What kills a book for you?

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by DMB

And then you have another type where the narrator is a character in the story, but a relatively minor one, so that the narration switches between first-person and third-person. Think of Sherlock Holmes or The Great Gatsby.

Or the Muppet Christmas Carol!

[ChipnDale]

1. Love triangles that never end, if by the third book the love story is not resolved I won't read further. Also, a liberal use of sex/sexual-tension to get the story moving...unless it's a trashy romance I don't want to have to wade through pages of text to get to the main story.

2. Heroines that are "strong" but when you read about them they are about as storng as a wet noodle, same goes for intelligence...don't tell me someone is amazing show it to me. A lot of chick lit books are like that.

3. Too many characters, I will get confused unless they are very distinct and on a reader it's hard to flip back to double check on the who-is-who.

4. Cardboard characters, mary sue and barry stew types. Same goes for characters of non-white races who are simply walking steryotypes or comic relife.

[maianhvk]

Originally Posted by ChipnDale

3. Too many characters, I will get confused unless they are very distinct and on a reader it's hard to flip back to double check on the who-is-who.

It's happening to me, I'm reading Song of Ice & Fire. The first time I read Game of Thrones, I was quite busy with studying and couldn't stand taking note while reading - jotting down note in class was hard enough. Honestly, my mind went nuts with the names. Like you said, clicking back back back back... is crazy so I quitted immediately after several first chapters.

The second time was much better, I keep a piece of paper to write down the names and slowly, really slowly, reread to give my brain some time to absorb it works miraculously

[TenaciousBadger]

I have to admit I couldn't get into Game of Thrones and the whole GRRM universe. And the films seem to be about Stone Age people. Not at all what I imagined GRRM's world to look like.

And yes, this is another big turn off: the films that don't match what I imagined while reading the book. It will retro-murder some books for me.

[anamardoll]

Parenthetical statements by the narrator. Just read Percy Jackson last night and while I liked it a lot, he had a tendency to do this:

For the first time, the quest felt real. I was actually leaving Half-Blood Hill. I was heading west with no adult supervision, no backup plan, not even a cell phone. (Chiron said cell phones were traceable by monsters; if we used one, it would be worse than sending up a flare.)

I don't know why, but parentheses HURL me out of the experience and remind me that I'm reading a book. I hate them. Hate, hate, hate. And it wasn't even necessary here -- he could have just said, "Chiron had said that..." and not done the parentheses at all. How odd I am.

[GFanthome]

...I immediately stop reading a book if I don't like, or have no empathy for any of the characters. Catch 22 was one of those books for me. Got to page 17 and that was the end of that read.

[maianhvk]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Parenthetical statements by the narrator. Just read Percy Jackson last night and while I liked it a lot, he had a tendency to do this:



I don't know why, but parentheses HURL me out of the experience and remind me that I'm reading a book. I hate them. Hate, hate, hate. And it wasn't even necessary here -- he could have just said, "Chiron had said that..." and not done the parentheses at all. How odd I am.

I think parentheses can be well used to humorous meanings (not your example). To me they're absolutely fine.

[Nancy Fulda]

Originally Posted by TenaciousBadger

I have to admit I couldn't get into Game of Thrones and the whole GRRM universe.

I had no trouble getting involved in that one -- in fact I thought the writing was fantastic. But I never bought the second book. Too many bad things happened to his characters.

And that's what kills a book for me: Too much realism. I read to ESCAPE.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by orlok

Eeeewwww. Glad you spoilered those. I'll give both books a miss, even though I'm a fan of tough thrillers. That's just gratuitous.

Yes, very glad! Wish I hadn't opened them!

What kills a book for me is have to struggle to keep up with the characters, locations, relationships. I guess I'm just a simple guy. I want my fiction reading (and non-fiction for that matter) to be entertaining and understandable without having to draw family trees or flow charts or maps.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash

[LIST]
..[*]Stupid words for various body parts
...

That'll do it every time!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

Or the Muppet Christmas Carol!

Watch it! You're treading on sacred ground there!

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Watch it! You're treading on sacred ground there!

Yep! But Gonzo rocked as the narrator... how else would you get classic lines like "lite the lite not the rat!"

[AJ Starr]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Spaces around emdashes take me out of the book and makes me want to do harm to whoever did it that way.

I'm a stickler for proper grammer, but, oddly enough, when I edit the ebooks I have converted, I PUT spaces on either side of em dashes for the specific purpose of letting the reflow break the line there instead of taking the entire two words and emdash to the next line. I hate reflow that leaves half a line empty worse than spaces on either side of em dashes.

[Nancy Fulda]

Originally Posted by AJ Starr

I'm a stickler for proper grammer, but, oddly enough, when I edit the ebooks I have converted, I PUT spaces on either side of em dashes for the specific purpose of letting the reflow break the line there instead of taking the entire two words and emdash to the next line. I hate reflow that leaves half a line empty worse than spaces on either side of em dashes.

Yup. I think ebooks are going to change the grammatical standards on this and several other points.

[AJ Starr]

Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda

Yup. I think ebooks are going to change the grammatical standards on this and several other points.

Instead of proper grammar changing, how about the software that reflows books allow line breaks at em dashes. I'm sure there will be other points that a software change would be better than trying to change all ebook texts.