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I'm an Author. I love to write, I love to read and I just love books in general.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Book pet peeves... and a little rant. LOL.

Today... I'm a reader. LOL. I blame being an avid reader on my deep seated need to write. How many times have you picked up a book... got into it... got disgusted or just couldn't get into it... and chucked the book? It's happened to me a time or two...or a few dozen times. My pet peeves are as follows. I can't stand really stupid characters. The woman who hides in the closet when someone breaks in her back door instead of running out the front. The male lead who crosses lines that are so far out there... there's no coming back from those kind of mistakes and YET... you are suppose to believe anyone could forgive a guy who stole your dog, slept with your sister AND your mom, your best friends, and maybe even your ex boyfriend. LOL.

I love to read all kinds of stories. If it's got a good plot, strong emotional ties or even fun loving... you got me. I read just about everything be it multi partner, m/m, shifters, ghosts, or vampires. You can bring out the whips, chains, or whip cream sundaes... and I will read it. LOL. I admit I'm not into 'Titanic' books. I wanted Jack to live, I wanted them to have hot sex again in a car... on land... and drive away into the sunset together to live happily ever after. LOL. My worst pet peeve though... I found in a book I sat down to read this week. Grrrrr!

I won't name any names and if you're an EC writer... don't get paranoid. It's not you. (Don't glance at each other pondering... was it your's???) LOL. This book is from another publisher. I love this author. I have bought every book they put out. They write a variety of stories involving anything from m/m/f to m/f. I think one of them was a m/m/m/f. I loved every sorted tale. Lately my 'want' list has been a lot longer than my 'did' list when it comes to reading. I'm a mother of 4. My oldest teenager is recently pregnant so I'm going to be a grandma in 7 months. I have 3 other children ages 10-4. School is starting. My first book is coming out Friday (Ral's Woman at ellorascave). I'm pretty busy writing and editing a few other books. (I submitted a second book to Ral's Woman... cross your fingers... shameless plug cuz it's my blog...LOL).

I sat down and started to read this book. I'm into it. I'm reading every line with anticipation. These characters are living, breathing people to me in my mind. They were intense, falling in love, and I'm scrolling my screen happily, eating it all up. Then suddenly about half way through... BOOM! I'm reading and thinking...WTF??? Where did my charaters go??? What happened to the plot??? What did I miss? Which way did it go??? I backtracked, read the pages again thinking I'd missed something. Nope. I sat there shocked, then angry, and I wanted to throw the book. Of course it was an Ebook. I'm not tossing my monitor so instead I did this. I hit DELETE! Yes, I so did that. LOL. I deleted that sucker. I was that mad.

Okay, here's a not so secret thing about deleting something on your computer. On the top left side of my screen I have the recycle bin. There it sat, that book lurking in that clear little icon trashcan. I have glanced up at, sometimes outright stared at it, and I thought a lot of things. This person writes good books. I love some of these books a LOT. I took deep breaths, I gave myself days to evaluate the situation, and I went back. I restored the book and tried again. I wanted to be fair. I thought... this author has something planned. There's a reason! I grabbed hold of that thought with both mental hands. I thought... it's going to be brilliant... just watch. So I read it over, got to that spot, flinched really, really, really hard... and forced myself to read through it and beyond.

What was the problem? I won't give away the plot because I don't want to hurt this author's feelings on the off chance they ever stumble into my part of blogspace. LOL. It was this though in a nutshell. Don't take a loyal, undying type of female lead who refuses to date, sleep with anyone else, because she's fixed on one man she loves.... and then turn her into "insert name here" does "insert city name here". It doesn't work! It angered me. It threw me and worse, the scenes were so uncomfortable for me because who was this person... certainly not the charater I had grown fond on and thought I knew. Nope. This was... someone else, someone I didn't even like anymore... and the scenes weren't hot. I like multi partner scenes but this was uncomfortable and just...eeewwww because it was like taking your mild manored little innocent friend who is the poster child for monogomy... and tossing her in a situation that this friend is majorly going to be messed up afterwards in. The male lead in the space of a few pages went from this possessive, caring, alpha male protective figure that didn't even want her talking to other men... into serving her up to other guys. WTF??? It made no sense. It upset me. It ticked me off. It didn't fit the story. It was like this scene was shoved in the wrong book, made the characters written into strangers, and it was icky.

