Tuesday 22 March 2011

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Pet Peeves

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme/ feature held over at The Broke and Bookish and this week's topic is bookish pet peeves. It seems like ages since I've done a TTT post and a lot came to mind for this topic so I thought I'd join in this week.


My bookish peeves are:  (in no particular order)


1) Blurbs that give away too much of the plot.
I find blurbs that describe the plot in so much detail that you know what happens up to halfway through the book just from reading it. I seriously don't need to know half of the plot line just to make me interested in the book-that's why I want to read it!

2) When the next book in the series lets you down
I hate when I love the first book in the series and really look forward to the next book for months and then I get disappointed because it doesn't live up to my expectations. It seems that sequels are either a let down or are better than the first in the series but they're never equal.


3) Shop assistants who seem to be clueless about the books they work with
Sometimes, when I'm browsing in a book store I overhear another customer asking for example where they can find a book in the store or a parent asking for recommendations for their children and the shop assistant seems to be pretty clueless. They're supposed to be the experts but often they seem to have no interest in the current book market or know what they're talking about. Of course, I know that there are bookshop assistants who are really dedicated to their work and passionate about books too!


4)Stickers on the covers of books or black marks on bargain books
It's very irritating to get a brand new shiny book from the bookstore or online and to find it has a sticker that leaves a horrible residue on the cover or a black mark on the pages to show it was selected as a bargain book. If there really is a need for this, it would be much better for it to be more subtle or for stickers to be easy peal.


5) When the models or illustrations on the front covers are completely different to the characters that are described.
It makes me wonder whether the cover artist read any of the descriptions of characters or conversed with the author at all when this happens. I find that it most often happens with girl's hair colour, for example a ginger haired girl is shown with blonde hair. I can't think of any specific examples at the moment but I know there are lots around.


6) When the cover design theme changes half way through a series.
I love to have matching covers for my series that they look  pretty, uniform and neat on my bookshelves so it's very frustrating when the publishers decides to change the looks of a series. An example that comes to mind with this one is the Lacy Romance series by Eve Edwards, where they changed the look in time for the release of the second book, The Queen's Lady (covers below.)








7) Character stereotypes
Okay, I've had enough of flat and stereotypical characters such as the popular, mean and beautiful cheerleader and the clever but ugly girl. This one has been around for so long now that it's very tiresome and the characters often aren't very original or well developed.

8) Rushed endings
Rushed endings just leave me with a bad impression of the book when I finish it even if I liked most of because it is really aggravating when the author spends a lot of time artfully creating suspense and building up the storyline before hastily wrapping it up in ten or so pages. It makes me feel like they got bored of that writing project and wanted to move on to something else as quickly as possible or felt the book was getting too long.

9) Books that are compared to popular books
There are so many books around that say '(Insert book here) will be the next (insert name of very popular and well known book.) The most common example I can think of here are paranormal books that continually get compared with Twilight or dystopian books that are compared with The Hunger Games series. It puts me off a bit because it's highly unlikely that this prediction will come true and it's just trying to appeal to fans of popular series.

10) When authors jump on genre bandwagons
Whenever a new YA book is released that sells well and becomes very popular, there seem to be hundreds of other books that pop out in the same genre to try and ride on its success.  This is what happened with the success of Twilight and the deluge of paranormal fiction that arrived afterwards or the wave of new dystopians being released now after The Hunger Games. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with this at all because I love the sound of some of the dystopians coming out now. It's only when the book has nothing new to add to a saturated genre that it becomes a pet peeve because the author could be writing an original book that starts a new trend.  








 What are your bookish pet peeves?


12 comments:

  1. Girl, you totally touched on some of my biggest pet-peeves. After reviewing nearly 160 books, I've begun to become more critical because I want to see authors break the mold and take more risks. I also have to say that when synopses are vastly different from what the book is actually about just kills me. Fab post :)

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  2. I didn't realize they'd changed the covers for the Eve Edwards series but I can see that now - I don't know that I really like the new ones. The headless girl thing always bugs me in covers and they all look so similar apart from the colors!

    Definitely agree with you on just about all of these - the genre bandwagon is annoying, it happened with vampire, werewolf & angel books and it's starting to happen with dystopian. And rushed endings are annoying, especially if they don't feel very clever, like there's been all this build-up and then you're like, "What? You expect me to believe the evil villain is vanquished THAT easily? I don't think so."

