I am admittedly a picky reader; on the other hand, I will read an author more for the plot than the writing. I love historicals and historical romances, but when I find inaccuracies, I grind my teeth. Sometimes, not often, the writing is so strong that it can overcome the problems. But because I use a Kindle these days, I download the sample chapters, which has helped a lot. Generally, if someone doesn’t care about research, it is obvious in the first chapter.
So, what makes you put down a book, or throw it?
ellaquinnauthor
Ella Quinn ~ Author 
I will admit that I finish every book that I get but there are certain troupes that drive me crazy. Menage and it doesn’t have a HEA for all three people. I understand the whole fantasy of a menage but don’t understand why some authors put three people together; the reader gets emotional involved in the story and the BAM…someone is the third wheel and a couple of months later that person gets their own book. Grrrrr…..
I’ve stopped reading authors because of it.
Great post Ella!
Marika
That’s interesting. I just read a book like that not long ago.
When it’s not a very good plot. I’m dying after the first chapter. However, I will try to read at least a hundred pages of novel before giving it up. I have gotten almost to the end and stop. I’m reading a book like that. Actually I haven’t picked up since I don’t remember, but I only have about 5 more chapters. I plan to finish it. Just not today.
Thanks for commenting. It’s so hard to put down a book.
i almost always finish a book. The last one I deliberately put down was Book three of Stephanie Laurens’ Black Cobra Quartet. The heroine seems very outside the period and the gathering of previous heroines made me think they were all the exceptions rather than the rule. That was a turn off. I’m more forgiving of writing these days, but I really need a strong plot, a hero to love, and a heroine to empathize with. I don’t think I have ever kicked a book across the room, but there could come a time…
Thanks Jenna. My days of throwing books ended when I got a kindle.
I once read a historic novel (purposefully forgotten the name) where the hero ended up marrying the horrid, crappy rich lady, getting her pregnant, but kept the sweet, loyal, loving heroine on the side as his mistress. Talk about a serious WTH? moment for me. Needless to say, the book ended up in the trash. I read romance for the HEA’s. How that was a HEA is beyond me.
Interesting. It couldn’t have been a romance. Thanks Melissa.
I guess I’m a bit of an optimist and patient. I like to give authors every chance to rebound. If a book begins to bore or irritate me, I try my best to keep pushing forward, hoping that at some point, they will make me glad I was persistant. Often times I find myself at the end, wondering why they didn’t go in one direction verses another. I do feel that you are very right about doing one’s homework. To me, I feel a stronger connection if the facts are validated and can relate stronger if I know it’s true.
I hate not finishing a book once I’ve started, even the worst book in the world (title on request, but it’s not HR). The worst thing apart from generally bad writing is the phrase “Little did she know that” followed by a complet synopsis of the rest of the book.
LOL. Doreen, thank you.
I can suspend belief, and even historical inaccuracies, if the story, itself, is a good one.
I hardly ever put down a book never to return, plugging on to the end. Mostly because I’m the type of person that once I start something, I finish it. In doing this, I’ve found genres I just don’t like to read and avoid them in the future.
Jenn!
Hi Jenn. There are genres I don’t read because I just don’t get them. I may finish a book with historical inaccuracies, but I won’t by another from the author, and I don’t leave reviews.
I, too, try to plug on. It’s the contrivances and “writing on the nose” that bother me.
What is writing on the nose?
The last book I put down had too many historical inaccuracies for me. It started with one and I said, OK, it could happen. But then it just kept going. When the hero rode into a major European city on a horse in 1911–with no mention of how he got through the cars, cabs, pedestrians, trolleys and buses–and then went into a store–with no mention of what he did with the horse–I gave up. Pictures of this particular city in that time period show, pretty clearly, no single riders anywhere. Horses, yes. Pulling cabs and carts. Riders? No. There were other discrepancies but this, for me, was so obvious. There are pictures for goodness sake! It was like seeing
a zipper on an 18th century gown.
Oh, no. Authors like that do the same thing in Regency. Like trying to ride a horse to a ball or other evening event. I’m pretty sure, one didn’t even ride down Bond Street.
