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What does your inner book critic focus on?
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Americanisms in books set in the UK. I don't have a problem with Americanisms - you say potato etc..., but if you're going to write British characters, make sure they say Autumn, not Fall & Maths, not Math. Same rule applies for British writers writing American characters.
I have a problem with what I'd call torture p*rn. New YA authors want to write an adult book ,so they add as many "dark" scenes as possible to get it across that its an adult book. Most of them are fillers that don't even add anything to the story, I will not read a book if appears to have many trigger warnings, I will not read anything that will stress me out, Its not helping that they are getting popular. so it seems I'm alone on this. I wish I could change this, but I will not read a book if it appears that the main character is not a good person or completely unlikeable. I don't mind books with multiple characters and some are bad but if the main character, the main focus of the story appears to be terribly mean. Why would I cheer for them?
Ahhhh and don't get me started on the cliffhangers that doesn't even answer anything, it feels like the author just gave up on the story and ended it abruptly. It doesn't help when its a sad ending, I had unpleasant dreams for 2 days and couldn't get over for a 2 weeks. I couldn't pick up a book, so depressing. If you gave up on the story just don't publish it, what a waste of paper.
eh I'm venting? my bad haha
Barelyspicy (Bash) wrote: "Ahhhh and don't get me started on the cliffhangers that doesn't even answer anything, it feels like the author just gave up on the story and ended it abruptly..."Yes! Ahh, I forgot to mention this one, but nothing completely turns me off an author more than an incomplete book. I will refuse to read anything else from them out of spite. There are different expectations for a novel versus a comic book, but when I buy a book - I damn well expect that you finished the book! That is the social contract: I pay for a story, you should give me a complete story.
I've had books in which the main enemy/conflict teased throughout never appears. I've had books where events mentioned in the blurb never happened.
To be clear, I don't mind chapter cliffhangers, or cliffhangers in serialized works. But a novel, even when part of a series, should end like it's the end of a book, not just another chapter. To be honest, (and this seems to be old-fashioned, or no longer the case for many works), but I'm also of the mind that the first book in a series should function as a standalone. This is a first date. We're still getting to know each other, and it may not work out. It's not a good look if an author feels they have to use manipulative tactics to convince me to stick around. Once you get into the subsequent books in a series, I think there can be more teasing of story threads. In the same way, there's the expectation that by book 4, an author doesn't need to recap in detail the entire history of what has happened until now. We've bought our fare and are along for the ride.
Melissa wrote: "Barelyspicy (Bash) wrote: "Ahhhh and don't get me started on the cliffhangers that doesn't even answer anything, it feels like the author just gave up on the story and ended it abruptly..."Yes! A..."
veery nicely said! First date indeed...
I am willing to forgive a lot of flaws and mistakes if I am enjoying a book. I think a lot of things influence how I am going to critique the book before I even start it. For example, what I am in the mood to read, what genre I am reading and how the synopsis presents the book. I am such a mood reader and if I can't find the right book to satisfy my mood I may end up judging a perfectly good book (that I may like if i was in another mood) very harshly. This is why i have a "try again" shelf. I am also much more lenient with books from certain genres (romance and all the subgenres, urban fantasy) than I am with high fantasy or sci-fi. I am also less harsh with my critique of autors I love. If the synopsis sells me on a story that is supposed to be intricate and has a lot to offer world building, character and plot wise then that is what i expect regardless of genre. I HATE when the synopsis and the book do not match. I feel like this is becoming such a common thing.
I also hate when POC characters are the villains in books and portrayed as evil savages in an otherwise white fantasy world where the white characters are moral and always the heros. One great example of this is Peter Brett's Demon Cycle series. His Muslim presenting characters were demonized and painted as savages and I just couldn't deal with it. In the second book we even get POV chapters from these characters and within those POVs the author still managed to paint the characters as savages. I feel like he missed an opportunity there.
things that don't bother me:
-smut (even smut with no semblance of a plot)
-violnece (even excessive violence)
-body fluids (except detailed descriptions of phlegm and vomit)
- insta love
-love triangles
-not having a connection with the character (as long as the ideas, plot, world, themes etc are on point)
-controversial topics
-MCs that are slefish, immoral and just generally not good people (Nyx from the Bel Dame series comes to mind). I gravitate towrds these characters.