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  3. Great comments on your pet peeves! I especially agree with you on the rushed ending!!
    Mine is here:
    http://abookwormsblog1.blogspot.com/2011/03/top-ten-tuesday_22.html

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  4. I think many of the things that you said are some of my pet peeves as well. It seems anytime that I go to a bookstore there is someone looking for something especially a YA novel and I am more help to them than the staff. I also hate the marks that are put on bargain books, why ruin a perfectly good book. As for cover models that are not the same I know that in Gini Koch's Alien series the main character Kitty has her hair as a different color on every single cover. Which brings me around to when they change covers to the series half way through, Nightshade for example did this. Plus I just read a rushed ending in The Body Finder, I loved the book up until the rushed ending.

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  5. Anonymous21:48:00

    It always irks me when I go into a bookstore and none of the employees seem to be aware that they should know at least the most popular authors. It always reminds me of that scene in "You've Got Mail." :)

    I saw that you're reading Clan of the Cave Bear. It's a great series, and the newest one just came out. I hope you're liking it so far!

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  6. I agree with most of these! I was really disappointed they changed the Lacey romance covers - I loved the old covers and I HATE headless girl covers.

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  7. I agree with all of them. :-)

    The worst would be #2 for me. Nothing like investing all that time only to be disappointed.

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  8. You would think someone working in a bookstore would actually be a person that read at least sometimes right? I can't believe how clueless they tend to be.
    And the bandwagon is pretty bad as well! I'm always hoping someone will think of something unique to add to it, but a often they don't.
    Great list!

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  9. Great post! I totally agree with the bandwagon thing!
    Haha, thank you I'm so exicted about getting a request! The book I was asked to review is 'miss peregrine's home for peculiar children' a new Y.a novel that combines vintage photography and fiction!
    Thank you for all of your support Stephanie!

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  10. Totally agreed on all of these. It bothers me so much when they change a book's appearance partway though the series. It's even worse when half is paperback and half is hardcover.

    I completely agree about the bandwagon thing. I love that books like Twilight have opened the genre and publishers are considering more books like that, but there should still be standards! Some books seem like they are getting rushed to publication before they're really ready or they're just not good enough. Just because a book has vampires or X-hot-new-trend doesn't mean it should be automatically published.

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  11. Thanks for all your comments everyone!

    @Melissa Haha, that's the one downside to reading so many books- the same generic ideas and things happen start to get a bit boring. Something original and new is bound to get a lot more interest. Yeah, it seems like publishers try to make it more appealing or something but it makes me ask why the story wouldn't be appealing in the first place if they're publishing it.

    @Danya I much prefer the old ones too! The old Queen's Lady design kept the same theme but looked more different than The Other Countess than in the new designs. Those headless girls don't do it for me either.

    @ Alexa I agree, there must be other ways that bargain books can be marked that aren't permenant.Wow, the different colour hair on the Gini Koch's Alien series covers sounds very weird. I can image it's very annoying.

    @couchpotatocritic Thanks! Yes, I'm reviewing it to mark the release date of the last in the series :)

    @Rebbecca It's such a shame because the others were so much more original and less generic. The new ones just look so many other countless adult historical romance covers. Amidst the deluge of beauitful covers, they jst don't stand out that well.

    @Ka Woei I find the worst thing is that it somehow makes me love the first book less and the author.

    @Daisy Too right! I'm sure many book bloggers could do a better job often.

    @Liddy I literally jumped up and down when I got my first request. Oooh, that sounds interesting! I'll look out for your review of it :)

    @Small Review Yeah, that often happens when they release the first one in paperback and then decide to publish the sequels in hardback because the first was so popular. I agree about books being rushed to publication because it often seems like they're trying to get in the market before the popularity for the genre dies out. It makes me wonder how many original and new books are sacrificed at the expense of ones that the publishers know will be popular because of similar books.

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  12. I think #5 is my biggest pet peeve. I absolutely hate it when the main characters on the front of the book look nothing like the way they are described. Anyway, good list - I'm a new follower :)
    http://paranormalopinion.blogspot.com

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I try my best to reply here or on your blog :)

Stephanie x