I was reading a romance book and when the male lead was introduced he was described as "reading the economist", needless to say i instantly dropped that book
I don't consider it petty to immediately reject a book that expects me to have positive feelings for some rich douche.
Chapo book had a factoid:
"France: Population: 656 million anthropomorphic candlesticks"
It’s literally 65 million. Is this a typo? Is it a joke? Proofread your book before you publish. Stopped reading.
Your first mistake was reading the Chapo book in the first place.
I made the same mistake with the Colbert book back in the day.
Never buy political comedy books.
yeah it's actually called this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_America_(And_So_Can_You!)
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Pick up Caste
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First paragraph praises Hillary Clinton for her role in "supporting" Black Lives Matter
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Put down Caste
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My phone died and I had to get a new one, so when I opened whatever Ice and Fire book I was on, I had to figure out what "John" chapter I was on and stopped caring quick
I stopped reading __Everything is Fucked: A Book About Hope _ by Mark Manson because on the 2nd page he went on a tangent about 'Yeah nazis were bad, but know who were worse than nazis? Soviets'
Actually now that I write that out it seems like a valid reason, just felt fucking absurd to stop reading a book on page 2
That's not petty at all. On top of being horrible for a thousand other reasons, it's soft Holocaust denial.
Non-symbolically burn it. Like, paper makes good kindling, if you need to start a fire use it.
I read the first page of an adventure book, saw that the main character was a 20-year old FBI agent with mysteriously purple eyes, said "it's gonna be like that, huh" and closed the book.
It was called The Wheel of Darkness
I bought a "mystery bundle" (kinda like a lootbox) of books from my local used books and one of the sci-fi novels written in ~2000-ish had a black character that talked like he was out of a 70s blaxploitation film. I get it, not everyone speaks “proper” English all the time, but felt like the author's only expose to black people was like Mr. T or something. I don't need every black character to be one of the "good ones" or anything like that but it just felt so weird they made him talk the he did. I just couldn't grasp a space black dude using what would be ancient slang in the future.
I stopped reading Lord of the Flies cause I felt really badly about how all the other kids treated Piggy just cause he was big. Have never picked it up since and refuse to.
That book's message is so fucking insidious. Complete propaganda
The guy who wrote it was a grumpy old British school teacher who really hated his job. He was basically getting off to the idea of his students all murdering each other.
Only cool thing I remember about the book is that it's subtly implied that WWIII is going on while as this shit is going down on the island and that civilization is basically done for.
what is it, Human NatureTM, you need the authorities, don't try to leave society?
I thought the message was about how entitled British children are actually as bad at maintaining society, if not worse?
I thought there were other groups who went missing and did okay because they didn't adhere so hard to hierarchical systems.
I don't recall there being other groups, but I did find this:
The idea [for the novel] came about after Golding read what he deemed to be an unrealistic depiction of stranded children in youth novels like The Coral Island: a Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1857) by R. M. Ballantyne, and asked his wife, Ann, if it would "be a good idea if I wrote a book about children on an island, children who behave in the way children really would behave?"
Sounds like 100% human nature brainworms, but maybe I'm not giving him enough credit. Chuds sure as fuck have appropriated it though
Kinda. At the end of the book the surviving children are rescued by the captain of a British warship, he berates the boys for acting so "savage", but then look at his warship with pride. FYI it's implied that there's a massive war going on out in the rest of the world during the events of the books. The message is meant to be that civilization is a veneer for humanity's warlike tendencies. Really the ship captain is no better than the boys, he just conducts his slaughter in a uniform. I thought it was kind of clever but the overarching message is mostly just that human suck.
Honestly, I've forgotten most everything I ever knew about the book, I was maybe 13 or 14 when I picked it up. What even IS the message?
"Everyone is CONSTANTLY FIGHTING their PRIMAL URGE to KILL KILL KILL, they all wanna KILL you, people are inherently EVIL, no don't question how capitalism makes people desperate and do horrible things, just know that PRIMAL URGE KILL KILL KILL EVIL EVIL EVIL LOOK OUT FOR YOURSELF ONLY"
more or less at least. idk its been years for me too but that's really as much as I took away from it
The British Empire could be summed up with that "why would X do this?" meme where the guy is shot multiple times.
I tried to have a rule for a while where I rejected any novel that mentioned the weather on the first page, but soon I had nothing left to read.
Occasionally I have an allergy to fiction written in the present tense.
I've also rejected historical fiction where the sources are too obvious. Gore Vidal's Julian - cool, because I've never wanted to slog through Libanius. Gore Vidal's Creation - goddammit, dude, if you're just going to paraphrase Herodotus I'll reread Herodotus instead.
One time I accidentally bought Ezra Klein's book instead of Naomi Klein's book and that was the last time I went in person to that book store ever again.
The guy behind the counter was probably like "Look at this fucking lib."
Real answer to the post though, one time I stopped reading a book about The Mob vs. FBI in Chicago because it had those rough-cut pages and I got frustrated trying to turn them. It was probably for the best, because it was a book written by one of the FBI guys.
I started reading Austin Murphy's The Triumph of Evil from Hakim's book recommendations and he does a Pol Pot apologia right in the introduction.
I'm not sure if that's a petty reason lmao.
I read a chapter that was just a poorly described acid trip. It felt so self-indulgent.
I'm not sure how petty it is, but I can and will stop reading a book the moment a supposedly smart or accomplished female character's brain spills out of her head when EgoInsert McAwesomeMan shows up and gazes at her with his piercing eyes. I may throw the book if EgoInsert McAwesomeMan is described as middle aged but in peak physical health and a military veteran. I may consider burning the book if the smart/accomplished female character starts going on and on about what HER FATHER taught her before he died or disappeared, implying that EgoInsert McAwesomeMan is both the future sex partner and also the surrogate daddy figure. :visible-disgust:
What I do know is petty is that I stop reading if a character smirks, winks, chuckles softly, or some combination of those early on in their presentation. I get allergic reactions.