Allison wrote: "friends, a reminder this is in the part of the group where we're interacting as readers! I'll leave the two comments, but let's be mindful please!"Sorry!
Pat wrote: "Americanisms in books set in the UK. I don't have a problem with Americanisms - you say potato etc..., but if you're going to write British characters, make sure they say Autumn, not Fall & Maths, ..."Oh yes! So important. I remember when I was a child, having to use a dictionary to try and find out what some of the words I was reading meant. The problem was that they were American usage, rather than Australian or UK, so quite often I couldn't find a 'translation' of them.
I was absolutely mystified by pumps (what on earth were they wearing water moving devices on their feet for?), bangs (loud noises somehow translated to hairstyle?), chinos (didn't have any idea about this at all), valentines (what was this strange occasion, and why were people giving things about it anonymously to other people?), and cinder block (Big Black Blocks? Something made of compressed ash?). Halloween was completely foreign to me. (This was when I was in my Bobsey Twins, Three Investigators and Nancy Drew phase.)
It took a long time until I knew what those words meant in context, and now they are very much 'America' to me in literature. And of course, there are many more like them.
Leonie wrote: "Pat wrote: "Americanisms in books set in the UK. I don't have a problem with Americanisms - you say potato etc..., but if you're going to write British characters, make sure they say Autumn, not Fa..."Oh, how interesting to hear from an American perspective! That something as common as a valentine or a cinder block could be baffling to another.
I grew up on British children's books, so I naturally absorbed most vocabulary in meaning, if not pronunciation. (It wasn't until my 20s that I realized it's "row" like "rowdy," not "Row, Row, Row Your Boat.") I also ran into trouble with my spelling, or got odd looks from adults who'd comment on my peculiar phrases. I do remember being confused by the word "jumper" though. I knew it as a gymslip sort of dress, and it took a bit before I realized the other meaning as a "sweater."
The most frustrating foreign vocabulary for me, however, was plants. I grew up in the desert, and had never seen an oak tree, much less a cowslip or foxglove; it bothered me to no end when I couldn't imagine what they looked like. None of my books ever mentioned ocotillo or cholla or brittlebush, and this was before the internet.
But to get back on topic... My equivalent pet peeve that rears my inner critic is Asianisms. When the ratio of Chinese or Japanese words in a book rings false. It's hard to put my finger on it, but it can sound like an overeager fan of Japanese is peppering in words just to show they can. Or worse, when they get it wrong. *cringe*
You know I never gave it a thought how often now I get on the internet during reading to see a plant that is mentioned - it really enhances my reading experience. And let's not talk about an unfamiliar word when reading kindle. When reading a book now I have to catch myself from pushing on the page on a unfamiliar word. I kid you not...
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I'm not an expert on this but the enjoyment of a writing style and author's voice is very important for me. If I like it I might read all the books by a same author, and keep my sights on new releases, if not I might DNF a book even if the premise seemed very interesting. I think this is very subjective but it's a main thing for my inner critic.
Ryan wrote: "My second favourite thing about ebooks is the ease with which I can look up a word I'm not quite familiar with. Don't even have to leave the app these days."Even better if the author uses Kindle X-ray to add such definitions for custom words - such as locations, creatures, tech, etc. A pity few do this, it doesn't take that much time to set-up. It's definitely something I'd point out in the review as a sign the author did something for readers' convenience.
Tomas wrote: "Even better if the author uses Kindle X-ray to add such definitions for custom words - such as locations, creatures, tech, etc."it really helped with Game of Thrones
on Kindles, all the words you look up end up in Vocabulary Builder and I have about 700 on my list
crottin
squiffy
quiddity
and when I click on the word, it shows the phrase it was used in and in what book.