I read – a book – that – was – completely – filled – with – dashes – I don’t think – the author – used any other – punctuation – in the – whole book – this was – a few years ago – before ebooks – so somehow this got past the agent – editor – and publisher – but it didn’t – get past – me!
Oh my. I wonder how that happened. Was it self-published?
no – it was fully published by a real publisher – all of which I have blanked from my memory.
That’s criminal.
I “abandoned” one “recently” because “it” was “full” of “inappropriate” “punctuation”.
Punctuation seems to be a never ending problem.
Illogical character motivation drives me batty. TOO STUPID TO LIVE heroines and forced plot twists. Bad writing and lack-luster characters all equate to early termination for me.
I agree. Thanks Kary.
Gross stereotyping to the point where characters become caractures. Where the hero has been such a jerk the entire story then all of a sudden, the heroine realizes she loves him. No arc, no perceivable redeeming qualities.
The final thing is sexual assult or abuse. I saw too much of it when I worked in mental health and am not interested in reading about it. Exception was Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Knew it was coming, so I skimmed over.
But in the Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, she really got back at him, so that helped. Thanks for commenting.
Oh, Ella, I’m with you. Historical inaccuracies really drive me crazy. No so much because I was a history professor, but when the characters are not realistic for the period. I once read a historical set in the American west in where the hero (the town sheriff) and the heroine (forget who she was), but in any case in the small town where they live, they spend the night together in the local hotel. And NO ONE say anything about it, and it changed nothing in the story. WHAT?? Or the 800s viking invader in Ireland looks deep into the coco brown eyes of the heroine. I wanted to know where he’d seen coco. As you can tell, this is my hot button.
Hi Terry,
I’m with you.
Once I thought about it, I discovered that nearly too many things will make me stop reading. Boring narrative (i.e. too much discription, interior thought, illogical action etc.); inaccuracies historical or otherwise; poor formatting, punctuation and grammar; stupid characters (the heroine who insists on going into the fight with the hero when she doesn’t have the skills, the hero who thinks fighting is the only solution, etc. I’ve been reading romance since before Rosemary Rodgers and Kathleen Woodiwiss (yes there was romance before those two icons) and like many I used to read every book all the way through. I don’t have as much patience with poor writing now as I used to. My time and money are more precious to me than when I was much younger. I know many authors who don’t care what a reader thinks. For those authors writing is all about the sales numbers. What they don’t realize is that better quality means better sales and return customers. So you can fool me into purchasing a poorly written book once, but not twice.
Hi Rue. I agree that good writing should be every writer’s goal, and that includes historical accuracy. Too often I hear the retort, but so and so isn’t historically accurate and they’re making lots of money.
Boring characters are the worst. They usually lack emotion. Readers read to feel… and identify with another speck of humanity that has lived through something they have. That should form a bond between reader and story. No emotion = nothing worth reading.
So true, Steven. Thanks for commenting.
LOL. I love it!
Wrong horse stuff! I can’t stand it.
I have a lot of issues that will make me delete a book from my kindle. I hate it when the h/h fight the entire book, and come together the last three pages. I feel cheated. I don’t like it when the plot is unbelievable, or when a 5 minute conversation would end the ‘conflict.’ I also find it hard to keep reading when (usually it’s the heroine), believes something horrible about the hero that is told to her by a woman she knows has an agenda. Duh. Use your head, lady. Blatant historical inaccuracies rub me the wrong way. And too many internals, descriptions, etc., along with a very slow moving plot will find that book in the cyber trash, also. But, that being said, I read (finish) over 200 books a year. Good post, Ella. I way to get this all off my chest, lol.
Callie, thanks for posting. I like multiple conflicts.
I’m also a picky reader. It doesn’t take much to lose me. I’ll list a dew of the things that make me stop reading.
1) Stupid characters. This is my biggest pet peeve.
2) Stupid dialogue.
3) The plot is too boring–too easy to figure out.
4) The voice sounds too amateur and the book isn’t a YA.
5) Sick and tired of the hero and heroine fighting throughout the whole book when they really love each other. To me that is old conflict. I like books where the H/H love each other and know it, but outside conflicts keep them a part.
6) Kick-ass heroines–heroines that are stronger than the hero. Heroines that don’t even really need the hero.
These are just a few.
