Book closers?

Dialogue that reads like third-person narration.
Dialogue that reads the same across characters.
Magic "systems" (What is this, D&D?).
Over-description.
Over-abundant ship battles.
Over-philosophizing.
Meta fiction.
Purple prose.
Et cetera.

If the book blurb just doesn't make sense.

This came from a Harlequin romance or something of the sort.

The male MC was some sort of cowboy or lawman. the female MC was the daughter of a prostitute who could make really good gingersnap cookies. My friend and I don't even remember what the plot was for this historical western novel. It cracked us up so much about the freaking gingersnap cookies that we read the story trying to fit the sentence, "and then she made some gingersnap cookies" as much as we could.

Not sure my thoughts will help. It's hard to get me to leave a book before I've finished it, even if it's awful. I believe I've done it 3 or 4 times, but I was only able to dredge up two today. One because it abruptly started detailing a sex assault against an underage boy. And the other because the cognitive dissonance of reading a book about the horrors of Jim Crow as written by and starring a white woman just got to me. And both of those books, a lot of people enjoyed, so I probably just have weird taste.

Too much back story upfront, before I have even formed a relationship with the character. I might care about the back story later on, but I want to get to know the person first.

I'm going to post this and then run very fast out of this thread:


First person present tense.

There I said it- Its like nails down a chalk board to me. ( Im not saying there aren't good books out there in this tense, I just happen to dislike it very much)

sheadakota said:

I'm going to post this and then run very fast out of this thread:


First person present tense.

There I said it- Its like nails down a chalk board to me. ( Im not saying there aren't good books out there in this tense, I just happen to dislike it very much)

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Interestingly, I dislike third present more. I'll stick with 1st p if your MC is interesting (even though it's not my cup of tea), but third has me automatically correcting everything to past tense and I have no idea how to stop! It's a bizarre affliction. Maybe it'll go away someday.

A book in FPP won't stop me reading on its own, but it is 'strike one' a lot of the time. Although I made an extensive list of what makes me close a book I've started, it's usually cumulative.

I've put books down halfway through and by that point it's usually due to a major plot hole, or while the MC might be fine, the other major MC or love interest or person needing to be rescued is either irritating as hell (please, just let them die!) or too much of a cipher.

richcapo said:

Dialogue that reads like third-person narration.
Dialogue that reads the same across characters.
Magic "systems" (What is this, D&D?). That's a 'don't bother even opening' for me.
Over-description.
Over-abundant ship battles. or any protracted battle scenes for me. I'll start skimming and if there are too many, I'm out. It's also always the part in a film where I'll fall asleep.
Over-philosophizing.
Meta fiction.
Purple prose.
Et cetera.

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Dialogue that reads like a daytime soap opera or is overly formal, like they're delivering a presentation or college lecture.

I'll say it too: Present tense. You'll get a chance with me here on AW, cuz the object is to help folks improve what they wish to do. You won't get a chance with me in the bookstore, because there you're a stranger and the grate on my nerves gets to me before I can see the quality of your writing.

My biggest peeve, tho, is being lectured by the author, especially on "social issues" (past or present). I hear it every day in Mundania; I don't want to hear it in my recreational reading. And if you disguise it til the end then do it as a gotcha, you're on my shit list forever.

Only one thing makes me close a book forever: boredom. Maybe I should have said extreme boredom.

Recently I started a book that began with an interesting situation and moved along at a fast clip. Midway, it expired. The MC became so speshul as to make the gods sick with envy. Yaawwwn. Had to read three other books at the same time, but I finally got to the last page, only to find my most hated ending: a cliffhanger. Bad as that experience was, I did finish the damn thing.

However, right now there's a fat paperback sitting on the table next to the sofa where I curl up to read. I'm not going to finish it. The story keeps getting lost in the landscape which has multiple personalities that the author details endlessly.

For everything else I have a high tolerance.

There are, however, several reasons I don't start a book in the first place.

Really? People don't like magic systems?

Not all magic systems resemble D&D. Recent fantasy has moved beyond D&D. A magic system just means there are rules to the magic, which lets the reader know what it can and can't do. By closing any book that features a magic system, you're missing out on great authors like Brandon Sanderson, who writes magic systems that have absolutely no resemblance to D&D.

I'm also surprised that people don't like a page-turning style. When I'm reading a book that doesn't make me want to turn the pages (usually because it's focusing too much on the finely textured writing), I'm very likely to put it down. Give me nonstop action and chapter-ending cliffhangers over slow, ponderous writing any day.

rwm4768 said:

Really? People don't like magic systems?

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If a book has magic in it, I'm pretty much, "Ooh, yeah, gimme."