Sometimes authors can pull it off. i recently read a mystery by a Danish author set in a small town in Wisconsin. The main character was a Danish women who inherited a funeral home, so it worked because a lot of the book was about her culture shock.
Also, I had a friend who was an author (she passed away) who wrote romances set mostly in Scotland. I have no idea whether or not she employed Americanisms, but she did do a lot of research into the times and the customs of those times that she wrote about. The characters in the type of romances she wrote and others who wrote in the same genre weren't very realistic in the first place ...
Sandy wrote: "And let's not talk about an unfamiliar word when reading kindle. When reading a book now I have to catch myself from pushing on the page on a unfamiliar word. I kid you not......":) same! As well as trying to turn the page by tipping on the edge.
Ian wrote: "Michel wrote: "That you see it mostly from native English speakers surprises me, Melani. I would have thought that non-English speakers would be more at fault in this. How common or frequent is tha..."I'd agree with Ian's assessment. It's generally from people who are confident enough in the language that they don't worry too much about various connotations the word might have. Or they take a word that does mean something and use it a place where it almost makes sense, but not quite. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does happen it annoys me.
The discussion about American vs. UK/AUS language can continue in Now you're speakin' my language :)
To return on the main subject, I have a particular dislike of action/war stories where it is evident that the author knows little or next to nothing about war, weapons and gunfights. If an author has no military experience or never went to an active war zone, then please refrain from trying to write a war story: the final results are too often cringe-worthy. It would be like a virgin young nunn trying to write an erotica book. The same applies to spy novels. I once read a spy novel which I nearly threw away because of its idiotic plot and flawed characters. For one thing, the bad guys were made to be obsessed with sex and anxious to shoot up female opponents just so that they could rape them afterwards. A spy/clandestine agent that would act like that would not survive for very long in the real world.
Bash, you're not alone about the 'dark' stories being all too popular. I agree that some disturbing content seems to be added gratuitously and exploitatively.... I wanna tell authors: if you're adding it just to be more adult or more serious, just, well, don't try to get me to read it!
This is a great thread. I agree with a lot of what has been said. I write reviews regularly but casually. I don't think about them too much or they would never get written.
I never go easy on moral issues. If the book is racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, able-ist, etc., and it goes unchallenged, this is something I can't let go.
This also goes for unnecessary trauma/ trauma used as a plot device (trauma used to show that someone is "bad" or to show "look how much MC suffered"), /especially/ if the characters don't have a realistic response to said trauma afterwards.
I'm harsher on character issues than I am on plot issues, although I care about both. However, if I like your characters enough, I might not care if there isn't a plot. But I'll never care about your plot if I don't care about your characters.
Another big thing for me is believability. As a reader, I have to believe that, given the parameters the author has set (the world-building/characterization), the story described would actually happen that way. This includes awkward dialogue, continuity errors, plots that don't make sense, characters who are immediately good at everything, and characters who are super dense, for example.
When I read, I like the feeling of immersion, so I also tend to criticize anything that takes me out of the story. Usually this relates to pacing (if the book drags, or doesn't flesh something out fully) or certain writing styles (awkward speech tags, etc.)
I also dislike cliffhangers at the end of a book. I feel like the author is trying to use a gimmick to get me to buy their next book. I don't mind if some things are open ended, but please resolve /something/ in the book.
Other things I dislike are more pet peeves, like story choices (love triangles, ugh) or guessing twists way before they happen, or certain word choices ("chewed their lip" WHY) and I try to be clear in my reviews that this is my personal preference.
Meagan ✊🏼 Blacklivesmatter ✊🏼Blacktranslivesmatter wrote: "I am willing to forgive a lot of flaws and mistakes if I am enjoying a book. I think a lot of things influence how I am going to critique the book before I even start it. For example, what I am in ..."so agree with your "things that dont bother me"
i find if the book is not catching my attention then i will jsut skim fast through it , i have to know what happens!!!
my main turn off is when a story line concept changes through the books with no explanation, some one develops that special device that is needed a few pages from the end
The other dislike is books that have the goodies losing in just so many ways and then voila a simple solution solves all
Something I notice - but don't focus on - are some types of formatting missteps. As I have experience with this in many ways - sending a DOCX or PDF file to Kindle to convert automatically (done for my uni notes), using Kindle Create, or doing it the manual way with HTML/CSS, I know the gimmicks of those ways.This is something I note to myself, and may mention it at the end of the review on my blog, but don't count it into my ratings - formatting can be tricky and I know myself that a single overlooked checkbox can mess up a lot.
