COMPLAINTS about BOOKS

why (looking at you specifically, FSG) do you insist on saying 'A Note About the Author'? after all you don't say 'A Note About Copyright Law' or 'A Note Involving the Title of This Book'

e-book stylists: i guess there's room for expression between the cover and the title page, but *then* comes the copyright and *then* comes the dedication. stop putting them at the end ffs

i shall let other posters weigh in on covers featuring yellow-lit buildings in the night

old-times digressive subset of answers (for reference and expansion):
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&boardid=40&threadid=42731&bookmarkedmessageid=48

e.g. this was when i shd have bailed: "The clash between Pope George VII and Emperor Henry IV of England is a case in point"

ie this:
https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=1&boardid=40&threadid=42731

(it's not doing the thing but you can still click thru) (sorry mookieproof)

hi academic ebook publishers, pdfs are fucking useless, thanks for listening

Books can fall on your foot

Main one would be the incompetent, cheap binding from some paperback publishers. Looking at you Metheun, NHB. The only translations of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Trilogy are published by these guys, and the books fall apart instantly.

^otm

if a book is worth printing it is worth binding properly so it doesn't break its back on its first reading. if you're that cheapass about binding you may as well have printed it as a newspaper.

Deckled edges. I don't get it

If the contents of your book are nothing more complicated than ordinary prose text, don't print it in a non-conformist size (e.g. 8" x 8") that has no real justification aside from 'we just wanted to do something different'. They stick out like sore thumbs when shelved, especially when the spine extends beyond the outer edge of the shelf. It's pointlessly irritating.

It aggravates me when publishers put any substantial text (Preface, Foreword, Editor's note) before the Table of Contents. The Table of Contents should be the easiest thing in the book to find. Put it as close to the front as possible, imo.

(Granted, this is less of an annoyance for leisure reading than for work reading, when I have to quickly skim the pdf of a report and the ToC is 10 pages in.)

Bad quality paper and printing is so frustrating. I just bought a friend’s new hardback novel, published by Abacus, that looks like rice paper run through a dot matrix printer

Re mookieproof’s third complaint:

The ever-growing dark building/yellow light crime cover collection. pic.twitter.com/WLqTrE251a

— Caustic Cover Critic (@Unwise_Trousers) September 15, 2023

That cheap slightly-glossed paper that’s so lightweight the print shows through but also makes the book weirdly heavy and is just awful to fucking read, aesthetically speaking
Academic texts do this a lot and should be yelled at for it

crooked pages, either cut wrong or printed wrong, drives me UP the wall

map reproductions in cheap printings where the image is sixth-hand from original and so blurry/small as to be completely useless

photo plates without captions
what is even the point

"Main one would be the incompetent, cheap binding from some paperback publishers"

omg i was reading this awesome article on Leon Forrest's novel Divine Days and they have a new reissue copy next door to my house (!!) at my friends bookstore (what are the odds?) and i took one look at it and knew that it would fall apart 1/4 of the way through. its a thousand pages long and its a trade paperback where you can lift the spine of the book and look through it! no way. i totally would have bought it. its looks like an awesome thing.

i suppose i could just tape it up and not care about the look of the thing.

When they print "This page intentionally left blank" on a page that is not, in fact, blank because it says "this page intentionally left blank" on it.

dedications that are like

to everyone who wanted to sleep a little longer when the alarm went off

do you really have no one in your life who has meant more to you than being twee as fuc

'A Note About the Author'

still better than 'Meet the Author' at least

author photos that are all like

https://i.imgur.com/UdyXjqN.jpeg

if you insist on a photo, just . . . try being normal maybe

Non-fiction books that don't have an index.

otm but tbf i hear that publishers now make authors pay for indexing themselves, and few non-fiction authors have the money to spare

old school complaint that must have been covered elsewhere -

• endnotes that don't reference the page number to which the notes refer (usually at the top eg pp50-53)
• acknowledgments generally (unless specific academic or other indebtedness - ie the book was clearly influenced by other books or research). Not 'here's a list of my mates who read it'
• the faber finds model of buying up classics into a print on demand and then issuing without any apparatus

Recently I've noticed while looking at reviews of fiction books that a lot of people complain that they "Had to keep a dictionary next to (them) while reading".
First off, these are not particularly dense or wordy books I would say.
Second of all, what's wrong with using and learning cool words?