Brenda, thanks for posting. I agree, especially with the kick-ass heroine. You really have to up the alpha level of the hero.
I have to really disagree with the kick-ass heroine. They all need to be kick-ass heroines. To me it’s much more powerful when the hero realizes she doesn’t “need” him but has stuck around becasue she “wants” him. Personally, I want my heros and herioines to “want” each other, not “need” each other.
LOL. My agent’s assitant, who edits my books, is always trying to protect my heros.
Plodding plots. Give me something to make me jump, laugh or cry.
I agree. I want to laugh out loud and get tears in my eyes. Thanks for your comment.
I will read almost any book, and won’t put it down… I keep hoping it will get better. My exceptions are when I read Pillars of the Earth and put it down halfdone when Tom the Builder died. No one told me that the boy was the main character. The story was Tom’s life, Tom building a Cathedral, Tom getting remarried, Tom hiding his wife’s past from the priests… when something happened to Tom halfway I was like WTF, this book sucks.
The other book I put down was an erotica book. I’m not into sex clubs where to get X your man you must sex up ABCDEF because X will hear about it. I was like this is porn. And i don’t read much erotica anyhow because of this book. that I made it to page 20 maybe. I have to trust the author’s name when it gets into that category.
Like I said, I will read a story looking for value in it. I can read the free ones that need editing and alot of editing because the story has potential. I’m pretty easy to please when I am the reader. I do own up to laughing at some horrible books like I laugh at unintended funny B movies.
Thanks so much for commenting.
Boring, stilted dialogue. If there’s no rapport between the hero and heroine, I’m not sticking around for three hundred pages. Too many grammatical/typographical errors in the first few chapters – especially in books that are not self-published. Lastly, historical inaccuracies that I can’t get past. I once read a book set in ancient Rome where a comparison was made to a test tube in a centrifuge. Seriously?
Ally, I so agree with you.
Great subject, Ella. For my part, if I find one too many clichés in the first few chapters, wether in the writing or the plot, I’ll put the book down.
Carole, thanks for commenting.
I don’t enjoy e-books that aren’t formatted correctly. I don’t care if you are a Big Six or a self-pub, if you can’t spare the time to make sure your uploaded book has indented paragraphs, I can’t spare you $2.99. No one goes to a movie whose soundtrack isn’t synched. No one listens to a song on the radio if the engineer forgot to add the percussion track. Yet I’m supposed to wade through a lack of quotation marks or periods because someone’s artistic genius didn’t cover grammar? That’s just laziness on the author’s and/or publisher’s part. Grrr…
I agree. Especially for self-pubbed authors. Getting it all right is so important.
For me it’s characters. If the heroine is weak or whiny, or the hero annoying I’ll stop reading. Gotta love the characters or I’m done. Great post, Ella!
Absolutely the characters have it. Thanks for commenting.
I have put down only a few books in my time. I try to really stick it out, hoping it will get better as it goes along. My pet peeve is cheesy dialogue or contrived plot. If everything is too easy, I lose interest. But honestly, if the characters have nothing intelligent to say I have a stack of other authors to read and review.
Great question!
Very true. Thanks for commenting.
When I’m reading and I don’t feel anything. If I’m not amused, saddened, outraged, scared or pulled into the the story…I’m out of there after the first fifteen pages. I love little surprises tucked between the pages here and there…like unexpected flashes of humor that make me grin. I need characters that I can relate to on a human level. They needs quirks and distinct mannerisms. PERSONALITY. I hate flat characters. This is just me, but I don’t want to hear about someone’s depressing memoir. I want to be whisked away from the humdrum of everyday life, and get sucked into someone else’s swashbuckling fictional tale.
I so agree with you. I want a book that gets me engaged.Thanks for posting.
I’m one of the people that won’t stop reading a book once I start. I can count on one had the number of books I’ve never finished.
But I will say that I’m guily of going online with ebooks and peeking inside at the formatting before buying. Even if the book sounds fantastic, if the formatting or writing is horrible, I won’t buy it.
I have a book that I forced myself to keep reading. Finally I gave up on it. I could find no real plot and the whole danged thing was boring afterwhile. I let it be the book I picked up after I read everything else for a while then I moved it is on the shelf in the pantry with all my other books. I doubt I will ever finish it I couldn’t see a redeeming quality about it either. Glad I was not judging it for a contest. I’d have failed it.
