Your Pet Hates: Book Edition

[J-Sun]

Ha, that's mad.

When I was trying to teach myself Latin (alas, didn't work too well) I got a grammar book, but when it arrived the last 50 or so pages were missing. It was weird. They hadn't been torn or cut out and the cover fit perfectly they just weren't there. Happily I was able to return it and get a complete version.

I've got a dictionary that goes from half of "clarion" to "convivial" (missing p.147-178) just like that - the pages just aren't there but the book is undamaged. Unfortunately, I didn't notice it for a long time. But it's fine as long as I never need to look up, say, "compromised" or "confounded".

I had a cat poop on a book once...I don't think I ever bought a replacement copy after we binned it...hah I can't even remember what it was but the cat obviously didn't like it!

One of my cats got his claws in a couple of my books (not in the sense of shredding them, but poking a few holes). He was a great cat: I just caught him trying it a couple of times and grabbed his paws to tuck his claws back in and said "No" and he stopped trying to do it. Unlike a certain other cat I had who liked to sharpen his claws on my bookshelves and would never stop such that I ended up having to keep him out of the room.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Something I've come across recently I find annoying in a mediaeval fantasy: when a chapter opens with:

Twenty minutes later...

It's like measuring events in the modern day by picoseconds.

 

[Ogma]

Something I've come across recently I find annoying in a mediaeval fantasy: when a chapter opens with:



It's like measuring events in the modern day by picoseconds.

I agree, but my biggest time-related headache is when somebody uses time schmeerps in fantasy/SF. E.g. a smoo is the equivalent of a second, an ukal is almost a minute, a rifo is about an hour...etc. Often the schmeerps aren't decipherable from context. A table is required. It's adding confusion for very little (imagined) advantage imho.

 

[soulsinging]

I agree. I also hate it when I order used online and end up with mismatched covers from a previous print of the series.

How about when halfway through a series the publisher changes it up so you have to buy them all again to get a set? I'm looking at you GRRM and your ADWD paperback that has an entirely different look from the 4 books I bought when AFFC hit paperback...

 

[soulsinging]

OH AN THOSE REALLY ANNOYING PAPERBACKS THAT ARE ALMOST AS TALL AS HARDBACKS AND PUT THE NORMAL SIZE PAPERBACK RELEASE DATES BACK BY 6 MONTHS TO A YEAR...GOLLANCZ I'M LOOKING AT YOU

Oh my God, these! The only reason I don't own Abercrombie's First Law series is this exact reason. There have also been several non-fiction books I've skipped reading because the only version is a $20 oversized paperback one... I guess they have pretensions to being textbooks (Lawrence in Arabia, Undaunted Courage).

 

[Ravenna]

Bad translations.

 

[JoanDrake]

Any commander using the command "Fire" in any story set before the invention of gunpowder or in a non-gunpowder world fantasy. Any "historical advisor" who lets that one past should immediately have his degree revoked and be thrown out of whatever guild they're in. He should resign in protest and insist they remove his name if they do it anyway.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

What did the Roman war machine commanders say? Though obviously in Latin.

Or the people slinging globs of "Greek fire" (naphtha and tar?)? Likely not English though.

I have trilogies where all 3 are different design/sizes of paperbacks. WHY!!!

 

[Darkchild130]

Hardbacks. And in turn, waiting for paperbacks.

 

[JunkMonkey]

What did the Roman war machine commanders say? Though obviously in Latin.

Or the people slinging globs of "Greek fire" (naphtha and tar?)? Likely not English though.

I have trilogies where all 3 are different design/sizes of paperbacks. WHY!!!

Dunno but I know English archers used to let their arrows fly on the command "Loose!" - Which was the only good thing about the movie Eragon. They got that right. (But only, I suspect, because they needed to immediately follow it up with a yell of "Fire!" as the dragons let rip.)

 

[Michael Colton]

Recurring and excessive descriptions of eating habits in order to make a character seem uncivilized. Yes, we understand that he chews with his mouth open and that fluids are dripping everywhere and bits of food are caught in his beard. You do not need to say it every single freaking time - let alone every time with more than one sentence. An author doing this over and over combined with a huge amount of scenes involving some kind of food almost made me give up on a book once.

 

[The Bluestocking]

I hate, hate, HATE it that here in the tropics, books start turning yellow after a few years due to the high humidity.

And using a dehumidifier doesn't work - it slows the yellowing down a little but it doesn't prevent it.

UGH!

 

[The Bluestocking]

I thought this thread was about why my pet hates books. Brings a whole new meaning to devouring a book!

