today's hot, trendy name rather than the hot, trendy name of 28 years ago.Anyone over the age of 15 should not be named MacKenzie, or McKenzy, or MyKynzy. Even then, not the best choice.

There's a US census website that has popular name listings by decade...see if I can find it.

Oops - it was Social Security registry of popular given names by year. More useful, and with are variety of search methods. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/

[cleoauthor]

MattW

Thank you so much for the social security website that lists the popular baby names for years 1880 to the present. How a terrific resource!

It is annoying to read a novel set in 1890 and the character's name is Hillary or Madison or Dakota or Summer or River or Snoop Dog or... Well, you know what I mean.

[MattW]

MattW

Thank you so much for the social security website that lists the popular baby names for years 1880 to the present. How a terrific resource!

It is annoying to read a novel set in 1890 and the character's name is Hillary or Madison or Dakota or Summer or River or Snoop Dog or... Well, you know what I mean.Hope somebody could put it to use - it's a bit modern for my needs.

Believe me - if I could name a character Snoop Dog, I would. How I could get him into a Conquistador's breastplate and hose would be a small challenge. No dizzle.

[zeprosnepsid]

I totally agree. I used to love reading Patterson, but stopped about 6 or 8 books ago. Just kill Alex Cross off and let the poor guy rest in peace, for crying out loud.

I had this friend and the first time I went over her house (she lived with her parents). Her family was very....literary. Not mainstream, I'll put it that way. But I noticed a whole shelf of Patterson books and I was like -- your family likes Patterson?? And she replied that her parents went to college with him and they were good friends and he sends the books but that they don't ever admit in public that they know him.

I always thought that was funny =)

2. Books where a main character is a writer of the same genre as the book itself (the sole exception to this is Dorothy Sayers' character Harriet Vane, who writes mysteries. Sayers, of course, is perfect and can do no wrong.)

Although not a book, I feel as if this is an affront to Murder, She Wrote -- a show I absolutely, absolutely adore =)

But on a more serious note, isn't that really what Wonder Boys is? And that book is good...

But I understand your sentiment. My boyfriend has sworn off movies about people making movies just because of the principle of the thing.

[MattW]

My boyfriend has sworn off movies about people making movies just because of the principle of the thing.Sometimes writing what you know can go too far. And become too close to authorial conceit.

It bugs me.

[FolkloreFanatic]

On that note I despised Adaptation. (That was a film, not a book. I think.)

[Albedo of Zero]

I love a setting well written -shown to me

I hate when the author thinks he has to tell me what I just read