Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Top Ten (Er, Eleven) Bookish Pet Peeves

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/feature hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is top ten bookish pet peeves.
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1. Repetitiveness - I get so annoyed when the author uses the same exact wording to describe something/someone, or when the author uses the same expression a lot, aside from for dramatic effect. There are so many thousands of words, use them!
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2. Unrealistic reactions. Definitely number one for me. If I started hearing random voices in my head, I would not think I was psychic. I would think I'd gone crazy, honestly. Or if I met a guy who was totally weird and sparkled in the sun and said he was a vampire, I would not think he was a vampire. I would run screaming and have him committed for life to the insane asylum. So, please, give us cold hard facts to prove your paranormal characters are in fact paranormal, and not just lunatics.
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3. Unrealistic endings - A lot of YA novels tend to have these, whether they be happy ones or depressing ones. I feel so unsatisfied when the characters don't get their happily-ever-afters, or end up way happier than they should've.
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4. Books-to-movies - Some of them are good, I know. In fact, some of my favorite movies are books turned into movies. But I would much prefer it if books remained books and screenplay writers got their stuff from other places.
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5. Pushover POV characters - Most of my favorite characters are strong, and stand up for themselves. If you're going to have a weak POV character, let that be for a reason, or make them grow stronger. I don't want to read a story about a girl who forgives everyone and always takes the blame, or a guy for that matter. Girls with low egos too - i just want to grab them and scream at them.
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6. How long it takes for paperbacks to come out in series. Seriously, I have so many book series that are half paperback and half hardback. It annoys the heck out of me, and I sometimes have to wait a whole year or more to get the next one so it won't look so uneven on my shelf.
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7. Poor writing/grammatical mistakes - I'm just guessing here, but it seems like most of the people who read books want to read, and like to read, and are going to notice mistakes. If your writing is poor, get someone's help; if you're not great at grammar, get someone to edit your writing. I know we all make mistakes and all, but as a reader, I want good writing, not someone's diary.
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8. Folding the pages' corners to keep your place. Please. Just. Don't.
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9. Authors who show their own personal opinions on political/religious/anything views. These tend to be books I absolutely hate. I'm not reading your book to find out whether you support abortion or not, unless that's obviously what the book is about. Make your fictional characters original, not a copy of yourself.
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10. Faces on covers. I really, really don't like this. The point of reading a book and not watch a movie is to use your imagination, right? Well, if the protagonist's face is right there on display, how am I supposed to not picture them looking like that?
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11. Books without any meaning - Okay, okay, I know I'm supposed to do ten, but I need to share this one. I love a superficial romance just as much as anyone else, you know? But sometimes it seems like authors think that just because they have a girl who needs prom shoes pronto, they have a great book. But in reality, as much as I'd like to hear about whether or not her prom is a disaster, when stacked up to books that have such deep meaning and beautiful language, prom girl is going to be left hanging.
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That's it this week, y'all. I'll have a review up tomorrow, I swear. Happy reading!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have some good ones here! Books to movies is a good one - and that is happening more and more with mixed results.
Grammatical errors are so distracting too - it's surprising how often these crop up.

The hardcover and paperback issue is a pet peeve of mine as well.
Thanks for sharing your list!

Anonymous said...

I don't mind books to movies when they actually follow the book! It's when they start playing around with the whole plot and changing everything that I just have to think - why bother? You've taken something and made it unrecognisable.

Anonymous said...

I was nodding along with quite a few of those. I couldn't agree more with the repetitiveness one. I always wonder where their thesaurus got to.

And even though faces on books don't annoy me overly much, I do appreciate it without a face, especially if it ends up being a series and the person on the cover changes. It happens way too often.

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz said...

I'm always disappointed to find typos. I don't remember seeing so many of these in days past. Where are the Editors of Yore?

Here's my list of ten bookish peeves.

Anonymous said...

I love your list! Anything unrealistic is a pet peeve of mine, whether it's the character or their reaction to something. And yes, whiny girls made my list too!

Liz Tea said...

A lot of these are some of my pet peeves too, lol. But I think my top one has to be using specific namebrand things in a book, or celebrities from current media. It just dates the book, and it's jarring to me. :-P I always get annoyed every time I see it, lol.

Birdie said...

Repetitiveness - I get so annoyed when the author uses the same exact wording to describe something/someone, or when the author uses the same expression a lot, aside from for dramatic effect.

AMEN! I tend to read multiple books from an author's oeuvre--I get on kicks--and the "favorite descriptive phrase" drives me nuts

Anonymous said...

Great answers, I totally agree.

Geosi Reads said...

You are on point with the books to ovies issue. Interesting list you have here.

Jacinda (The Reading Housewives) said...

I hate how long it takes book to come out in paperback!!! gosh! Great list!

Kat said...

I often don't mind books which become movies, as long as the directors follow the original plot pretty closely and it's not completely terrible. (I'm looking at you, *Inkheart* and *Eragon*!)

I totally agree about dog-earing pages-- hate it! There's a reason we have bookmarks. And I also dislike having a mix of hardcovers and paperbacks in a series, just because the publishers realized they were selling enough copies to sell twice-as-expensive hardcovers. (I'm thinking House of Night series here.) Awesome list! :)

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