Pet Hates

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Pictures in Novels

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Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Jun 20, 2015
Cornwall, UK
Much as I love books, there are some things that drive me nuts!

1) Novels that are part of a series, but the 'Also By' information fails to say what order they were published in. The situation gets more confusing when the novel was originally published abroad, meaning there are two dates to consider.

I've written a series of crime novels about my Cornish Detective, and I'm of a mind to add a subtitle that tells the reader what number book it is. I prefer to read series in the sequence they were written, not wanting to learn of spoilers about what happens to the protagonist.

2) Glaring errors that should have been caught by the editors and the author. I recently read a crime novel set in Cornwall in which a troubled child was said to attend private school in Sennen (close by Land's End). Thirty pages later his mother drove him to his private school in Penzance—which is 10 miles away from Sennen on the other side of the Penwith peninsula.

I once read a thriller about a vigilante biker, in which he stole a motorcycle that he kickstarted. This model only ever had an electric starter. It was the equivalent of using a starting handle to get a car engine going. The author of this one-off novel was given as Anonymous—and so he should be! It was strange that a story which would appeal to motorcyclists, as much as crime fans, contained such a wild inaccuracy. It proved to me that Mr Anonymous had never ridden a bike in his life, but surely he could have done some basic research?

3) I've previously moaned about the trope of having a back profile of a figure walking away from the viewer on the cover of a book. If you want to drive your local bookshop staff mad, try arranging such paperbacks together. It won't take long, as there are hundreds of them, and it creates an unsettling feeling that everyone is leaving you!

Recently, I've noticed a lazy trend for book cover designers to create an image using several stock photographic images. I enjoyed reading another of Linda Castillo's excellent crime novels set in the Amish community. Among The Wicked was an intriguing tale, and though the cover design looked slick, there was something wrong about it. The picture credits showed that four different photographers had taken images of the sky, a field, the tall grass in the foreground and an Amish woman in traditional dress, including apron and bonnet.

To make her look a part of the scenery, the designer had removed her feet, inserting her into the grass—which had the disconcerting effect of a double amputee hovering on the spot!

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Is there anything that drives you bonkers about books? :mad:
 
The name 'Blake,' as a writer's choice for a hero's first name, and he's always a goodie, but rough and tough.

Gahhh.

My humblest apologies to the company if anyone's published a hero called Blake.

No rhyme or reason. It's just one of those funny, personal preferences, and I am NOT referring to you or your book, but why is it so beloved of novelists?

Should I blame William Blake or Blake's Seven or what?
 
Authors who don't do their homework. Many write great stories, only to get the details of the setting horribly wrong--crescent moons rising at sunset, barn owls hooting, animals and plants found way out of their natural ranges or behaving in ways they would never behave.
 
The name 'Blake,' as a writer's choice for a hero's first name, and he's always a goodie, but rough and tough.

Gahhh.

My humblest apologies to the company if anyone's published a hero called Blake.

No rhyme or reason. It's just one of those funny, personal preferences, and I am NOT referring to you or your book, but why is it so beloved of novelists?

Should I blame William Blake or Blake's Seven or what?

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And no, I didn't choose his name for any particular reason, other than it rhymes with "snake." ;) This book is a fan favorite of my Tortured Love series. :D


Relentless.png
 
Soz, my estimable and much esteemed friend.

Snakes and cake.

No good. Still haaaate it.

Flake.

Cadbury's chocolate flake. Well, better, but....
 
Authors who don't do their homework. Many write great stories, only to get the details of the setting horribly wrong--crescent moons rising at sunset, barn owls hooting, animals and plants found way out of their natural ranges or behaving in ways they would never behave.


Agree, though I have seen moons at sunset.
 
Talking of Blake, not a book, but there is a TV show made currently in Australia called the Doctor Blake mystery series. I like it, lol.
 
This is quite an interesting read. *grins*

Might as well jump in..

Agree with Paul there on not knowing the sequence of the novels, when author has multiple that are not clearly marked. Half of the bookmarks in my browser lead to sites detailing the book order in a series. Made the mistake of not googling that info on Kim Harrisons' Hollows series and am still cursing myself for that years later.
Pre-internet era was no fun at all. Still have a set of Karl May books that I had to figure out the sequence to (sweat and tears, let me tell you) - though it made a super fun re-read once I sorted it all out.

It really throws me off when there is a series of novels - I adore series! Think it started with Famous Five when I was a kid :D -where you find something that has been changed, a detail that slipped... it irks me to no end. I still love the series books, but it has taken me a while to learn to ignore it and read on. I understand that it is difficult to have all the details correct through multiple books, but sometimes.. there was this one book series I loved and it was nearly ruined by inconsistencies. One triplet was shy, the other very assertive. Then the shy one became assertive in the next book and the one who wasn't mentioned before became shy, which left assertive one to magically transform to industrious one. Not to say that people don't change, but they don't change the core characteristics like that.

Scifi novels that defy all principles of physics. Yes, some visionary solutions are ok; no, I don't expect the plot to be stuck at the level of tech development that we have right now - what's the point in enjoying scifi then? But for the love of all things holy, please don't try to convince me that the Earth is flat - that's a fantasy realm. It's not possible to deny existence of gravity, either. Just take a look at Interstellar, how the writers made that script, which is so baffling to an ordinary human, and still stuck to the science. This Universe is fascinating as it is - really no need to change the foundations of physics to do a mesmerizing job. Isaak Asimov and Michael Crichton, anyone?
Plus, I prefer someone who will take me on a journey where we toy with all the endless possibilities ;)


Use of the word bulbous in adult novels; or any novels at all.
Not sure why is it so upsetting, but yeah.. always makes me cringe.
 
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Happy Birthday, Kitty.

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