A few of my least favorite things

The topic for our Sunday Six this week was “Reasons you would throw a book you are reading against the wall." I love this topic so did not want to miss a chance to contribute although I am a few days late. I found myself nodding and laughing through the other posts on the topic as Alyson, Jacqueline and Macy nailed most of my pet peeves (check out their posts from earlier this week!). I did want to add a few of my own, though.

So, what would make me quit reading a book and throw it against the wall? Well, considering that much of the time I’m listening to the book on my iPod, I would tend to refrain from the throwing part no matter how provoked. But I am more than willing to abandon a book if it’s annoying me. And lately I seem to have become extremely hard to please. I think I’m so preoccupied with trying to understand what makes for a great book that my inner critic is on all the time, even when I’m just reading / listening for pleasure.


So without further ado, some of the things that make me switch off my iPod:


Stupid endings.

This seems like one of the cruelest reasons to quit reading, since by the time I’ve reached the stupid ending I’ve already spent the time it takes to read almost all of the book. And if the book was good enough to hold me to that point, maybe it’s churlish of me to consider the experience ruined because the ending is bad. But it’s true: a bad ending can ruin the whole book for me.
-- When there’s a sudden plot twist thrown in that really doesn’t make any sense, just because the author thought that endings should have sudden twists.
-- Likewise, when someone dies at the end, or something similarly terrible happens, because the author thought that would contribute to an emotional catharsis. I like happy endings, but I’ll be fine with a tragic ending if it makes sense. What annoys me is when a tragic ending seems to have been manufactured under the mistaken assumption that it will give the book more gravity, more literary “weight” than a happy ending.
-- When important loose ends are left dangling. Authors shouldn’t throw out baited hooks if they don’t intend to reel them in.
-- When the book doesn’t really end, but just fades away. I think of these as “indie film endings” – you know, those films where you’re expecting the next scene of the story and instead get the closing credits.


Hate at first sight.

This used to be a staple of romance fiction. You could always tell who the heroine would end up falling in love with: the guy who makes her utterly and irrationally furious when they first meet. Jacqueline mentioned how she hates it when the couple bickers all the way through, and I agree, but I especially hate it when they take a completely unwarranted dislike to each other from the first time they set eyes on each other. It’s such a cliché, and besides, how can I like or care about people who would make such ridiculous snap judgments?


The idiot plot.

I think everyone has mentioned this one. As a writer, I understand how this happens: if the characters behaved like normal people, the conflict would evaporate and the story would come to an end. So a woman who’s been shot at in an alley and whose front door shows signs of an attempted forced entry insists that nobody is out to get her and goes unconcernedly on with her life, making her vulnerable to the guys who are, in fact, trying to get her. The experienced cop overlooks the obvious clue. The defendant in a trial fails to share with their lawyer the critical piece of information that would change the verdict. The hero and heroine won’t have the conversation needed to clear up the terrible misunderstanding that is keeping them apart. Making characters into idiots, rather than finding real reasons for conflict, is just laziness.


The beautiful bitch.

I really can’t stand it when the heroine is a nasty spoiled brat, but the hero loves her anyway because she’s physically beautiful. She regularly throws hissy fits, stamping her small, shapely foot or tossing her mane of auburn hair (she almost always had red hair), but he is so captivated by the sight of her indignantly heaving but abundant bosom that he barely notices the tantrums. She’s sexy, so it doesn’t matter if she’s completely annoying. I haven’t seen much of this lately but it used to be such a staple that I carefully avoided any books where the jacket blurb referred to the heroine as “tempestuous” or “spirited”. That was almost always shorthand for “unbearably bitchy”.


No sense of story.

This is possibly the shortcoming that annoys me the most. A fiction book presents a slice from the life of the characters. I’m assuming when I pick up a book that the author is presenting a significant slice of those lives, one where something important happens, one that changes the characters forever. I’m assuming that the scenes and characters will all contribute to the story, that it will build to a climax, and that there will be some kind of resolution. Instead, especially in books with literary pretensions, I sometimes get meandering narratives, collections of seemingly random scenes with no point that never build up to anything and that end without any resolution (see “indie film endings”, above). They may be beautifully narrated, they may have eccentric characters and interesting settings, but they aren’t stories, and they aren’t going to keep me engaged.


What it comes down to is, writing a book that doesn’t commit at least one of the sins mentioned in these blogs is hard. It may be nearly impossible. So having vented, I want to take a step back and salute all those people who take on this nearly impossible task, providing me with countless hours of enjoyment. I hope I can join their ranks one day -- and that I don't commit more than, say, three or four of these sins myself!