What are your book related pet peeves?

[booknerd]

Can be related to actual books themselves or to the content within.

[booknerd]

Physical: Basically any major damage to the book, such as cracked spines, water damage, bent/torn covers or dust jackets. I don't mind some wear and tear but some people seem to destroy books in one reading. My new books all stay looking brand new and I am so picky at used book sales because I go through them all to find the best looking ones.

Content: fade to black sex scenes (NO lol)
weird character names (certain genres, like fantasy, get a pass, but it should still be PRONOUNCEABLE. Make it as unique as you want but if I can't say it in my head I get mad and spend half the book trying to say it in my head)
long series that just need to end/repetitive story lines/etc
when the book's ending isn't any good (can really hurt the overall feel of the book after I'm done with it)

[Deleted]

I can't stand when they feel the need to describe how they had to get and put on a condom. There's no need to add anything about a condom unless its foreshadowing for a character getting AIDS or accidentally pregnant.

[booknerd]

Haha that always seems really awkward to me too. They're going at it all hot and heavy and then suddenly he's looking for his pants to get a condom.

[charlatti]

I don't mind much if a book looks well-loved as long as the pages aren't falling out, but I cannot stand books that smell like cigarette smoke. I've only encountered it once or twice with library books, but ugh, yuck.

My biggest content peeve is when authors don't bother to pay attention to details. Most recent example: I really enjoyed The Movement of Stars, set in 1840s Nantucket, but the author often forgot to make the dialogue fit the time period. Characters often said "try and" instead of "try to" do something or hopefully meaning I hope that... I'm not 100%, but I am pretty sure those are fairly modern language quirks. It just bugs me when authors research some things so well and then mess up little details.

[daydreamer]

It really bugs me when an author uses a real historical person in some out of persona way. The worst example recently was a novel in which a male character essentially gets raped by Fidel Castro and for no reason that advanced the story.

[dorothyinAus]

My biggest is poor proofreading, which can be things like poor grammar; misused, but correctly spelled words (their, there, they're, etc); or conflicting descriptions (when the character has red hair in one chapter, but is a brunette in the next).

Another is when the cover illustrator has obviously not read the book.

Poor or incomplete research in historical novels is another one. Poor research in general, particularly in books set in/around New Orleans. Check GoogleMaps people!

Physically, I hate people who crack the spines or dog-ear pages. But my biggest pet peeve in used/borrowed books is people who write in them! Especially if the notes give away the ending long before I get there.

[booknerd]

Jun 10, 2013 18:40:03 GMT -5 dorothyinAus said:

My biggest is poor proofreading, which can be things like poor grammar; misused, but correctly spelled words (their, there, they're, etc); or conflicting descriptions (when the character has red hair in one chapter, but is a brunette in the next).

Another is when the cover illustrator has obviously not read the book.

Poor or incomplete research in historical novels is another one. Poor research in general, particularly in books set in/around New Orleans. Check GoogleMaps people!

Physically, I hate people who crack the spines or dog-ear pages. But my biggest pet peeve in used/borrowed books is people who write in them! Especially if the notes give away the ending long before I get there.

Yes! This! I hate when I buy a book with people on the cover and when I'm reading I flip back to the cover and sure enough, they look nothing like what the book is describing. But they're already stuck in my head as the main characters!

[MrsAxilla]

When I have ten pages left but I absolutely have to leave the house right now!

[GilliC]

I crack spines. [:$] I try really hard not to, but with a mass-market paperback over 400 pages, it's really hard to open it wide enough for me to read the inner parts of the lines, and inevitably the spine has a few lines by the time I'm done.

I do hate writing in books. Highlighting textbooks to help me study is the only time I let ink touch book. When I want to make notes, I write them on mini post-its and stick them to the page. Part of that is maintaining the book condition, and part of that is that I don't necessarily want someone reading my notes later on. Sometimes my opinions change, and I don't like to commit!

I hate deckle-edge pages. It was kind of quirky ca. 1995, but now it's just annoying. It makes the pages harder to turn, and your book doesn't look cool when you're following a trend that was edgy 20 years ago. Deckle edges were originally a manufacturing limitation rather than a trend, and I don't think these books are trying to look "Oh so 90s!"

Digitizing typos can really annoy me sometimes. I wish someone would proof them, because I can get quite confused when the digitizing accidentally adds punctuation. Sometimes I'll spend nearly a minute re-reading something to figure out what the author was trying to say and deciding whether he was trying to be clever or if the punctuation was just wrong.

Speaking of punctuation... Authors skipping punctuation (esp quotation marks) just because they can? Pretentious and annoying.

As for content, my only pet peeve is characters who consistently make the same mistake and never learn. Shopaholic comes to mind.

[aurora]

Historical inaccuracies and contradictions within a book definitely bug me. I just finished 11/22/63, which was really good overall, but I was annoyed when a character said there were 49 states in some year prior to 1959 because Hawaii wasn't yet a state. Alaska didn't become a state until 1959, either. Why do people always forget Alaska???

