If you’re anything like me, there’s been more than one occasion when you’ve started a book and read a few pages or a few chapters, set the book down, and never came back. It happens. No shame in that. But WHY does it happen???
That’s the question that a recent Fussy Librarian survey addressed, and it got me wondering.
What makes YOU stop reading in the middle of a book and not go back?
Choose all that apply from the options below and leave a comment on this post with your answer(s).
1. The plot takes a turn that doesn’t make sense
2. Spelling and grammar errors
3. Inaccurate technical or historical details
4. Too much profanity
5. Explicit sexual scenes
6. A character I like is killed off
7. I always read to the end
8. Other reasons? Please explain!
We posed this question on my Facebook page and in my NewsFlash newsletter, and the outpouring of results has been fascinating. Next week I’ll be compiling all the results, including yours left in the comments section here.
So please, weigh in! What’s your biggest reading pet peeve?
Excellent questions!
While I almost always read to the end (Game of Thrones excepted, which I couldn’t read any more after eight chapters … but I understand it’s quite popular :p ), I do get annoyed with some of the above:
1. Plot turns that are seem to be the author asking me to do way more than “suspend disbelief”
2. Spelling and grammar most definitely – and misuse of words.
8. Other reasons: a character does something either a) ridiculous (as in: would not happen in real life … OR sci-fi), and/or b) out of character or inconsistent, or c) only as a plot device.
More other reasons: Introducing convenient new information because the character just “happens” to overhear it … more than four times in the one story; too much exposition.
None of the above are restricted to the indie or trad published worlds, in my opinion!
The results will be interesting 😀
Some times they just don’t make any sense or they are boring. Some you just can not get into.
Forgot to say. If I have a problem with a book, I read the first, middle, and end.
I left my answer on FB a while back but basically, it’s when an author will go off into what I refer to, as too much background information on the characters. Sometimes it could be summarized into shorter information. You, however, don’t fall into this category!
1. Too much profanity, 2. Explicit sexual scenes, 3. Too many unpronounceable names and words in dialogue, 4. Too much detail about home decorations and clothing at every scene change.
Too many sex scenes and no interesting plot….seems like they just think there is no reason to create an interesting story.
1. The plot takes a turn that doesn’t make sense
2. Spelling and grammar errors
5. Explicit sexual scenes
8. Other – Juvenile writing style
I almost always finish books except for too much profanity and explicit sexual scenes [ I have lived a long time and have a good memory ] . So I prefer to have it some things left to my imagination. Sometimes I skip the profanity and sex to read to the end, if I enjoy the story line, otherwise.
One grammatical error I see and hear way too much is ‘sit and set.’ Too many people sit inanimate objects as well as people. I don’t do well with sentence structure but my Mom [ born 1914], with a 1 room school house education all 12 years corrected my 4 brothers and myself like a ‘Prof’.