I caught the dog just in time once:

One of my books fell to the floor and opened up to a random page. I walked in on the dog about to tear the page into little pieces the way she tears loo roll into pieces.

Her crestfallen expression when I took took the book away cancelled out the "Who me? Intent on destroying this book? NEVER!" look of innocence when she saw me coming at her waving my arms about and yelling: "NOOOO! STOP!"

 

[tinkerdan]

This complaint has sound basis...

Recurring and excessive descriptions of eating habits in order to make a character seem uncivilized. Yes, we understand that he chews with his mouth open and that fluids are dripping everywhere and bits of food are caught in his beard. You do not need to say it every single freaking time - let alone every time with more than one sentence. An author doing this over and over combined with a huge amount of scenes involving some kind of food almost made me give up on a book once.

... in that if it's that important to draw constant attention to, then it has to be some sort of plot device; but if the reader never sees any proof that it really is a plot device and not just some author fixation, it becomes a waste of important prose space that could have been better used with a real plot device that moves the story along.

 

[JoanDrake]

What did the Roman war machine commanders say? Though obviously in Latin.

Or the people slinging globs of "Greek fire" (naphtha and tar?)? Likely not English though.

I have trilogies where all 3 are different design/sizes of paperbacks. WHY!!!

That is an interesting question, but I would be very surprised if it was not some variation on "loose" which is the standard I've seen most used by authors like Guy Gavriel Kay when directing arrows to be used. "Fire" implies actually bringing fire to powder, that is, using "fire"arms


As for books I have to agree. Newspaper and magazine publishers standardized various sizes sometime in the 19th century. WHY didn't book printers do the same? I could look like a lawyer instead of a hoarder with books.


Mass Historia: Another Historical Pet Peeve--Archery and Hollywood

 

[thaddeus6th]

One of my books (biography of Pyrrhus, I think) has a few marks in the back where my brother's dog bit it. I don't mind, it adds character (plus I liked the dog in question rather a lot).

 

[Null_Zone]

Miss-matched pricing - Primarily where the Ebook price is still based on say10% off the hardback despite the fact the paperback having been out for months.

Lumping every pre-Christian/non-Judaic religion into a default “pagan” wherethey all get along marvellously and have a conformity of worship that puts theCatholic church to shame.



Changing covers between editions so that scanning across theshelves/scrolling down the screen you have a moments thrill thinking a new bookhas been released.



Odd placement of books in shops – For some reason Justin Cronin’s vampireseries isn’t under Horror or Sci-Fi in any of my local book shops or even thevast majority of ones I’ve bothered to look. Genetically mutated, diseaseridden psychic vampires of possibly alien origin in a post-apocalyptic Americaseems to count as general fiction. It makes me wander what else I’m missing outon.

 

[Michael Colton]

This complaint has sound basis...



... in that if it's that important to draw constant attention to, then it has to be some sort of plot device; but if the reader never sees any proof that it really is a plot device and not just some author fixation, it becomes a waste of important prose space that could have been better used with a real plot device that moves the story along.

In this particular case, it seemed as if the author was attempting to use it as some sort of world-building/setting utility. It was very aggravating. Also, it was not limited to a particular character - the same sort of description of food and the eating of it was nonstop in the book anytime food was mentioned. Though, in the author's defense I greatly disliked the book as a whole and so I was probably a bit touchy to annoyances at that point.

 

[JunkMonkey]

One of my odder pets hates is that books don't have a word count printed on them as standard. Sorry if I posted this in the forum before but I'm going to keep posting it about till someone in the publishing industry notices, thinks it's a good idea, claims it as his own, and puts it into practice.

If I buy a DVD of a film somewhere on the back it will list the film's running time. CDs more often than not have the running times of the individual tracks if not the whole album listed. Why don't books have a word count? With variations in print size, paper thickness, and line spacing it is near impossible to tell whether the great big thick doorstop of a book is 80 thousand words long, or 100, or 120.

Page number is no real indication of the length. A book with a hundred short chapters is going to take up more pages than a book with the same number of words in one huge chunk.

Books should have a word count printed on the back.

Who do I have to sleep with to make this happen?

 

[J-Sun]

One of my odder pets hates is that books don't have a word count printed on them as standard.

Excellent. I've thought about it before (and am having problems with it right now in an anthology I've just finished - collections and anthologies should itemize all the word counts as well) but never vocalized it. Hope someone in the industry does get on that.

Also, books should have a specific editor (or editors) listed. Tor sometimes noted that but otherwise, big publishing houses have dozens of editors and they're rarely actually credited. Same with proofreaders and all - to go back to your DVD minutes thing, we need to know who the directors and best boys and gaffers are!