JessicaVendetta

Like I said, maybe Im anal, but I view good literature as a piece of art, and I think a book should be checked to the wire about stuff like that. It makes the book seem sloppy.
The good thing is though there's only been 3 or 4 books in my life that have had errors like that.

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There is no place I can go, there is no place I can hide. It feels like it keeps coming from the inside.

TE4SE

I have read a couple of Stephen King novels! And the problem I have found is Mainly all his books are basically the same, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent?
One thing I cant understand about. J,K,Rowling and Harry potter! Witches dont celebrate Chrimbo so why do they have Xmas at hogworts?

Krim

Should they be celebrating...Satanmass or something? I must have missed the pagan ritual they go through upon their entrance to Hogwarts where they become the devoted followers of a god of energy or whatever.

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"A terrible energy and strength began to grow in him. It grabbed his emotions and forged them into a solid bar of anger with one word stamped on it: revenge." - Eragon by Christopher Paolini, an international bestseller

JessicaVendetta

From what i gathered from the series.....it wasn't really related to any ritualistic/ordered witchcraft so much as saying funny sounding words and creating magic.
I liked the Christmas at Hogwarts thing.

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There is no place I can go, there is no place I can hide. It feels like it keeps coming from the inside.

Mishki

Coming out of longtime lurkdom (Hi!) for my own rant. I constantly read about half of a book that looked promising in the store and is written by an author I've never heard of. Once I come upon the halfway point I suddenly think, "this is an MFA novel!" And then I read the note about the author and throw it across the room, because yes, it is an MFA novel. I have never once been wrong about this in the past five years or so that MFA novels have become so common.

What is it about them that makes most so godawful? (No offense to those of you that have acquired an MFA. I'm sure I've read many MFA books I've enjoyed and just never realized it.) I tend to think it's that these writers learn not to experiment--to write things that are "safe," usually in the "literati" way (i.e. excessive, masturbatory characterization). Or perhaps they're writing according to some rules of academics that I just don't know about. Maybe the workshop process is unhealthy, I dunno.

My #1 grievance in all writing, though, is the--I don't know what else to call it--"virginal maiden" stock character, such as Lucy Manette, Rowena, Lana Lang, Gwen Stacy, etc. She's usually the object of the protagonist's affection, is extremely passive, is meant to be perfect in every way, is the ultimate symbol of femininity, tends to have no opinions or ambitions, is surrounded by a halo of light, etc. etc. It's sexist and boring and I can't stand it. That crap got old in the Victorian era, yo.

ClancyBoy

Paging Robert Heinlein to the thread.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

ClancyBoy

Beltane.

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"Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons wait for you down there. Little pets they are, little little little pets. Cute little things, they say. Don't you believe it. No man ever saw them and walked away alive. You won't either. That's the final dash, flash. That's the utter clobber, cobber." --Cordwainer Smith, Norstrillia.

Tangent_string

grammatical errors due to mis-types that the editor never caught. In my case, terry goodkind's "wizard's first rule" is guilty of this on almost EVERY single page.

Also lack of subtlety. I don't like it when I know the themes and the philisophical points of a book early on, and I don't like it when they have a wise old character who basically spells it out.This is why I love Orsen Scott Card so much, you don't have a CLUE what he believes, because he writes every character with different beliefs as equally truthful.

I hate predictability, and cliche'd plots. I don't like epic stories, because it can only go one of two ways, either good wins, or evil. And it's always good, so the end.

Tangent_string

I know this is probably a profoundly ignorant question to ask but... what's an MFA novel? I googled it, and couldn't find a clear cut answere.

Sorry to post a second time, but saw this after my other post.

Suzip

I'll probably get shot for this as the series is so popular but I really don't get Harry Potter. I've tried reading it but it really doesn't interest me, I thought I would because it is the genre I like. The woman has done so obviously well and good for her but I don't find it that well written. I read about a third of the first book but couldn't go any further.

MerryLlama

what annoys me is when the main character you like suddenly does something really stupid and you just cringe as the make a fool out of themselves. Arg! I can't stand that in films either.
Also when the discription rambles on long after you've got the idea (i general just skip those parts but if the books full of it you tend to skip most of the book)

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The glass is neither half full nor half empty... it's twice as big as it needs to be.

Crow

Quotation coherency and disorienting point of views. I found the most recent culprit in McDevitt's 'Polaris.'

While it has a sound premise, too often I can't tell whose speaking or whose point of view I'm dealing with, and that takes away from the experience. It made me do something that I rarely ever do--stop halfway through and get another book. As an avid reader, I consider that a cardinal sin to do to a novel. Especially when you're a good ways through the book already.

Another annoyance is paragraph breaks. I don't mind long paragraphs. Actually, I prefer them to shorter, choppier Grisham-style ones, as long as they are fluid and culminate to a point. Tom Wolfe does an excellent job with his paragraphs, they almost read like poetry.

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Matt3483

I think it means a novel written by someone who has achieved a Master of Fine Arts (majoring, I assume, in Creative Writing).

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Reading is to me like water is to a fish: I can't live without it.

Adjective Ocean

Absurd wordy descriptions really piss me off. I don't give a damn about the rug the character's staring at! I don't give a shit about the curtains or the furniture! I don't give a fuck about that car! Tell me about something that matters! Uhhggghh, it just annoys me thinking about it, especially when they start giving off eras of the furniture. The fact is I don't know anything about chairs, cars, or interior decoration and I don't want to know anything about them, so why is their so much description in my book? Life is to short for me to devote any time to such things.

Sam Winchester

Ha ha. Love it. I haven't heard that saying in ages.

What really pisses me off about a novel? About sixty characters. I have a hard time remembering the main character's name, much less fifty-nine others. I also have no time for long-winded novels. 800-900 pages is my limit. I once tried to read Stephen King's 'The Stand' which is over 1800 pages long. The first part of it was okay, but after a while I just lost all interest.

I like novels that move along quickly. If you want to know who I think is currently the best author in the world, it's Jeffrey Deaver. His novels never disappoint. Another good author is Michael Connelly. Their work moves along almost at breakneck pace, and they are usually always filled with with double-whammy endings.