I don't usually do internet memes, but this one, from The Broke and the Bookish, really made me think. Those who love to read always say that we "love everything about reading", but it isn't really true. There are tons of things that I don't like that are book-related (not to get all negative on you).
Raping Good History (Philippa Gregory, I'm looking at you). I understand that the whole fun of writing historical fiction is creating your own spin on it. That's fine. But to take history (which I always feel is better and more incredible than any fiction writer could invent) and write blatant and ridiculous lies into it to make your book sell more? Ugh. Criminal.
Quick-and-Dirty Plot Hole Covers. I'll use the Harry Potter series as an example (which sucks because I love Harry Potter). In The Chamber of Secrets, Polyjuice Potion is an extremely complicated potion to make (it takes one month for full potency) and includes rare, hard-to-find ingredients. By The Half-Blood Prince, everyone and their mother is brewing (and using) Polyjuice Potion. Come on. Work a little and come up with a better cover for your plot holes.
The Current YA Literature Genre. Every time I go into any bookstore lately, the YA shelves are full of nothing but vampire fiction. Twilight has been done, guys. Move on. And in the same vein, every YA book I seem to pick up has "bland female protagonist lusting after cute but aloof male who turns out to be supernatural." Ugh.
Adjective Overuse. "She looked sadly out the window at the falling rain" = fine. "She heaved a melancholy sigh as she stared balefully out of the rain-spattered window at the cold, gray rain falling from the iron-clouded sky" = you need to put your thesaurus away and tone it down a bit.
Books with Multiple Protagonists. The only book that I've ever read that featured multiple protagonists that I liked and could follow was My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (mainly because each protagonist got a different font in the chapters in his/her point of view). Other times, I get confused when the first person narrative switches from one character to the next. Too strange.
Unauthorized Prequels/Sequels. I am sorry. All you have managed to do is get your fanfiction published. Also, you are riding on another author's coattails and using his or her hard work as your own. The most difficult part about writing (IMHO) is coming up with compelling characters and a setting that interests the reader. When you write an unauthorized prequel or sequel to an original piece that doesn't belong to you...well, the hard part is effectively over. And I have never yet read an unauthorized sequel that was as compelling and well-written as the original. Someday, when I have time and feel like giving myself a headache, I'll review Susan Hill's unauthorized sequel to Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, entitled Mrs. DeWinter...but today is not that day.
Hyped Books. I'm stealing this one because I agree. When a book has been so overhyped, I find myself feeling let down if it's not quite as amazing as I heard it was. Which makes me not want to read overhyped books. I have been proven wrong a few times (Memoirs of a Geisha, The Hunger Games series, etc.), but overall, I find I'm disappointed when a book has been over-exposed.
Re-writes of a Well-Known Series. Everyone was buzzing about the Sweet Valley High books being rewritten to update them to the 2000s instead of the 1980s. I went through these books like crack when I was a teenager, so I picked a copy of the "updated" series in Borders to check it out. Thank God I didn't buy it. The "updated" slang was terrible, and really, making the twins a size 4 instead of a size 6? Ridiculous. And thanks for showing us that body image in the 2000s is every bit as ridiculous and vain as we already knew it was.
What are your book-related pet peeves?
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