Reading/Book Pet Peeves

[Twik]

Here's a rather odd peeve: you get a new ereader, and decide to download a free book just to test the machine. So, you pick what you think will be at best a forgettable fantasy/romance novel.

A month later, you've bought all of the author's ebooks, and are horrified to discover you'll have to wait for her to write new ones. 

[Outdoor Girl]

LOL.  Yes, that happens to me, too.  For most of them, I can resist the urge but a few authors, I just keep buying.

[lady_disdain]

Here's a rather odd peeve: you get a new ereader, and decide to download a free book just to test the machine. So, you pick what you think will be at best a forgettable fantasy/romance novel.

A month later, you've bought all of the author's ebooks, and are horrified to discover you'll have to wait for her to write new ones. 

You can't tell us this and not share the author's name.

[alkira6]

Here's a rather odd peeve: you get a new ereader, and decide to download a free book just to test the machine. So, you pick what you think will be at best a forgettable fantasy/romance novel.

A month later, you've bought all of the author's ebooks, and are horrified to discover you'll have to wait for her to write new ones. 

You can't tell us this and not share the author's name.

My mom has recently discovered that she has spent over $600 US since we gave her a kindle for her birthday in September. This is with a self imposed limit of not spending over $2 on an e-book.

[kglory]

For those who need a Taffeta update:
She is the daughter of a duke, but she and her brother are amateur highwaymen.
She rides astride.. in a riding habit...in 1813.
She is described as young, barely out of the schoolroom, and has not had her first London season...at 20.
Oh, yes, and she's psychic. On page 1, she has a vision of a naked man. Who is described in detail.

The saddest part of this mess is that the dialogue uses actual Regency slang. Which is really brain-hurty.  It's like she knows enough to know they wouldn't talk like 21st century people...but when it comes to their actions, she's just given up.

Hahaha!  Sounds like a must-read!

[Twik]

Here's a rather odd peeve: you get a new ereader, and decide to download a free book just to test the machine. So, you pick what you think will be at best a forgettable fantasy/romance novel.

A month later, you've bought all of the author's ebooks, and are horrified to discover you'll have to wait for her to write new ones. 

You can't tell us this and not share the author's name.

Lindsay Buroker.

Love her characters, and she's good at world-building.

[lady_disdain]

Thanks, Twik. I am going to look her up.

[Jocelyn]

My mom has recently discovered that she has spent over $600 US since we gave her a kindle for her birthday in September. This is with a self imposed limit of not spending over $2 on an e-book.

I've spent less than that, and I have close to 1200 books on mine-most of which I'll never have time to read, but if they're free...

[artk2002]

According to Wikipedia:

In the United Kingdom, ain't is generally used only by the working classes, such as those speaking the Cockney dialect, and is often considered improper speech by the middle and upper classes, in contrast to 19th century England where it was readily used in familiar speech by the educated and upper classes.

I believe that Sir Percy uses "ain't" in The Scarlet Pimpernel, as published in 1903, so it's not unbelievable.

Dorothy Sayers has Lord Peter Wimsey using it in the 20s as well.

[chigger]

Authors do love and focus on one thing.  My sister and I usually read the same books and we have an inside joke that whenever we hear the word "Uzi" we both say "Dean Koontz."

When I was younger, I read Christopher Pike and hunt the phase "starlight crystal" like Easter eggs.  Finally, he just went for it and wrote a book with that title.
[/quote

Dean Koontz--there's always a dog pet named "fur face", and the "glow from the sodium vapor steet lights."

[lady_disdain]

It is strange to us, but often the aristocracy had a whole slang to itself, nearly unintelligible to outsiders. For example, the "Devonshire set" in the late years of George III/early Regency had its own slang, which included baby talk, extensive use of insider nicknames and mispronunciations (yellar for yellow and cow-cumber instead of cucumber, for example). It seems very strange to us to imagine these very refined people deliberately using wrong language (and it was quite deliberate) and we would surely cry foul if a book used nicknames such as Canis (dog) for a Duke, Hary-O for a lady or Poodle for a society man.

[faithlessone]

we would surely cry foul if a book used nicknames such as Canis (dog) for a Duke, Hary-O for a lady or Poodle for a society man.

Isn't that what they call one of the daughters in The Duchess?

[Jocelyn]

Ok, I finished Taffeta and Hotspur.
Not a particularly amusing read, but a lot of wasted potential. And some of the crudest references to Scrabble I've ever seen in a romance novel...and I didn't read too closely.
This book has the feel of one written by a committee.

But you have to read the description of the sample at the end of the book (a sample that takes up 25% of the Kindle file!)

Available in early January 2013: A young woman just coming into her powers as a white witch, hidden evil in a school for high-born orphan girls, a dashing marquis with a hidden agenda of his own.
Enjoy a sneak preview of Netherby Halls (unedited)

'Prologue: Sutton Village, England 1815'

And that's the first page. I am not turning it.

A school for high-born orphan girls? Seriously? Did such an entity ever exist?

And as for poor Taffy...at what stage did public school education for girls start in Britain? Would a daughter of a duke have been sent to boarding school in the years c. 1800-1810?

[Barney girl]

Ok, I finished Taffeta and Hotspur.
Not a particularly amusing read, but a lot of wasted potential. And some of the crudest references to Scrabble I've ever seen in a romance novel...and I didn't read too closely.
This book has the feel of one written by a committee.

But you have to read the description of the sample at the end of the book (a sample that takes up 25% of the Kindle file!)

Available in early January 2013: A young woman just coming into her powers as a white witch, hidden evil in a school for high-born orphan girls, a dashing marquis with a hidden agenda of his own.
Enjoy a sneak preview of Netherby Halls (unedited)

'Prologue: Sutton Village, England 1815'

And that's the first page. I am not turning it.

A school for high-born orphan girls? Seriously? Did such an entity ever exist?

And as for poor Taffy...at what stage did public school education for girls start in Britain? Would a daughter of a duke have been sent to boarding school in the years c. 1800-1810?

Public, as in paid for by the state, education was much later  (although there were various charitable or church run schools), but there were certainly boarding schools then. Remember Miss Pinkerton's Academy for Young Ladies in Vanity Fair.

[Winterlight]

we would surely cry foul if a book used nicknames such as Canis (dog) for a Duke, Hary-O for a lady or Poodle for a society man.

Isn't that what they call one of the daughters in The Duchess?

Yep. Harriet Cavendish, who went on to marry her aunt's lover.