Monday, March 21, 2011

Top Ten Bookish Pet Peeves

TopTenTuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  They are very fond of lists.  Each week they post a new top ten list relating to all things bookish.  Check it out and be sure to link your own list there.

This week’s topic is:

Top Ten Bookish Pet Peeves

1. Love triangles.  I’m sorry, I know other people love them.  I don’t as a general rule.  They make me feel like my main character is fickle.

2. Inexplicable attraction equaling love.  I see this a lot in paranormal romances.  They meet, they yearn for one another, they make-out, and now, they’re in love.  Sometimes without any meaningful conversation. 

3. Cliffhangers.  I love a good series, but sometimes I feel like a book is cut off at the end just because they could get a deal for more than one book, when the one book would have sufficed.

4. Long descriptions.  When the descriptions of the flora and fauna are too long my eyes glaze over, and I skip paragraphs.

5. Books or authors with social agendas.  I read for fun, not to expand my horizons.

6. Sex and/or excessive swearing in YA books.

7. The way that Amazon.com groups books together for shipping.  Sometimes I have one book shipping next month, one in six months, and two available now, and they group the two available books with the last shipment instead of the first available.  Grr…

8. People who get really offended about reviews.  We’re all just sharing our opinions.  You don’t have to agree, but we can all be nice about it.

9. Whiplash endings.  You know the book: the build-up of the story took over 200 pages, and now it’s resolved in ten, yet leaving you with many unanswered questions.

10. When release dates get pushed back.  I have no problem when they get moved up :)

Next week-- Top Ten Authors That Deserve More Recognition

12 comments:

  1. Definitely agree on cliffhanger endings! There has been many times when you can tell that a novel has been deliberately engineered towards a huge cliffhanger ending just so a second novel can be spun out. It's really frustrating and I find it's mostly in YA where they turn out to be trilogies.

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  2. Cliffhanger endings. Agreed. I haven't posted a lot of reviews yet but Rachel Hawkins had ridiculous cliffhangers at the end of both of her books, and it really just made the stories feel incomplete. (Though, don't get me wrong, I still love her work.)

    And love triangles. And the inexplicable attraction. Ah, Twlight.

    You have a really nice blog here. I like the teal and pink flower & curl designs you did on the sides.

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  3. Ugh! I heartily agree with no. 2. If an author can't make the characters fall convincingly in love, they have no business writing about it.

    No. 4. I think long descriptions have their place, but that place is definitely not in genre fiction.

    No. 8. Agree. A review is an opinion, and when well reasoned and supported by evidence, people should respect them even if they don't agree with them.

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  4. I put similar to 9. It's really annoying.

    Old follower. :)

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  5. I agree with a lot of yours! I hate whiplash endings that just leave you going: 'wait, WHAT?? What just happened?'

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  6. I don't understand the getting offended by a review either. Why do people get so worked up over the words of a complete stranger? I see this happen more often on Amazon than on blogs though.

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  7. great answers, stop and see mine.

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  8. There is no doubt you are making a good point with people who often get offended with reviews. You are on point-we are all sharing our thoughts.

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  9. Regarding #5 - I included the Author Tract on my list too, but I have to say that sometimes you do learn from those books. And you can be entertained and expand your horizons at the same time. Challenge yourself.

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  10. Oh, gah, love triangles. I've seen those everywhere in YA recently, and it's getting seriously annoying. Fortunately the Study series by Maria V. Snyder doesn't have a triangle in sight, which is refreshing. Nice list, I wish I'd thought of some of these things myself!

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