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

Devil Ledbetter

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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.
Absolutely.

I was telling my mom how much it bugged me reading all of the "a small this, a small that" in Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and she looked at me like I was insane. But really, there were few items in that book that weren't (redundantly) described as small (a small end table, a small tea cup, a small cottage) or expressions (a small smile, a small wince, a small laugh, a small sigh). If I didn't write, I wonder if I would have even noticed.
 

Morven

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The book I just finished: I'm irritated that the author left behind the truly interesting second viewpoint character of her last work and focused this one almost entirely on her too-mopey-Goth-for-words MC. She's basically a huge dreary downer a lot of the time, and the plot doesn't give her sufficiently frequent kicks in the rear to shift her into fanatic-problem-solver mode until pretty late in the game. She's fun in that latter mode, not so much in the stuck-in-the-past lifeless dwelling on past loves, past failures, and whatnot that she does a bit too indulgently early on.

Sure, it made sense that she couldn't take Interesting Second Character with her in this one (said character had to stay where she was, earthshaking doomly stuff had to happen elsewhere) but I wish the author had recognized better that someone else with a bit more fire in the belly was needed for balance, and made one of the secondary characters like that.

Oh, and as to your (Devil's) initial irritation about a 65 year old not understanding power windows: they were first used in 1940, albeit on American luxury cars, and became somewhat common from the 1950s on in the US, at least. By the 60s they were an available option, at the very least, on every model that wasn't an utter bargain basement offering.

I'm guessing that Major Pettigrew is English, and such things were a little slower to catch on there, but power windows were available on upper-end models from mass-market manufacturers like Ford from the late 70s if not earlier. He sounds like a character for whom the world was set fixed from some point in the 60s, which is increasingly ludicrous the more recent the books are supposed to be set…
 

Smiley0501

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I just finished a woman's fiction novel that was great...except for the romantic plotlines. I know women's fiction in general has romance, but this was one novel that DIDN'T need it! *tears hair out* It bothered me so much in this book that the 2 sisters/main women got men at the end.
 

heza

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This last week, I picked up a book in the hospital waiting room that sort of drove me batty. There were a bunch of "as you know, Bob," moments, but the nuttiest were centered on the tech that was supposed to show that this was the future... except, the tech was "phones you can use to send email" and "books you can read on your computer"... except in the 2nd, the tech was abandoned because those were just too impersonal and paper books were all the rage again. (I can't decide whether that was just author wish fulfillment.) The copyright was 2008.

I guess it wasn't a huge deal, but it totally kept yanking me back out of the "future" idea and solidly planting me in the here and now.
 

savagelilies

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I lost count of the amount of times "frantic" (or "frantically") was used in the book I just finished. It didn't help that I read it in one sitting, so I started to anticipate the usage of those two words and get a weird kick out of seeing them every few pages... sometimes even twice on one page. Not even kidding. I've never seen another author brandish a word at me like that--frantic frantically frantic frantic! Argh! Couldn't some astute reader, or editor, have caught on to how redundant that word became?

I wish books had a Search or Find function so I could see just how many times those two words were used. Alas.
 
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Devil Ledbetter

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I wish books had a Search or Find function so I could see just how many times those two words were used. Alas.
I longed for that while reading Interview with the Vampire (glittering), Major Pettigrew (small, horrified), and Twilight (rolled her eyes, chagrin).
 

quicklime

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currently reading a cookbook, actually....my biggest bother is most of the things will take weeks to be ready.

But I DO have a duck breast prosciutto curing for next week....
 

zahra

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currently reading a cookbook, actually....my biggest bother is most of the things will take weeks to be ready.

But I DO have a duck breast prosciutto curing for next week....
Blimey, you ARE a serious cook. Homes, if it doesn't get done in my halogen oven in forty minutes, it doesn't get done.

It's a novella rather than a novel, but I'm re-reading 'The Mist' and, as always, finding David/Stephen King infuriatingly patronizing of the wife, Stephanie. She's always glancing at him before deciding what to do, always asking him stuff there's no reason she shouldn't know as well as him. Then there's David lecturing her on the personality and capabilities of their son. Excuse me, but she's the primary caregiver - there's no mention of her working outside the home - she'd know the boy better than anyone. So annoying.

As for David getting all judgemental about Norton eyeing Steffy up, and 'little after that', as my father would say, David's shagging a woman he's just met - hm, I wonder if we'd be expected to feel the same about little halter-top-wearing, 'David-are-we-going-to-be-OK'-ing, Steffy if she'd taken the opportunity of sweating up the floor with some strange man while the world was ending.

And another thing. That bloody woman in the supermarket who tries to get one of the men to see her home because she's left her kids alone and Wanda's only 8 and 'forgets she's supposed to be watching Victor', who appears to be something of a firebug when left to his own devices. Why the hell did she leave them alone, then, instead of taking them to the supermarket with her? We're supposed to feel sympathy for this child-endangering wretch of a mother?

Phew.
 

EarlyBird

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I don't want to divulge what I'm reading for fear the author might be on AW, but...

This novel was published about ten years ago by one of the big trade firms, so obviously it's good, right?

It's OK. For one thing, it is trying to be a literary novel but falls a little short. Now, literary is my favorite fiction, but it has to contain outrageously creative and compelling prose to get beyond the rather slow plot progression. This one doesn't. I find myself skipping pages just to move things along.

