What's bugging you in the novel you're reading?

shadowwalker

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Reading "The Sixth Man" by Baldacci. The plot might be okay if the characters weren't so... cartoonish is about the only word I can think of. The guy is supposedly former Secret Service, guarded the president, but he's portrayed as needing his own protection. His female partner (also former Secret Service) and the other predominant female (former some other secret intelligence community) seem to be clones of some Amazon goddess in comparison. One gets the distinct impression he's pandering to the "we want strong females!" viewpoint and instead of accomplishing that, he makes them so over the top it almost seems like parody. Or maybe that's what he's going for and just does that so badly I'm not seeing it.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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That tastes/rules of what's acceptable have changed since this was published 40 years go. I like this one better than many newer ones, and part of what I like about it are things that I've read specifically that we are "not to do."

Sign #43 this week of being an old fart.
Huh? It was published in 2002. It's set in the '70s, but it's only 10 years old.

Which reminds me, early on there was an anachronism about riding without a seatbelt being "an illegal joyride." I lolled at that. As an old fart myself, I know that seatbelt use wasn't legislated until sometime in the 1980s.
 

lorna_w

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I was referring to the book I'm reading, not a book you were reading. :)
 

Kayley

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I already finished reading it, but the novel Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzgerald is a piece of s***. And I don't curse liberally. The plot is nonsensical, the characters are bland and unbelievable, and, worst of all, it promotes masochism and rape culture. The LI is a total creep who enjoys making the MC afraid, yet it's written in a way that he seems desirable. It makes me want to vomit. Even Twilight is better than this c***, because at least Edward likes Bella (even if we never know why.)
 

lorna_w

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Ah. Since you didn't indicate anything bugging you (nor mention what novel) I figured you were responding to my post. :tongue

When you're right, you're right. (of course, how else would that sentence end, when you're right, you're...a tulip? Pregnant? Anyhoo). So I fixed it a little better.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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Yeah. My family won't shut the F--k up so I can read! I sick and tired of reading the same paragraph over and over again.
That hits home. I've been traveling with my teen daughter this week, who interrupted my reading twice per sentence (on average). Hey, at least she still talks to me. :)
 

Miss Plum

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A very interesting thread.

I juuuuust finished The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Of course I loved the lush prose, and I loved the first half of the book. But the second half was so full of forced, overwrought, random, inconclusive scenes -- fake intensity, everyone staring or screaming when they should have been speaking, shrugging when they should have been shocked, then horrified, shocked, and stunned in rapid succession, and always drunk or high -- I started to skim. I skimmed to the last 20 or so pages, which I read carefully, and found myself not the least bit moved when I reached the end.
 

cmi0616

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I'm reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. Soooooooo many footnotes. No doubt Wallace was a great writer, but I must say that a lot of the footnotes feel unnecessary and even gimmicky at times. The actual writing and the stories are very good and perceptive and enjoyable, but the fact that I have to use two bookmarks is ridiculous.
 

WordCount

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I just noticed a few plot holes the size of mini-vans in Spiderman 3's screenplay. Nothing makes me more aggravated than plot holes -_-
 

Devil Ledbetter

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I just noticed a few plot holes the size of mini-vans in Spiderman 3's screenplay. Nothing makes me more aggravated than plot holes -_-
Last night we watched Sense & Sensibility. There seems to be a huge plot hole in the resolution. If anyone has read the book and can explain to me why ....

SPOILER ALERT
(Highlight to view)



.... Edward Ferrars is cut off from his family fortune when it's revealed he is secretly engaged to the socially inferior Miss Lucy Steele, yet she goes on to marry Edward's brother Robert, who was not cut out of the will. Seriously, I don't get it. Why did the Ferrars family deem her okay for Robert, but not Edward?


In other news, I have finished The Lovely Bones. I believe it was overrated. The first few chapters are excellent, but then there is a lot of headhopping (yes, I get that it was omniscient, but still). Generally it seems to be about going from character to character as they wallow in a lot of grief for several years.
 

squeaky pram

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Last night we watched Sense & Sensibility. There seems to be a huge plot hole in the resolution. If anyone has read the book and can explain to me why ....

(I've written this in vague terms for spoiler reasons)

After ___'s fall from grace, the family grants that thing in question to ____ "irrevocably". Done deal.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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After ___'s fall from grace, the family grants that thing in question to ____ "irrevocably". Done deal.
Ah, I get it now. There was nothing to be done for it, so it's not a plot hole at all but works as a comeuppance or cruel irony to ____ and ____'s mother.
 

WordCount

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but then there is a lot of headhopping (yes, I get that it was omniscient, but still). Generally it seems to be about going from character to character as they wallow in a lot of grief for several years.


LOL. That bothers me, too. I often make jokes about how certain writers can jump from Miami to Seattle in just a few seconds. Or, how writers have a crystal ball that allows them to read everyone in the world's mind! A powerful tool indeed...