And it really doesn't matter if there's a system to it or not.

There are few books I haven't finished, but one was just... so pretentious, the plot either absent or so convoluted as to be impossible to follow, the characters mere mouthpieces for the author's intellectual masturbation...

*considers that mixed metaphor for a moment*

tee hee

*leaves it in anyway*

I can't remember the title, but it was historical fiction (well, it would be, as that's pretty much all I read).

And Catcher in the Rye. Dumped it after a chapter. You couldn't pay me to pick that up again. I can't even say why, except that I have no particular desire to make my eyeballs bleed.

wonderactivist said:

The sloppy, middle-aged, alcoholic detective who somehow is irresistible to twenty-something victims. They choose him over younger, more handsome junior detectives-- and take him to bed every time.

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Had to laugh. I'm slogging through one of those right now. Gag me with a spoon.

I'm usually pretty good at finishing anything I start reading. I guess I keep hoping it will get better. The only novel I can recall slamming shut and dumping had a whiny main character who was always complaining about how hard done by she was and how prejudiced her male colleagues were against her. I was so exasperated by this stupid woman that I threw the book in the garbage.

rwm4768 said:

Really? People don't like magic systems?

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I believe what was meant by that was 'Magic systems based almost entirely off DnD with predictable level ups, unoriginal aspects, and an author so enamored with it they wrote a book for their magic system instead of the other way around.' That's what I mean when I say that, at least.

Kallithrix said:

And Catcher in the Rye. Dumped it after a chapter. You couldn't pay me to pick that up again. I can't even say why, except that I have no particular desire to make my eyeballs bleed.

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*high fives so hard it hurts her paw* YES! I'M GONNA SIT BY YOU NOW!


Ahem.


Never have I so wished for a character's demise the way I wished for that little twit's. Argh!

Exactly, LAM.

Plus, I'm not fond of anything 'systemic' either, when most of the stuff I've read about 'real' magic - Paracelsus, Prana or Chi energy, Carlos Casteneda, etc some of which is quite opposite to that concept anyway. Most 'magic systems' I've disliked because they seem ripped off of video games, comic books or some other already derivatory source.

Kallithrix said:

There are few books I haven't finished, but one was just... so pretentious, the plot either absent or so convoluted as to be impossible to follow, the characters mere mouthpieces for the author's intellectual masturbation...

*considers that mixed metaphor for a moment*

tee hee

*leaves it in anyway*

I can't remember the title, but it was historical fiction (well, it would be, as that's pretty much all I read).

And Catcher in the Rye. Dumped it after a chapter. You couldn't pay me to pick that up again. I can't even say why, except that I have no particular desire to make my eyeballs bleed.

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That was one of mine too - authors that can't part with their own mirrors. Nice I'm not the only one, though I didn't reckon I was

As for Catcher in the Rye, I didn't even make it that far. Unlike some people I'm not crazy about anything that's too 'voicey', especially when 'voice' consists mostly of 'damn' or 'hell'. That and the appearance of 'you' outside of dialogue too early on. The only author I've allowed to get away with that is Iain Banks.

If I have read about 100 pages and the story don't get along. I also don't like confusing descriptions and too many characters. But sometimes I read a book like that until the end like some Star Trek books I have read. But this is very seldom.

jjdebenedictis said:

But that's rare. Usually I close a book because it's boring me.

I might give up on a book for any of the following:

- The plot isn't going anywhere
- The plot is going somewhere I can predict from page 4
- The plot is going somewhere I really, really don't want to go

- The protagonist is boring
- The protagonist is not boring but won't shut up about boring stuff
- The protagonist is not boring but very, very easy to hate

- The writing is bad
- The writing is beautiful but the story is bad
- Good grief, did the editor die unexpectedly or something?

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Good list!

sheadakota said:

I'm going to post this and then run very fast out of this thread:


First person present tense.

There I said it- Its like nails down a chalk board to me. ( Im not saying there aren't good books out there in this tense, I just happen to dislike it very much)

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Oh YES. I can't believe I left that off my list. In fact, I will add to it: second- or third-person present tense.

it takes a lot to close a book early...

I stopped re-reading Fireflies by Piers Anthony because after a hundred pages I felt plenty well-studied on why I hate the fucking question mark and exclamation point, when they are over-used.

I stopped reading a Ketchum book's bonus novella when it was clear it was about a teenage psychopath" gifting" her drugged twelve year-old sister to her even more messed-up boyfriend.

I stopped reading Angels and Demons when I just couldn't make myself go on without re-reading individual lines and trying to figure out what Brown was thinking, or if there was some greater whole (my opinion only, but something like taking the fibers from cowshit to weave a tapestry) that I was missing, and i realized I wasn't reading a story anymore anyway, I was just dissecting sentences.