So there's my biggest pet peeve and the reason for this post. If these characters had been written to be the kind of people who would turn that scene into something hot... YEAH! But to completely change them mid stream into strangers... GRRRRRR. I gave the book another shot, I tried to be fair, I tried to get around the whole uncomfortable 'WTF???' situation these characters found themselves in... but I couldn't. I hit delete again, I went up to recycle bin, and I emptied it for good. No more lurking book hiding under a trashcan icon. It's GONE! Now if only I had that delete key for my brain because it still bugs me that I read one book, ended up with two strangers in the middle, and they were so different that I couldn't even stand them. LOL.

Okay... so what are your pet peeves? What makes you GRRRRRR over books? Am I the only one who gets frustrated enough to toss a book or in Ebook case... delete? LOL. Thanks for reading and letting me rant.

11 comments:

  1. Oh!!! - I think I might have read about this story in a recent review, and the reviewer wasn't impressed either!
    What's my pet peeve? - simply a dull read with characters doing nothing out of the ordinary to gain my interest. I really hate to spend my hard earned money on a flat read =(

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  2. Hi Laurann -- thanks for visiting my blog!

    I'm a pretty forgiving reader, but I can't stand it when characters behave illogically or stupidly. This sounds like what happened in the book you deleted. I love all types of characters -- as long as they made intelligent, logical decisions and stay in character.

    If you'd like to be a guest on my blog sometime, email me at helenhardt@gmail.com.

    Helen
    www.helensheroes.blogspot.com

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  3. Pet peeve? Physically impossible actions especially in regard to sex. Um, an erect penis down the pants leg would make it impossible to sit down without breaking poor penis. Yet I've read this in numerous books. Argh! It hurts to think about and is not at all sexy.

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  4. Oh I sooooo get this because this is one of my pet peeves, too. A writer needs to stay 'true' to her characters. So often we try to write to a market that says for example....menage sells so insert menage HERE. I don't think that works. Begin with your characterizations as you mean to go on. That doesn't mean your characters can't GROW and CHANGE but when they suddenly do a 360 degree turn, it's just not realistic.

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  5. Thanks for stopping by. Mel, it probably was that book. LOL. I also read some reviewers who were disappointed. Then again big fans LOVED it. Maybe they didn't mind the middle but I did. LOL.

    Helen, I'm pretty forgiving too but not about that. LOL. I'd love to be a guest so I'll drop you a line. Thank you.

    Anny, LOL! Thank you for stopping by.

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  6. Regina, that's exactly what happened and it sucked. LOL. I was really disappointed and while I'll probably buy the next one from this author... I won't get excited until I test the waters this time around. Thank you for stopping by.

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  7. Glad I saw your note that you'd posted a blog about pet peeves. I don't have any grammar pet peeves. I don't have any clothing pet peeves, or any that require the character to have a certain look. How-evah, I do have a big problem with a female lead who is stubborn to a fault just because, then later she's not stubborn but truly understands why the hero is trying to protect her, only to turn around and be stubborn again. And we're not talking about having a fight with the hero and she's pissed off and decides to be defiant until her anger wears off. Oooh-ho-ho no. We're talking 'ready to walk into the killing sun because eventhough she knows she's a vampire now because it was the only way to save her life, she is determined to prove she's not (WTF??) a vampire. The result? She almost kills herself and the hero who has to save her. And not once, but two or three times.

    Now, you'd think there was a reason that the heroine bounced back and forth between rational and total ditz, right? Well, there's no story background as to why she is this way. Her current circumstances require her to use some common sense, yet she can't seem to find any in the current scene...yet a few scenes back she had plenty. Then a few scenes forward she has none, then she has common sense again. What the hell?

    I've actually seen this psychological and emotional mambo in a few books. They usually end up against the wall. And it just kills me because these are authors I just love. Or maybe I don't love them. Then again, maybe I do... ;D

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  8. LOL TJ. I have read a few like that myself. That is too true. I find the ones who 'refuse' to admit they are hooked on someone, even though they get hit with billboard size signs... and STILL won't cave annoying. LOL. Thank you for dropping by.

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  9. I don't like sex just for the sake of sex. I crave romance and need build up. I also don't like ditz's or TSTL characters.

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  10. Me too, Ashley. I'm a sucker for people falling in love.

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  11. I hate it when the hero cheats on the heroine, If that happens in a book I lose interest straight away.....if there are both ok with additional partners... that's cool, but it has to be M/F/M not F/M/F....
    Bea Jay

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