So yeah, I don't like omniscient either. :D
 

Kitty27

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I am reading A Feast For Crows and wondering what the hell has happened to Cersei.

She was no Tyrion or Littlefinger when it came to the game,but for god's sake,the woman took down Robert,Jon Arryn and Ned Stark. She had balls and sense.

Now she's just a fool. I mean,seriously.Her decisions aren't making sense at all. Sigh.
 

Michael_T

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I'm reading Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton. It's epic SF and after about 120 pages I have had something like 4 or 5 different POVs and none of which really presented me a character with a real problem/wants/needs. Reminds me of the first book of Game of Thrones where it was really just the first act of eight different novels spliced together.
 

Hiroko

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I'm reading - don't laugh - Transformers: Exodus by Alex Irvine.

The prose could be better; it's decent, for the most part, but at times not so decent. Some characterizations are off, but otherwise the story is being told well enough for me to keep reading.
 

Arcadia Divine

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I was reading World War Z by Max Brooks. I returned it to the library before I ripped it apart and burned it. The whole thing in general bugged the heck out of me. I couldn't follow it at all.
 

Atlantis

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I'm reading a romance book by an author I've read a million times before and what bugs me is ALL of her characters in ALL of her series are basically the same. You have the small, fairy/child like, small waisted woman with eyes too large for her face that you can drown in, hair to her ass, and is so light you can pick her up! She'll either be super girly and be into things like baking (cookies anyone?) or she'll be running around wearing man pants and doing men's work. Her man will be emotionless, a trained killer, and will dominate and possess this woman. She'll drive him nuts because she doesn't do everything he says and will run off and do her own thing sometimes or GASP talk to another man. Each story ends the same way: the man becomes a little less dickish, gives the woman some space to breathe, and the two get married and have babies.

Why every book of hers has to have a violent, controlling, over bearing, possessive man in it I don't know. Is that a thing? to be with a man so strong he could snap your neck?

I would love for her to write a book about a man who is NOT an uncontrollable killing machine. Show me a man who is kind, caring, and smart. He doesn't always have to be rambo. And can the woman not be super thin with dreamy, fathomless eyes? Or long, wavy hair? Or a narrow waist he could easily wrap one hand around?

And why does every romance book have to end with the characters getting married, engaged, or having babies? Is that what a "happily ever after" is? How about some stories about couples who are happy not to marry but are still devoted to each other and love each other? Or a story about a woman who is happy and content not having children? Most of the time characters like that are usually in books where the plot is: "She didn't want to have children...until HE changed her mind" or "He vowed never to marry...until SHE touched his heart" or some nonsense.
 

Becky Black

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In the one I've just finished it seemed like every kiss was described as the kisser "slanting" his mouth over the kisee's. I could take slanted once, maybe twice in a 100 page story but not half a dozen times. I was all, "okay, I get it, when you kiss your mouths are sort of slanted in relation to each other, stop telling me that!"

Otherwise, good and very saucy! :)
 

Persei

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Probably that the poor girl is only twelve.

Jesus.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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You have the small, fairy/child like, small waisted woman with eyes too large for her face that you can drown in, hair to her ass, and is so light you can pick her up!
That's funny. In The Lovely Bones the dad called the mother "Ocean Eyes" because, you guessed in, he could drown in them. *gags*

Heroines getting lifted up and/or carried by the men in their lives bugs the ever-livin' crap out of me in fiction, and when I see it in SYW I always call it out. I am not a large woman, but I don't want anyone lifting me or carrying me, ever. It's disrespectful, controlling, overpowering and plain old gross whether it's the lover carrying the woman up the stairs to a bedroom, or the father lifting her and spinning her around because he's overjoyed to see her. Blech.

In the one I've just finished it seemed like every kiss was described as the kisser "slanting" his mouth over the kisee's. I could take slanted once, maybe twice in a 100 page story but not half a dozen times. I was all, "okay, I get it, when you kiss your mouths are sort of slanted in relation to each other, stop telling me that!"
I hate when the same odd description is used more than once. The more times, the worse it gets. Even ordinary ones (nodded her head, stopped in his tracks, etc.) bug me after a few repetitions.

Man, I am probably too picky.
 

lorna_w

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re: pickiness on repeating phrases. It's one of those things that I think I suffer more from because of being a writer, you think maybe that's so with you, DL? I doubt average readers notice some phrase that repeats five times in a novel.

As to marriage and children being the be-all and inevitable end of romances, it's one of my complaints about the genre (at least in its Harlequin manifestation), that it's always lagging 30 years behind the times. A good thing about e-pubbing (whether through kindle/self or a publisher) is that it will be opening this up. Marriage is hard; parenting is harder--I just don't see scrubbing the toilet and poopy diapers and a bitchy MIL as a happy fantasy ending, myself. Better to have the guy heroically dying to save her while the sex is still good. ;)