Note in Ketchum's case in particular this isn't a "He's a bad, bad man for writing that!" thing, and that battle cry really bothers me, but I have kids around that age, and this world is plenty disturbing at times.....it hit close enough to home I chose not to read it. That's all.

all that said, i usually read to the end of anything I start, although most of the things listed by other posters will determine if I buy another book by the same author later or not.

rwm4768 said:

By closing any book that features a magic system, you're missing out on great authors like Brandon Sanderson, who writes magic systems that have absolutely no resemblance to D&D.

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I really hate this argument. While perhaps the reader is "missing out on great authors" by not reading something they're not interested in reading, I doubt their reading list is suffering any either. There are plenty of other "great authors" out there to fill up the gap.

Also, I have heard a great deal about Sanderson's 'magic systems' and so far in anything I've read, I've not been terribly impressed by his ability to write one. I see his authorial hand in there showing off his mad magic system building skills and well...leaves me cold when I can see his hand in the prose.

1.) If there are horses in the book and the author hasn't gotten it right (example: I read a book once where two characters were going to steal horses and one of them said, "Don't take the gray. Only Arabians are gray and they can't be trained to ride." Um . . .)

2.) Characters I don't care about. Like Madame Bovary. Or the main characters in The Swan Thieves.

3.) Poor writing. Learn. To. Edit. Please.

4.) Adjectives and adverbs used too much. I love Karen Marie Moning, but I almost threw her last one, Iced, across the room. I don't know how many times she used the phrase, "I said pissily," but I think it appeared at least once on every page.

5.) Deux ex machina.

6.) Heroines and heroes who meet and fall instantly in love w/o even knowing each other's favorite color, car, TV show, etc.

7.) Heroines who believe a man will come along and save them and solve all their problems. Get off your butt and get a life.

Sorry, I have a migraine and am feeling unusually crabby today . . .

RN Hill said:

1.) If there are horses in the book and the author hasn't gotten it right (example: I read a book once where two characters were going to steal horses and one of them said, "Don't take the gray. Only Arabians are gray and they can't be trained to ride." Um . . .)

Yeah, I reckon this applies to pretty much any subject that you, the reader, are fairly knowledgeable about, and the writer quite clearly aint. Poor research or just general ignorance will seriously quell my desire to keep reading.

2.) Characters I don't care about. Like Madame Bovary. Or the main characters in The Swan Thieves.

Yup, another biggie. But I think a distinction needs to be made between characters you just don't give a toss about one way or the other, and those you actually dislike. I think I'd close a book for the former, but the latter I'd be more inclined to finish purely in the hope that they reached a sticky end
6.) Heroines and heroes who meet and fall instantly in love w/o even knowing each other's favorite color, car, TV show, etc.

This is a MAJOR pet peeve of mine. I read a lot of ancient HF (Greece, Rome), which are mainly written by men, about men. Often they include a token romantic subplot, yanno, just to show their kickass character is human. And more often than not this subplot is handled HORRIBLY. Bare lip service is paid to developing the relationship, and once it's been established they're the designated LI, we're just told the MC is in love with them. Trying to buck that trend with my HF novel

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RN Hill said:

Sorry, I have a migraine and am feeling unusually crabby today . . .

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Awww

Lyra Jean said:

I recently read a book that took place in Britain around the 1850s or so. I love reading about that time period and ya know America wasn't the only with slaves. I was reading it to see how slavery was portrayed in Britain.

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I'd have been fairly annoyed seeing as slavery was abolished in Britain in 1833. ETA: The first slave was emancipated legally some time before that (1772) and the case ruled that slavery was unsupported by law, and a law was passed to ban slave trade in 1807 (in hopes it would stop slavery. As it happened they needed more law to stop it entirely)

6.) Heroines and heroes who meet and fall instantly in love w/o even knowing each other's favorite color, car, TV show, etc.

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Oh gawd, yes a pet peeve. I had one recently. Man sees woman, falls instantly in "love". Apparently his manly manly man lust (I won't call it love) saved her emotionally from the abusive relationship she'd been in for some years and was still in. Without more than two dozen words spoken (though she cried prettily a lot) they fell into bed, sorry, stable with presumably attendant manure, where it was wonderful for her. Despite her only experience before being...well.

Then she stood up to her abuser, failed and had to have another man rescue her, then she got fridged.

She was one of only two female characters in the book -- the other was an Evil Seductress, who also got fridged.

><

Now, falling in insta lust, I can get. But it ain't love if you don't even know their name. .