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?