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Kateb wrote: "my main turn off is when a story line concept changes through the books with no explanation, some one develops that special device that is needed a few pages from the end
The other dislike is books that have the goodies losing in just so many ways and then voila a simple solution solves all"
Unbelievable deus-ex-machina is an issue, yes.
My inner critic is on high alert most keenly when I'm reading samples of books rather than when I'm reading a book for real. If the sample passes the sniff test (writers with poor grammar, word use, writing style rarely fail to reveal their deficiencies in the sample text; usually within a paragraph or two you can tell if the writing is subpar) ... if the sample passes the sniff test then my critic only awakens if there are other issues.These issues vary but mainly what I'm looking for is an internal consistency with the book's overall tone, mood, theme, and story content.
For example, dialog that flows naturally and consistently with the characters in conversation is a big win for me, but if the book is a flippant, ironic, or comic work then conversations can be less real to life and still feel internally consistent with the mood and style of the book.
Pacing is similar. I don't mind slow pacing if it is deliberate and serves a structural purpose in the book. BUT -- I'll pick on Kim Stanely Robinson here -- when the main characters in his book 2312 get stuck in tunnels under the lead-melting daylight side of Mercury, for example, Robinson literally spends 50 pages describing their journey along never-changing tunnels. Fifty. Pages. That simply doesn't work. At all.
Exposition is the same. It has to fit the book. If you're reading a Dashiell Hammitt hardboiled detective story then you can expect some really bizarre and colorful exposition. That's fine. It fits the book. Other writers/books I don't mind reading long descriptive passages that paint beautiful pictures in my mind, as long as these passages do not interrupt the flow of the story or the pacing.
It's all pretty relative. It has to be internally consistent with the work and enhance the work's overall effectiveness.
Here are some things, however, that have really thrown me out of stories and set my internal critic into a five-alarm state:
-- The flashback that included an aside into something never seen or known by the person having the flashback.
-- The description in a SF book about the first trip to another solar system that acted like Newtonian physics was not a known thing.
-- The 25-page gripping space battle prologue where the main character of which is never seen again until the 4th book of a 6 book series, and who turns out to be a very minor character in the overall story, the space battle in the prologue not even turning out to be part of the overall plot.
-- Characters meandering through a string of virtual worlds for no other reason than to show off the author's ability to come up with "neat" ideas for virtual worlds, several of them based on classic literature. Well, they also served the purpose of padding out the book series to 6 or so 800+ page books. Call it a word count contractual obligation.
-- Highly praised authors who get all the science stuff right yet fail utterly to describe humans reacting in realistic ways. Call it social naivete or perhaps simply didacticism.
-- Characters who are given "it's either this or that" solutions to a given problem when the reader can easily think up one or more alternatives that the character would be smart enough to consider as well.
-- Plots whose resolutions are based on erroneous premises or assumptions. This is another case similar to an author being didactic. I'm thinking here of Arthur C. Clarke's book Childhood's End where one of his major premises is that science and the arts only produce worthwhile outcomes as a result of strife. Patently false. Has no worthwhile art been made as a result of joy? Has no worthwhile science come as a result of wonder and curiosity?
... Too long. Sorry.
Phillip wrote: "Where do you sit on this? Do you focus more on story issues, style, or are you good at a healthy mix of the two in your reviews. Even if you don't actually write a review, do you find yourself thinking about one area more than the other?"For me, the absolute first, and nearly only consideration is character and emotion. Emotional arcs trump action arcs 100% of the time. Bonds (of whatever kind) created, strained, broken, healed. I can be extremely picky about this, and if characters feel flat or unconvincing, I will absolutely call that out.