^ another reason ebook are better (when i actually remember to use the dictionary). the kobo dictionary has impressed me a few times with just how obscure it goes.

If there is a map in your book, it should ideally show every place name that appears in the text.

I would like an ebook of the first Earthsea novel that adds a little dashed line to the map as the book continues

"Ged, Sparrowhawk, Archmage of Roke, YOU ARE HERE"

i hate those jumped-up modern trade paperbacks with pretend dust-jacket flaps built into the cover

the tassel bookmark things on Library of America editions are annoying

it doesn't make me angry but it did used to make me kinda sad that so many sci-fi books i read obviously didn't have a proofreader. so many typos. like it wasn't worth the publisher's money to get it right. i've only really encountered this with SF.

yeah, tassels and paperback dust-jacket flaps, i mean anything that gets in the way of actually reading the book is so dumb! it would be cool if books included nice bookmarks with a picture of the book cover on them.

Typos on stuff from major publishers confounds me. I can’t be that good at spotting typos without even trying. Is proofreading/copyediting for long stretches so tedious that it’s impossible to avoid this?

texts peppered with endnote reference numbers don't read smoothly. I'm still not sure how to order my time checking them out. End of paragraph despite there possibly being a couple more. Or end of page. Each time one crops up breaks the flow in reading anyway.
& really doesn't help in a loo book.

otm i so agree stevo!

two guys got together to write a space opera. they didn't bother to hide the fact that they were two guys, but they chose to create a name -- JAMES S.A. COREY -- for the cover and stuff. and i hate them for it

- Prefaces that read like personal or academic essays, whose ideas and interpretation are quickly dated and controversial, that are full of spoilers, and that take up 20% of the text that follows. This is not your book, shut up.
- On that matter, books that are not clear where the text starts. I want to know if I'm reading the incipit or the first line of yet another introduction.
- Notes that assume an erudite tone, flaunt needless historical details or obscure references, offer judgement on the text, or assume the reader speaks fluent Ancient Greek and Latin.
- Stickers that are printed on the cover, superlative praise / bait, and other marketing devices.

i do hate spoiler intros so much! who reads them before they read the book? why can't they put them in the back?

to be honest, i hate endless book club stuff at the back of a book too. also filled with spoilers. i feel like the text is sometimes bigger too and sometimes i accidentally see stuff that i don't want to see. like who killed the butler!

especially intros in the front that quote huge chunks of the book. i hate that.

Sometimes I think about book covers and how they are constantly changing.

Is music the one form of packaged art where we get really precious about the original cover? Movies are repackaged with new covers fairly regularly, as are books. It seems like every time I perused paperback Stephen King books back in the day his entire works would be reissued with brand new covers, none as good as the originals. That first Pet Semetary cover was so good.

Yeah always wondered about that. It does happen with music occasionally but not often

wait, now i'm curious, does anyone read the long intro that explains every element of the book with liberal paragraph quoting before they read the book? uh, talking fiction of course.

no, hate them. i do read them after i've read the book and they're easy to skip and i can understand why putting them at the end would be a bit weird so it's somewhat an irrational hatred.

must books be described as 'cozy'?

most introductions should be afterwords

as skot said

i tend to read the introductions to classic fiction last if at all because yeah ffs spoilers, and sometimes among the spoilers there is useful context - the older and more foreign to me the origin of the book this can be v useful, but i don't want to know the plot points before i've read the book itself

The copy of Charles Webb's The Graduate I own has a summary of the entire plot on the blurb on the back, including the final scene.

I generally skip introductions that have been added on reissues of works of fiction.

Unless they are by the author.

why (looking at you specifically, FSG) do you insist on saying 'A Note About the Author'? after all you don't say 'A Note About Copyright Law' or 'A Note Involving the Title of This Book'

They often do "A Note About The Font," right? I love that.

Or maybe it's "A Note On The Type"

Anyway, yes, the first page of the book I'm reading should be the first page of the book I'm reading, there is just never a case where I want to put off starting a book I want to start in order to enjoy some supplementary material which I'll only appreciate after I've finished the book I'm reading, at which finish, by the way, would be an excellent place to deploy said supplementary material

i don't care how many languages your books have been translated into, showoff

Or how you "divide your time" between your homes in NY and London