It’s a blow to the ego when someone describes you as “ineffable.”
Huh - not only do I not remember creating this thread at all, but I don’t remember the Quirke books at all either. 
Another for the OP: I would love to get one of Lee Child’s books elecgtronically and see the search results for “Reacher said nothing.”
My thoughts exactly. If that word had been removed from Turtledove’s book “Guns of the South” this 500 page novel would have been a pamphlet.
This reminds me of the use of brand names in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (and possibly the sequels, but I hated the first one, so I stopped reading), especially with the computers. Was Stieg Larsson getting kickbacks from Apple or something? MacBooks are described in loving, gushing detail. I’ve heard wonderful parents talk about their wonderful children in less glowing terms.
Hunter S. Thompson is one of my favorite writers, and I’m on a serious jag right now (half-way through Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72). Everything in Hunter’s world is “atavistic.”
He describes something that way many, many time in pretty much any piece he’s ever written. It’s almost enough to make me look up the word to see what the hell it means.
I forgot another Trollope favourite: pressing someone’s hand. If I had a dime for every time someone’s hand got pressed, I’d be a millionaire.
When I was a kid reading Naked Lunch I remember Burroughs wouldn’t shut up for a while about iridescence.
That’s funny. I was thinking of the same word but different author, Steven Erikson.
I think it was a Lee Child book that drove me crazy because the car kept “nosing into traffic” or “nosing onto the freeway”
Can’t forget ‘celerity.’
H. Beam Piper, in Little Fuzzy, was seriously hung up on the world “Niffleheim.” Everything was “What in Niffleheim are you doing?” or “That would stink on Niffleheim!” or something similar. It was bad enough that to this day I refer to an author overusing a particular word as “Niffleheim Syndrome.” 
Psst - posts 26 & 36. 
Oh, my. Zombie ate my brains! (I used to be winterhawk, so there’s that–but I searched on my newer username and it didn’t come up, so I figured it was safe!)
Timothy Zahn
In his *Thrawn Trilogy *if something goes wrong, the situation “goes straight to hell” every time. When it does it all happens in a “heartbeat”.
He wrote another series (Conquerors Saga) in which the alien’s hearts are called “hunns”.
Of course everything happens in a “hunnbeat” :rolleyes:
I never noticed the “pinched” thing.
I love Martin’s work, but the phrase “much and more,” appears several times per chapter. In fact, if you type “much and more,” into google the first thing that pops up is an ASOIF related link.
Also, at least three different characters have “hands the size of hams.”
But with 5000+ words in his story, I’m willing to forgive him for repeating himself once or twice.
A mess of a book, but in “The Long Goodbye” it really struck me that Raymond Chandler could manage to use the phrase “Portrait of Madison”… FOURTEEN times. Generally a clunky “that means a 5000 dollar bill” dialogue would follow, as well.
Portrait of Madison.
I remember coming to the bottom of a page. Marlowe had just met someone or something, but out loud, with myself as my only witness, I predicted the word would come soon. Flipped the page, and there it was: the portrait of Madison, crisp and green. My Kindle returns 5 full pages of search results for it.
Even though it’s been over 20 years since I read Louise Cooper’s Time Master series, I cannot hear the word “conundrum” without wincing.
And everyone says “Point” when they want to, you know, acknowledge a point has been made.
Dean Koontz likes that a lot also.
Every suit of armor in George R. R. Martin’s universe is “lobstered.”
In Stephen King’s universe, sunlight never reflects or glints off a surface. It “heliographs.”