Next comes worldbuilding and atmosphere. Take me to a weird place that I could never experience in real life.
Like a number of other people, -isms will absolutely get called out, unless I've brought them up several times in the last few reviews and am tired of talking about it.
When a book has a slow "upward slope"--when we have setup that lasts hundreds of pages with only occasional blips of payoff/release of tension along the way--I get fretful and impatient and will absolutely mention that in a review. Second books of trilogies have had this issue for me, recently.
This is a fascinating thread! For me, character, narrative voice, and plot are all fairly important, if those things are done well I can forgive occasional editing mistakes. I get fed up when an author writes inaccurately about a subject I care deeply about. Another pet peeve is romance tropes; love triangles are boring!!! I avoid reading romances, so I get frustrated when sex scenes and hormonally-driven angst take up a large part of the plot of a book that claims not to be a romance. I do enjoy a good love story, but feverish attraction does not equal love, a thing many modern writers have completely forgotten.One stylistic choice I don't love is when a whole book is written in the present tense. I think the idea is to make everything feel more immediate, but weirdly for me it has the opposite effect. I will read a book in present tense if it is generally excellent, but will give up on one faster than I would a book with a more typical structure if I don't like other things about it.
I agree, I can't stand present tense and often bounce off of books right away if they're in present tense. But I can tolerate it if the rest is really well-done. And ditto on the "writes inaccurately about a subject I care deeply about".
Ryan wrote: "My inner book critic examines what it deems to be greatness from many angles and does a poor job in articulating its findings. Which is why its my inner book critic. It doesn't like sharing what it loves."Reading through more of the thread: this is my inner book critic, too. Five-star books that cause internal cataclysm and week-long book hangovers get a couple of bullet points. There's something inexpressible about an experience like that. Or something I'm too shy to reveal, or both.
CBRetriever wrote: "Even amongst those who speak English from birth, I still see people from the US complaining about UK or Canadian spelling and grammar (and the reverse as well)."
This boggles my mind, in part because I love seeing these differences... and appropriating them for effect. and also probably sounding like I am dialect-confused or pretentious, or both. :D
That said, it's dismayingly common for people not to "get" extremely simple differences like color vs colour. I watch a YouTuber who felt he had to change his accent to a more Americanized one because US commenters, the bulk of his audience, kept making fun of his Canadian pronunciations. I later read an article that said that the US had a vowel shift that Canada didn't (in words like plague and bagel, for example), and that was so fascinating to me.
(this post is getting quite long but I keep finding new things to respond to)
Eva wrote: "Do you guys have things that will make you close a book again right away without needing to read more than a page or so?"
Creepy sex gaze - I'd rather know characters a bit before their sexy parts are mentioned. Depending on the book, it can be a red light indicator of a chronic misogyny problem.
Annoying narrative voice - this is obviously subjective, but if I can't bear being in the pov character's head for two pages, I'll never make it through 300 or more.
As also mentioned by Eva, obvious carelessness right out the starting gate. Typos or basic grammar mistakes in particular.
Poor pacing is my biggest pet peeve. Specifically books that start out slow, drag for a while, and then like 90% of the action happens in the last 10%. It's the one problem I have with Brandon Sanderson. Guy's a great writer, tells a compelling story, but historically his pacing is awful.
Joon wrote: "Poor pacing is my biggest pet peeve. Specifically books that start out slow, drag for a while, and then like 90% of the action happens in the last 10%. It's the one problem I have with Brandon Sand..."i so agree, even if an interesting book that has deep thought involved in the characters reaction, all of a sudden all is solved in a few pages.
very disappointing
Just found a new peeve. The main character of the book has a job that requires a high intelligence, and is praised for the ability to fulfill this job So when the action starts they do really stupid things , something nobody would even do in a panic. But no they aren't in a panic they "thought it through"
Cant read the rest of the book
Yes, supposedly intelligent characters acting like ignoramuses is awful. I've also just realized one of my pet peeves: I've read a lot of classics and novels set in 19th century Britain, so any historical inaccuracies/etiquette mistakes/ignorance about social rules and conventions/mind-sets/language in stories within this setting really bug me and immediately break my immersion. They're often things other people would not even have noticed, and yet for me such things make me want to throw the book into a corner. It's a bit unfair, but I can't help it. I want my historical accuracy.
