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So, I've been reading a lot. Or a lot for me. I'm a slow reader, a savor-er.
I've been reading mostly recent fiction and I've enjoyed my selections with the same predictability of percentage as I've ever tallied, but in these last books I've read, there's almost always something glaringly weird in each story.
For instance, I'm reading right now, A Reliable Wife. So far, it's pretty good. But one of the main characters is freaked out by snow. She's traveled by train to Wisconsin, in the dead of winter, to fulfill a newspaper ad in search of a 'reliable wife'. This woman has an agenda and a past, but right now, the snow is really bothering her - the vast whiteness of it; the three solid days of it curtaining down. She goes on quite a lot about how alien the snow is. She's even gone so far as to order a pair of smoked glasses to shield her from the glare that's kept her indoors with the drapes drawn.
But. But, but, but... she's from Chicago.Doesn't it snow as a matter of course every winter in Chicago, too? I dunno. It just seems weird.
Then there was Dark Places. Two characters meet for the first time, a man and a woman who have communicated only by phone up to this point, and only in collaboration of a slightly seedy business proposition. She meets him at an iffy-ish tavern, where he has already ordered up a pitcher of beer. He's a bit odd, but not off-puttingly so - only slightly geeky in perhaps the way of an unflattering stereotype such as someone who spends a lot of time indoors collecting comic books or watching Star Trek would be. He's not an Igor.
Anyway, they've just met and he pours her a beer, but in his nerves, he goes too fast and runs up a big head of foam in the glass. So he swipes his finger down the side of his nose and "oil-flattens" the head on the beer.
1) Yuck.
2) I didn't know you could do that.
3) No one on planet Earth has ever "oil flattened" the head on a perfect stranger's beer. At least not right in from of them.
To top it off, the next line goes something like, "She wondered whether or not to drink it."
No she didn't. She may have wondered whether or not to dump it over his head, but I promise, it never occurred to her to drink it after some dude stirred a dose of his nose grease into it.
These are highly acclaimed books and it's a headscratcher, because my betas would never allow me to get away with stuff like this.
You guys run into any of this or am I being picky?
I've been reading mostly recent fiction and I've enjoyed my selections with the same predictability of percentage as I've ever tallied, but in these last books I've read, there's almost always something glaringly weird in each story.
For instance, I'm reading right now, A Reliable Wife. So far, it's pretty good. But one of the main characters is freaked out by snow. She's traveled by train to Wisconsin, in the dead of winter, to fulfill a newspaper ad in search of a 'reliable wife'. This woman has an agenda and a past, but right now, the snow is really bothering her - the vast whiteness of it; the three solid days of it curtaining down. She goes on quite a lot about how alien the snow is. She's even gone so far as to order a pair of smoked glasses to shield her from the glare that's kept her indoors with the drapes drawn.
But. But, but, but... she's from Chicago.Doesn't it snow as a matter of course every winter in Chicago, too? I dunno. It just seems weird.
Then there was Dark Places. Two characters meet for the first time, a man and a woman who have communicated only by phone up to this point, and only in collaboration of a slightly seedy business proposition. She meets him at an iffy-ish tavern, where he has already ordered up a pitcher of beer. He's a bit odd, but not off-puttingly so - only slightly geeky in perhaps the way of an unflattering stereotype such as someone who spends a lot of time indoors collecting comic books or watching Star Trek would be. He's not an Igor.
Anyway, they've just met and he pours her a beer, but in his nerves, he goes too fast and runs up a big head of foam in the glass. So he swipes his finger down the side of his nose and "oil-flattens" the head on the beer.
1) Yuck.
2) I didn't know you could do that.
3) No one on planet Earth has ever "oil flattened" the head on a perfect stranger's beer. At least not right in from of them.
To top it off, the next line goes something like, "She wondered whether or not to drink it."
No she didn't. She may have wondered whether or not to dump it over his head, but I promise, it never occurred to her to drink it after some dude stirred a dose of his nose grease into it.
These are highly acclaimed books and it's a headscratcher, because my betas would never allow me to get away with stuff like this.
You guys run into any of this or am I being picky?
I'm almost tempted to figure out which book this was and read it again, but it annoyed me so much the first time I doubt I ever will. 