(P.S. In case anybody hasn't read it, this anecdote is not actually important for anything else that happens in the book, so that's why I didn't put a spoiler alert.)

Interestingly, physical book damage doesn't really bother me because I like when books are well-loved. I finally had to replace my (originally garage-saled) Lord of the Rings books when they fell apart after too many re-reads, but I was a little sad to do so.

[booknerd]

Jun 11, 2013 9:28:42 GMT -5 GilliC said:

I crack spines. [:$] I try really hard not to, but with a mass-market paperback over 400 pages, it's really hard to open it wide enough for me to read the inner parts of the lines, and inevitably the spine has a few lines by the time I'm done.

I hate deckle-edge pages. It was kind of quirky ca. 1995, but now it's just annoying. It makes the pages harder to turn, and your book doesn't look cool when you're following a trend that was edgy 20 years ago. Deckle edges were originally a manufacturing limitation rather than a trend, and I don't think these books are trying to look "Oh so 90s!"

In reference to your first comment: I get it. I hate cracked spines and I do it too accidently, especially for larger books like that. Then I get irrationally irritated at myself for a few minutes haha.
Comment two:
First, I literally felt shocked to realize that 1995 really was almost twenty years ago. Omg. That doesn't seem real.
Second, I agree with you. I love tall/trade paperbacks but when the pages are deckle edge they are harder to turn and i don't like how the covers sometimes stick out over the pages, similar to how a hardback does. They get damaged easier.

[Myrrhine]

I hate a book full of cat hair.

I also hate in a series where the sequels "reset" the story in some way so that it's almost like the events of the first book didn't even happen or are no longer particularly significant. Ugh.

[Nonny]

I hate it when people dog ear pages. My H does it to magazines, which I can handle only because they'll be trashed anyway. If I ever caught him not using a bookmark in one of my books I think I'd flip. LOL! I also don't like it when people ruin the dust jackets of hard cover books. I always take them off to read, and I won't loan a book with it's dust jacket on; I take it away before I give it to them.

[booknerd]

Jun 15, 2013 15:32:09 GMT -5 Nonny said:

I hate it when people dog ear pages. My H does it to magazines, which I can handle only because they'll be trashed anyway. If I ever caught him not using a bookmark in one of my books I think I'd flip. LOL! I also don't like it when people ruin the dust jackets of hard cover books. I always take them off to read, and I won't loan a book with it's dust jacket on; I take it away before I give it to them.

I do all of that. Dust jackets are too pretty and get all bent and torn if you leave them on.

[mala]

I read a book recently where the author didn't start a new line when a different character was speaking. It was so had to follow because I was never sure who was talking.

[dorothyinAus]

Jun 22, 2013 17:42:14 GMT -5 @awesometothemax said:

I hate when I want to buy a book that was recently made into a movie, and I can only find copies with the movie tie in cover. I don't want Brad Pitt on my damn book, no matter how attractive he may be.    

The book-snob in me will wait until I can find a non-tie-in cover to buy the book.  I have also been known to search and search until I can find a copy of the book without the Oprah Book Club symbol on it.  My book snob is very sensitive to people thinking I'd be reading a book because of the movie or because some talk show host told me it was good.

[mommy3]

I hate when they use huge words words when they don't have too trying to prove a point like duh we get ur an author

[panicked]

You all would hate my book collection. I write in books. (The horror!) But in my defense, I only write in them so as to correct a proof-reading/editing error. And I do it with red pen. I always mentally high-five the person who circles errors in books before I read them.

I'm also a spine-cracker. Shame, shame, I know.

My pet-peeve? When someone doesn't give me a book back in a timely manner. It should not take your 6 months to read a 200 page book.

[Pippin]

I can't stand when people bend the cover part of a paperback behind the back of the book while they are reading. HATE IT!! I stopped loaning out any paperback books because of that.

[jr009j]

I can't stand when the huge conflict in the book is resolved in less than a page

[booknerd]

Jun 22, 2013 19:09:19 GMT -5 panicked said:

You all would hate my book collection. I write in books. (The horror!) But in my defense, I only write in them so as to correct a proof-reading/editing error. And I do it with red pen. I always mentally high-five the person who circles errors in books before I read them.

I'm also a spine-cracker. Shame, shame, I know.

My pet-peeve? When someone doesn't give me a book back in a timely manner. It should not take your 6 months to read a 200 page book.

YES. I have a few books right now that have been loaned out for nearly a year and they still haven't read them. 

[booknerd]

Jun 22, 2013 19:32:03 GMT -5 jr009j said:

I can't stand when the huge conflict in the book is resolved in less than a page

Agreed. A book where the conflict builds and twists for 400 pages and then has a half-page resolution makes me stabby.