Eva wrote: "Yes, supposedly intelligent characters acting like ignoramuses is awful. I've also just realized one of my pet peeves: I've read a lot of classics and novels set in 19th century Britain, so any his..."I think it's quite fair to expect historical accuracy in a historical novel :)
Yes, supposedly smart people doing really obviously stupid things drives me insane too! I see this happen a lot in mysteries. Do the people who find themselves caught up in a mystery happened to be people who have never ever read one in their lives and so don't know how to behave when faced with a dangerous situation? Do they really say to themselves, "this person has been sending me death threats, so why don't I break into their house to see if they have any incriminating evidence in there?" (LOL)
in mystery books, it the lone female protagonist who elects to break into a dangerous person's house, office, etc. Reminds me of that commercial with the four teenagers (and the Texas Chainsaw guy) who elect to not jump in the running car and instead to hide behind the tools (chainsaws, saws, scythes, etc).
Oh yes! Or "this house is obviously haunted, but let's stay the night". Or "I'm all alone and don't have a weapon, so let's go *toward* the unsettling noise I've just heard from the basement without calling the police! I also really wish writers would stop having people conk people over the head with bottles etc., resulting in a brief and harmless unconsciousness, instead of what it usually results in IRL: death. And then our courts fill with cases of people saying "I just wanted to knock him out for a minute, how could I have known it would kill him?!" - how indeed if writer after writer perpetuates the same incredibly harmful trope?
Eva wrote: "I also really wish writers would stop having people conk people over the head with bottles etc., resulting in a brief and harmless unconsciousness, instead of what it usually results in IRL: death."This one for sure. Temporary but otherwise harmless unconsciousness by being lightly bashed in the head is just not a thing.
If you get hit hard enough to go unconscious for ANY amount of time, you get AT LEAST a major concussion out of the deal, which is not something you just wake up from like a nap, and is not something you're over after you wake up.
a couple of the mystery writers I follow have had their main characters suffer serious problems after being conked over the head: Helene Tursten's Judo champion female policeman can no longer compete because of her conking and I seem to remember Paretsky's detective losing her eyesight for a bit because of it (she's one of the ones who's always going it alone like I complained about above)
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Metro 2033 (other topics)Flashback (other topics)
Voodoo Children (other topics)
The Three-Body Problem (other topics)
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I tried to come up with a formular for myself, but I think I'm a bit like Tony in msg 15: it seems to be very different from book to book.
For some (sub)genres I can more readily say what I'm noticing than for others. I.e. the classical Fantasy with soldiers, queens/kings, villages, castles, chosen ones, some magic and perhaps some dragons thrown in with a plot of war or court intrigue (or both) it is most definitely nearly 100% the characters. Since the plots in those books most often aren't exactly innovative my reading on with a series depends solely on the cast.
For books that are mainly about ideas, on the other hand, I can go with uninteresting characters. "The Three Body Problem" has been mentioned. That's a typical case here. I totally agree that the characters (in all three volumes) are forgettable, but I was glued to the concept and absolutely loved the books.
Then I'm a freak for interesting structures in the writing. A book told from A to Z can be okay for me, but an author definitely has my attention with mosaic structure, (meaningful) flashbacks, time jumps and such. When I 'have to work' for my reading pleasure I'm piqued (up to a certain point of course. If it gets too abstruse even I give up).
One point I found in the discussion here that I wholeheartedly sign is the 'driving a plot point home to the reader in abundance' mentioned by Allison. When I feel like shouting at the book that I get it, it loses at least one star in the rating. I can't stand it when I have the feeling the author doesn't deem the reader intelligent enough to go with hints instead with a sledgehammer.