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We all have pet peeves, those things that drive us crazy for no good reason. Most of the time it's just a minor annoyance but when it comes to books they can drive us to distraction or possibly even to the point of throwing a book against the well. (Which I am sure is someone's pet peeve - book abuse!)
Personally I have two big pet peeves and surprisingly neither actually has much to do with the content inside the book. The first is actually more with other readers. Have you ever noticed that whenever you say (or whenever anyone says really) that you don't like a book there's always someone who chimes in and says, "How can you not like that book? It's wonderful! You're crazy." That statement drives. me. crazy. Let's be honest - if everyone all loved the exact same books then every book would be a success and a book would never be stuck out on a clearance bin, show up at a thrift store or in a secondhand bookstore, etc. The simple truth is that different books work for different people. There is no one-size fits all. The end.
Ahem. Moving on.
My second pet peeve is one that will not be a shock to some people as I've been rather vocal about it. I loathe headless women and girls on the covers of books. I'd love to say that I refuse to read them, and I've actually considered it, but for quite awhile it would have meant not reading much of anything. Everything from literary fiction to chick-lit to romance to young adult was sporting the latest and greatest of female decapitation. (Some of the people in the publishing art departments would have done great during the French Revolution.) Now there's some variety among the headless covers - some are full body shots from the neck down, some are mostly legs and feet (lots of feet dangling in water) and others are just torsos (I call these the T&A covers). Thankfully this trend seems to be waning, though I doubt it will ever go away completely.
So there you have them, my top two reading pet peeves. But that doesn't even being the scrape the surface of things that get under people's skin. Casee at reading pet peeves is flashbacks.
I freaking hate them w/ a passion. I rarely hate anything b/c hating takes up too much energy. But I hate flashbacks. I hate when I'm all into a story and then all of a sudden it flashes back to 34 months prior. Wtf?
I've seen flashbacks work, I've seen them really not work. When they don't work they really don't work. Ditto flash-forwards.
Author are not above reading pet peeves (though presumably they do not appear in their own work...). Young adult author (and the woman who brought us killer unicorns) Diane Peterfreund says that her pet peeves are a bit general.
Boring openings, plot points that come out of nowhere (and not in the cool, “I totally didn’t see that coming, but wow it fits” way), motivations and characterizations that are far too on the nose. Everyone feels exactly what they say they feel, which is also, conveniently, exactly as they are supposed to feel.
Allison Boyer hits another one of my fiction pet peeves on her list of her top ten fiction pet peeves. (Actually she hit a couple but this one stands out for me.)
When I see the same word within a few paragraphs or even pages, I want to tear out my hair. I don’t mean common words, and you don’t necessarily want to use your thesaurus to find crazy words that sound unnatural to your writing style.
If I say the word "dazzle" I know the Twilight fans will know exactly what I'm talking about won't they?
What's your reading pet peeve? 'Fess up!
Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.
