The Terror of Knowing

Welcome one and all to this week’s Top 5 Wednesday post! For those of you who don’t know Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme/challenge which was created by the wonderful Lainey from gingereadslainey and is now overseen by the equally lovely Sam from Thoughts of Tomes. Every Wednesday, participants devise their Top 5 based on a given topic.

This Wednesday’s topic is… Bookish Things You’re a Grinch About: since being a grinch is a funny thing, try not to make this serious topics that make you angry (like lack of diversity or abusive relationships in fiction, etc) as this is supposed to be more of a petty bookish things you hate. This can be stuff about covers, dumb tropes, etc. Have fun with it.

5. “Exclusive”/collector’s editions 

I am something of a hypocrite on this one because I am a sucker for alleged special editions of my favourite books but it bugs me when you get “Waterstones” or “Barnes and Noble” exclusive editions that don’t really add anything to the story itself but just have an excerpt from the next book or an author interview or something. I have fallen prey to many an enticing Waterstones’ exclusive edition whose only exclusive feature is sprayed edges or a slightly different coloured foiling on the cover. I’m a sucker and they take my money every single time so I’d like them to not exist anymore, please and thank you.

4. Dumb “inner voices” of characters

I’ve been reminded how much I hate this by casually coming across an excerpt from Darker on Twitter (seriously, trying to make cooking a chicken stir-fry erotic is not going to happen, stop trying to make it happen, E.L. James) but I despise dumb inner voices. I understand the point of first-person narrative; it’s a device that facilitates storytelling because as the narrative character learns about things, the reader learns too. I get why it’s used, but what I hate is when it is used unnecessarily and when the inner voice of the character is so mind-numbingly dense that you wonder how they are the one you have to root for.

3. Different heights in paperback/hardback editions (esp. of the same series)

I understand there are a lot of different formats of both hardback and paperbacks and that a lot of market research is behind a publisher’s decision to produce a book in a particular format. From A to B formats, to trade paperbacks vs. mass market paperbacks, it all gets very complicated. However, I think we need an amnesty where all publishers sit down and agree on which hardback and paperback format they will use and then that’s it, for life. I’ll allow “special editions” of like classics or whatever which are a funky size but I will not allow travesties such as this to happen within the same series…

2. Obviously resolved love triangles

Don’t get me wrong, I am a sucker for a good old-fashioned love triangle, or even a love polygon every now and then. What I am not a fan of is obviously resolved love triangles. The point of love triangles is to present one of the “points” with two options/”points” of the triangle which mark two very different paths they could go down depending which person they choose. I’m not a fan of weak love triangles where it is so obvious that one of the options is the vastly more appealing/logical to the character and to the author writing it.

1. Too many unnecessary trilogies/series

Sometimes, guys, a story doesn’t need to be a trilogy, it just doesn’t. Let alone a series of multiple books. It becomes painfully obvious that an author is stretching out a pretty mediocre idea and the plot becomes meandering and convoluted for the sake of filling out pages. Personally, I think the worst offender of this is Sarah J. Maas but that’s just me… I am swiftly coming around to the idea of those series that take as many (or as few) books as they need to tell their story, no more, no less – the duology is a very underrated thing that I wish were more commonplace.

That’s it for now, folks, those were my Top 5 bookish things I’m a total grinch about! What things in books turn you into a grinch? Be sure to link me to your Top 5 Wednesday post, if you have one, I’d love to read it!

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