I’m doing another retrospective #sixforsunday prompt today, following on from my bookish loves last week, this once encompasses my bookish hates. The actual prompt for this week is characters I would like to date however, Rhysand has ruined me for any other book boyfriend so coming up with 6 would be struggle!
Printed stickers
Printed stickers are my biggest peeve when it comes to paperbacks. Even before I started bookstagram I found them to be incredibly frustrating and now they mar the beautiful covers for my pics I hate them even more. Why spend time and money creating a beautiful cover if the aesthetic is going to be compromised? I have to admit that I have spent a lot of time and often more money trying to track down covers of books that are without them, I know that so many readers hate these and I have often thought of starting up a petition but I doubt publishers will take any notice!
Movie tie ins
Movie or TV tie in covers just look cheap and nasty in my view. I understand why it happens as it gives new readers a beeline to go for if they recognise actors on the cover but they are often unimaginative and have that mass market feel to them. It’s like publishers know they will be a quick and easy sell whatever, which begs the question – give your readers the benefit of some intelligence and allow them to find a book in a store the normal way, they may even find some other great reads in the process.
Formatting the font to the edge
Nothing worse than picking up a book opening its pages to find that you can’t read easily because your thumbs are covering the words (I have pretty tiny hands too). I format books for print and make sure that this is never an issue but again I can see how it happens, but it doesn’t make it right. For me this is one of the reasons historically that I have rarely bought indie print books, however, with the rise of formatters like myself and my friend and mentor Jo Michaels, this is starting to become a thing of the past. I have to admit that I went to an indie book signing a couple of years ago and I have read 0 of the 10+ books I bought because they just look terrible inside. This isn’t an indie bash though as there are trad books which do it too. To this day I don’t understand why Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo was forced to be aesthetically the same size as Six of Crows, it’s led to it being a pretty unreadable book inside. Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas was also a lesson in how not to format a book (tiny font and so heavy I could barely hold it up for long reading sessions,) although with a book of that size there was probably little they could do, rather than editing out the 200 pages or so of dead weight in my opinion.
Character pronunciation list at the end
I know that some times these are done to prevent spoilers but seriously it’s frustrating to realise that I have been been reading a name wrong throughout a whole book, it’s pretty much impossible to change it in my mind from then on. What makes it worse is that I’m aware that I’m saying it wrong in my head which pulls me from the story if I’m reading a series continuation – my worst offender for this is Feyre from ACOTAR, I think 3 books later though I have finally got it!
Unhealthy relationships in YA
I did a specific post about this last year following me reading a pretty popular trilogy that for me, encompassed every unhealthy relationship trait going. In adult fiction it’s easier in some ways to reconcile however, when young adult and teen readers are faced with toxicity regularly being normalised, it worries me about how they will perceive this kind of potential treatment in their own relationships. I feel that YA authors, and to a degree their editors, should consider the wider impact and in a world where sensitivity readers are becoming more commonplace, perhaps this is an area that should be considered too. I’m glad I read a lot of YA as I know which to steer my children from in future.
Long Waits
I know authors are not writing machines and people demanding the next book in a series will likely lead to a block in creativity but leaving more than a year between books is likely to end up losing readers. I think the most obvious and most lamented of these is George RR Martin and the Game of Thrones series. I didn’t come late to these books and I read a Dance with Dragons when it came out all those moons ago. The conclusion of the TV series (and yes I hated the Ned Stark tie in cover) will be coming in April and for me I’m going to be done with the series, there is no way I remember what happened in the books (as we all know how different the two beasts have become) and no way do I have time to re-read the whole series so I can safely say that when the last series finishes i’m going to be done with the story, although I know that many, including my lovely friend Vanessa, is in it for the long haul. My favourite indie sci-fi series too seems to have completely stalled, it’s been over 2 years since the last book and the author hasn’t announced a single thing about the next in the series (which ended on a whopping cliffy) as they seem now to be focused on writing romance, I’m pretty sad that I may not get to see how the story ends.
Did any of these strike a chord with you?
Paperbacks and Pinot 