I will read just about anything but inconsistancies drive me nuts. If your heroine’s house burns down in one chapter she better not be wearing her Halloween costume in the next chapter. Black panties at the start of the scene better not morph into a pink thong either. Grrr. Oh, and please try not to sound like you swallowed a thesaurus and barfed it up in your prose.
Great reasons. Thanks for commenting.
I agree with Katie O’Connor. Half the time the words don’t mean what you think they mean anyway. “Scarify” for just one example means to scratch or scrape, as you would a mossy lawn to get the moss off.
I’ve just realised though that even worse than throwing a bad book across the room is reading a really good book and finding that the author has added skunks to the fauna of Hampshire, for example. That one little thing makes it difficult to sustain the voluntary suspension of disbelief.
I got violent — actually want-to-rip-the-book-apart violent — with a book that dealt with marital infidelity. It was obvious the author had NOT ONE friggin’ clue how it feels to be the one who was cheated on. It was a Regency romance (novel, not category) where the married MMC and FMC were estranged at the start of the book and now he needed a legitimate heir, so back to the wifey he goes, with no repentence about his infidelity, (okay, social mores being what they were I can slightly understand that) just the desire to get it on so he gest his heir. He has to ‘woo’ her a bit to get his desire, but the FMC never once believeably expressed herself to the b@stard on his affairs. I can’t remember much else about the story — HEA was achieved, MMC brought acceptably low by his heinous actions, etc. But I never forgot my irritation and disgust at the author’s inability to articulate the true devestation of infidelity.
In all fairness. I agree, the wife’s feelings, whether she cared or not should have been dealt with.
I’m a picky reader and put aside many books that other people love. So, I guess it would be easier for me to say what keeps me reading a book. It’s great dialogue and prose, an intelligent author guiding the story, the proper emotional involvement of the characters, and a detailed fictional world. I don’t get so upset about historical inaccuracies but I do have an issue with the blatant disregard for history in some historicals. In those cases, I believe the book has passed from an historical to a fantasy. I guess I’m a fuddy-duddy that way.
Thanks for commenting. I don’t like reading history books, but I do like historical ficton and romance. It drives me crazy to read inaccuries.
No book-throwing going on here, since I, too, use a Kindle. But definitely some deletions! I find I’m a much pickier reader now that I’m a writer. But at the same time, I appreciate things I didn’t used to. Lots of things will make me pick up a book, but it’s usually awkward writing (especially dialogue) or a boring plot – and if both happen together, the book is gone immediately.
Interesting. Now that I’m writing, I think I’m a more understand reader about somethings. I’m absolutely reading more new authors.
I am a very picky reader. I am extremely wary of spending money on an untried author. I check the library first or check author websites for excerpts so I can gage the writing style. Things that turn me away?
1) Excessive clichés. I once began a book where there were so many, I began highlighting them. Literally. With a yellow marker. When I hit 23 in the first two chapters, I donated the book to the local library (I don’t throw books across the room and I don’t throw them in the garbage. Someone, somewhere liked it or it wouldn’t have gotten published, right?)
2) An overused word or phrase. I read a book where the author used the phrase “how so?” The first couple times it barely registered. By the fourth, I started counting. She used it 16 times…and there were only 15 chapters in the whole book. Now, every time I read the phrase, no matter the author, my teeth grind and it wrenches me completely out of the flow of the story. I hate that!
3) Excessive use of “cutesy colloquialisms”. A big, tough, hero referring to his gun as a “click, click, bang, bang” is too much for me to take seriously. There is one author I read who, it seems to me, works as hard to come up with other terms for everyday items as she does on her plots. I do a lot of eye rolling, but I really enjoy her plots and characters. Lately though, her writing style is starting to interfere with my enjoyment. Another overused cutesy colloquialism is “heart of hearts”. To me it has no meaning and is just ridiculous redundancy.
Those are my 3 biggies. There are other things that irritate me such as excessive typos but those I don’t fault the author for and will overlook in favor of a good plot line and strong characters.
Thanks for posting. It’s the lack of good editing that’s responsible for repeated words and phrases.