What kills a book for you?

[Namekuseijin]

commonplace events without interesting narrative.

[peterjmerrigan]

Spelling, grammar and other 'technical' issues are real turn-offs. But as for the stories themselves, some of the things that make me want to put a book back on the shelf and never read it again are:

- Excruciatingly long passages of technical data (in novels). Tell me that the flux capacitor works; don't tell me how it works in six pages of scientific words.

- Excessive physical descriptions. It's fine to tell me that she has blue eyes and blonde hair, but I don't need to know her dress size and what she's wearing, down to the colour of the flower-print on her undies.

- Ending a book with "And then he woke up and discovered it was all a dream."

- Conversation between characters that is exposition for exposition's sake. If it's something we need to know, put it in the novel in an appropriate way.

- A lack of continuity. Didn't Robinson Crusoe "strip off his clothes and swim to shore" only to get out of the water on the beach with "his clothes dripping wet and clinging to his body."

Excessive use of character names. I mean, if there's only two people in the scene, we should be able to judge who's speaking without a barrage of "Lucy said," and "said Tony."

[pixiestyx]

Series books where the author constantly reviews what happened in previous books as though the reader has no long-term memory. Right now I'm reading the Southern Vampire Mysteries & there's a reminder paragraph for each of the previous books scattered throughout each new book - sometimes covering the same issue a couple of times. Even worse, I swear, in last two books, Harris is stopping to re-review what happened in the previous chapter! "Once upon a time, such and such happened, and since then, blah" - um, thanks, I *just* read about it. Minutes ago.

I don't know why I keep irritating myself with this series, I really do need to just put it down and walk away.

[benham]

That is a good one too. You expect some recap because not everyone reads books in order or a reader might just pick up the book because it was recommended, but sometimes it seems like they take up 1/4 of the story just to describe what happened in the previous book.

[hols57]

Oh yes! There are loads of my favourite book killers there! I particularly hate it when pets are killed, as mentioned - Kate Atkinson is very bad at this.

I hate cliched characters too - the maverick cop with a failed marriage and a drink problem who nevertheless always has the female characters after him. He's always in trouble with the top brass and of course he gets taken off the case just as he's about to solve it...

...and the baddy always turns out to be the head man/boss/boss's bent nephew who is therefore part of a giant cover-up....
don't get me started!

[mayoi]

• Misspelled words.

• Bad grammar.

• Stilted and awkward dialogue.

• Clumsy/incorrect use of slang.

• Poorly written sex scenes (and they’re almost always poorly written).

• Formulaic plots.

• Recycled plots – if you’ve read one book by the author, you’ve read them all.

• Indiscriminate use of buzzwords and brand names.

• Over-used favorite words. I read Andrew Greeley in the 80’s and used to keep count of how many pages it took for him to use “implacable.” I’m currently reading Gibbon and laugh every time I read “credulous,” “liberality,” “insensibly,” and variations thereof yet again.

• The “why use one subordinate clause when five or twenty will do?” school of thought (Gibbon again).

• Overused phrases. When reading Philippa Gregory’s “The Constant Princess” I thought I’d scream if I had to read Catalina referring to herself as the princess of Wales or the infanta of Spain one more time.

• Rushed endings. I loved “The Wise Woman” (Gregory again - hey, everyone needs some fluff), and I liked the unexpected ending but it was needlessly rushed.

• The Boss Gets Bigger, aka the Over-the-Top Ending. The first time I encountered this was when I watched Disney’s version of “Sleeping Beauty” as a little kid. In the movie Maleficent turns herself into an enormous dragon for the final battle. It was effective at the time but then again, I was a little kid. I don’t expect to find end-game bosses in the books I read. When I hit the end of “Angels and Demons” I swore I’d never read another book by Dan Brown.

• Affectations. Hilary Mantel’s wonderful “Wolf Hall” was almost ruined by her pronoun-antecedent confusion and sporadic use of quotation marks.

• Woo. Especially woo that uses the word “quantum” for any reason.

• Bleak, hopeless stories like “Less Than Zero.”

• Explicit violence or abuse.

• Dei ex machina.

• Thrillers/horror from production line authors (King, Clancy, Patterson, et al) are non-starters.

• “Chick lit,” “beach reads,” and other sappy nonsense. Unless I’m really in the mood for sappy nonsense.

[poohbear_nc]

Any use of the phrase "wreak havoc"

[Michael McLovin]

For me it would be books with a controversial subject.
Most times it just tries to get a reaction from people with no regard for plot or characters.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by mayoi

• Rushed endings. I loved “The Wise Woman” (Gregory again - hey, everyone needs some fluff), and I liked the unexpected ending but it was needlessly rushed.

Phew! I'm glad it wasn't just me -- I thought that ending was unbelievably rushed. It was like her publisher had called her THAT DAY and send "Finish it up, we're going to the printers!"

[fbrII]

Zombies!

[JSWolf]

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

[Ransom]

Wasted words. Unnecessary descriptions. Bad logic/philosophy. Erroneous history. Sex & romance (especially sappiness). Repetitiveness. Clichés & obviousness. Telling me the psychology behind your characters motives instead of letting me figure it out. Using the same word for the same item several times within a single paragraph (don't say "car" every time, but rather say automobile, vehicle, bucket of bolts, coupe, hot rod, beater, clunker, jalopy, heap, etc.)

[jtdolphins]

Originally Posted by mayoi

• Rushed endings.

I read a lot of old pulp stories. What would happen is that the writer would realize he hit his word count for the story, thus ending the story. Like with in a page or two the whole story would just wrap up. There is no excuse in novels for them, but in the old pulps is a different matter. In pulps I actually enjoy the quick endings, for the sheer insanity of them.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by jtdolphins

I read a lot of old pulp stories. What would happen is that the writer would realize he hit his word count for the story, thus ending the story. Like with in a page or two the whole story would just wrap up. There is no excuse in novels for them, but in the old pulps is a different matter. In pulps I actually enjoy the quick endings, for the sheer insanity of them.

I'd criticize, but I'm pretty sure all my blog posts read this way.

[djulian]

What ruins a book for me:

• The obvious stuff--poor grammar, misspellings, etc.
• Endings that feel like the author just finished a community college "Intro to Psych" class (see: In the Woods)
• Adventure without character development or character development without adventure
• Any sex or violence (or any other behavior, really) that doesn't affect the plot or develop the character--stop telling me that they brushed their teeth unless it's telling me something about them that I need to know
• Violent, dehumanizing sexual activity (see: Bret Easton Ellis)
• Dehumanizing violence (see: Thomas Harris) - though some dehumanizing violence serves a plot or narrative that ultimately works to humanize the characters
• A character who never has a wrong intuition or a bad idea (I'm looking at you Mitch Rapp)
• Blatant political soapboxing
• When the author treats me like I'm stupid