Also, I'm only about a quarter of the way in and already the author has used the word 'circumspect' twice. Come on.:e2faint:
 

Devil Ledbetter

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The only thing that ever bugs me when I read Lionel Shriver is the fear that I'll never be half the writer she is.
 

Silver-Midnight

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*sigh* The romantic interest in the UF novel I'm reading kind of man-handled/grabbed the throat of the MC. He did it before, like earlier in the novel when they still hated one another. And he apologized after he realized just how much he messed her throat. However, even with all of that, the book/soon-to-be-relationship is still not sitting well with me. :/
 

EmilyBrooke

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The romance in the novel I'm reading is completely overriding the potentially kick-ass time travel plot. :/ I'd really like it for the FMC to stop commenting on how gorgeous the MMC happens to be.
 

Rhoda Nightingale

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Just realized the alternate-universe-steampunk book I'm reading might actually be a heavily veiled Christian allegory. Plot, characters, and writing are still kick-ass, but I feel like I got tricked.
 

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Right now I'm reading Honolulu by Alan Brennert. He wrote one of my favorite novels, Molokai, and I just finished re-reading that for the 5th time and wanted to do an Alan Brennert/Hawaii reading fest. I read Honolulu when I first got it and liked it but not nearly as much as Molokai. Same time this read.

What bothers me is the "who cares" factor. An otherwise great author spent a great deal of this novel writing TOO MUCH detail that it gets to the point that I just skim over parts because the details are just pointless to the rest of the story. I have been trying to get through it for a while now and just want to start reading Treason by Orson Scott Card because my boyfriend highly recommended it.
 

Ellefire

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In "How the dead live", by Will Self, the dead are said to have 'subtle bodies'. They cannot taste or touch each other or smell. Apart from the scene where Lily describes a "Jasmine-scented room" (or some such thing). Um. How does she know Mr Self? How does she know?
 

crunchyblanket

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The bit in Century Rain where they're discussing how this guy's evil brother that everyone thought was dead might be behind everything...and the temporally-displaced detective says "hey, I've seen that guy before"....AND NOBODY EVER FOLLOWS IT UP. EVER.
 

lorna_w

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Not a book, but when I signed out of yahoo mail today, they teased me with this headline: "Bird punches a hole in the nose of plane" and I thought, oh, cool, it's the zombie bird apocalypse and they're punching things...but alas, it wasn't quite that. Honest mistake on my part. In the article, they told me, "United Airlines flight 1475 from Dallas-Fort Worth apparently stuck a large bird as it was descending into Denver," so now I'm wondering why the bird was descending into Denver. Between the headline and the article, there were only five sentences...and I can't promise you the other three were devoid of error, either.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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The novel I'm reading started off promising but halfway through I realized that the mc just does not grow. She turns into an enormous Mary Sue with everyone fawning over her endlessly while she pouts and flips her long blonde hair. The color of the LI's eyes is mentioned every other paragraph, and much description is spent on everyone's hair. There is so much repeat action, face making, information, repetition of effect that it starts to feel like "same shit, different page." Ugh. At one point we are told 4 times in as many paragraphs that the MC is wearing a yellow strapless sundress.

It's at the point now where I'm reading for the sheer entertainment of bad writing. When it all started falling flat and the song lyric quotes came out I concluded this sucker is self-published. (It's an ebook so it wasnt obvious right off) It's a shame because the writer shows excellent potential in the first third.
 

SinK

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Paradise Lost is unrelentingly misogynist.

I picked it up again after quitting it a few years ago at the point where Eve has a long speech about how without Adam she is nothing and she is here to serve him and to make him happy and she is weak and... and... and... it goes on. Then they go to sleep and there is a long bit about all the animals in the garden going to sleep. Then they sleep. Then she wakes up. And then SHE STARTS RIGHT BACK UP on the whole Adam-you-are-amazing-I-am-so-much-less thing.

I figured I would push through this time but it keeps coming up. Every line out of Eve's mouth either praises Adam or suggests a sort of naive malignancy in her character. And at the points where Jesus or an angel turns up they join right in.
 

Chris P

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I'm getting through John Grisham's The Client, and I just don't buy it that the feds don't approach Mark's lawyer Reggie and strike a deal about the witness relocation program. Both sides talk about it, but never approach the other, even though that would be the simplest resolution to both of their problems. Have none of these people watched My Blue Heaven?

Is there an opposite of deus ex machina, where the characters avoid a solution within their control and prolong their conflict?
 

BarredOwl

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The Catcher in the Rye

I understand the words. I understand what the characters are doing. And yet I have this overall sense of not having any idea what the heck I am reading.
 

Escape Artist

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I longed for that while reading Interview with the Vampire (glittering), Major Pettigrew (small, horrified), and Twilight (rolled her eyes, chagrin).

In regards to all things glittery, I read Iris Johansen's Eve, Quinn, and Bonnie (a trilogy, with each of those names denoting a separate book) and I swear, everyone's eyes 'glittered recklessly'. It was quite annoying.
 

LJD

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The author feels the need to describe every character's appearance and outfit, and the color of everything (not just the outfits!) is mentioned.

Also, a lot of (IMO) needless swearing. It's very rare for me to feel that way about a book, but there are an awful lot of "fucks" and it's grating on me.