Oh and Deus ex Machina endings to rambling books. Sort of seems that the author was getting tired of the book and just decided to end it abruptly.
Also, scrappy heroines sort of annoy me.
Characters who don’t behave like real people, and it ruins the premise of the novel.
Case in point: Earth Abides. I’m going to quote a review I wrote of the first 120 pages (all I could stomach before tossing the book aside) –
Another thing that chaps my hide is when authors come right out and foreshadow disaster in plain speech. Example: Paul Auster’s Oracle Night –
Let the reader see the fallout from the one disastrous action as it unfolds! Don’t fucking spell it out like that!
Just as bad are authors who subvert the template for the sole purpose of subverting the template, all the while directing attention to how they’re subverting the template by shouting “Look at me, I’m a rebel! I’m subverting the template!”
Joe Abercrombie, I’m looking at you.
I read a lot more non-fiction than fiction, but when I do read fiction my preferred genre is space operas. Figured that might be relevant.
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When a book goes “small”. For example, a book about a war between interstellar civilizations that concludes with a chase scene. I’m looking at you, Peter F. Hamilton and Judas Unchained.
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When the author sets up a brilliantly realized society, then spends the vast majority of the book avoiding it. I was quite irritated by this in David Brin’s Uplift series, where he has this fantastic galactic civilization… and then sets his books on out-of-the-way locations with characters who spend the entire book hiding from said civilization. It’s the equivalent of setting a book in NYC or Istanbul… and then all the action takes place in a small apartment with a really tiny window.
You know what a simile is - something compared to something else somehow similar. It can be a useful device when done well, and used sparingly. I once read a book (well, tried to read, and didn’t finish) a book where nearly every paragraph contained a simile! It got really tiring.
And many of the similes were really bad, too, something like “I was merely tolerated by my family, like a pet dog who has suddenly developed a bad case of flatulence.”
Fire.
Did you feel that reading his first one (the blade itself), or was it more a cumulative response to his work? I only read him recently and was v impressed - although I agree it’s such a strong style that it becomes easy to parody.
When a main character is a smoker and the author can’t shut up about it.
He lit another cigarette. He stubbed one out. He went out for more smokes. He emptied the ashtray, blah blah blah…
I get it. He smokes, I don’t care that much.
Poor research (or outright ignorance) on how guns work.
Can be a tricky technique, bringing the camera in (or pulling it back) in a novel. Or at least it seems like plenty of writers bollox it up.
Gene Wolfe is one of my favourites, but he’s butchered this a few times (badly in the wizard-knight IIRC)- he’s fond of focussing on the small then pulling right back to elide over major events in a few sentences. Very stylish when it works.
I haven’t read Earth Abides, but the survival rate of a healthy mother and infant is around 90%… As for carrying a child around…is it a ‘World without people’ scenario? If so, then…so what?
Giving the heroes heroic names and the villains villainous names bugs the shit out of me.
In non-fiction, any error in fact really irks me, I don’t care how trivial, and makes me unable to fully enjoy the book.
Two examples:
In a recent beststelling bio of William T. Sherman he is identified as a grandson of Declaration of Independence signer (and 1776 character) Roger Sherman. He wasn’t- they were distant cousins, and while super minor it irks me because there were red flags, not least of which:
-Roger Sherman was born 99 years before Cump was born, which while not impossible or unprecedented is very unusual, especially considering that Cump’s father was only in his early 30s when he was born.
-IT’S SOMETHING YOU COULD CHECK ON WIKIPEDIA EVEN! The most cursory bio of Roger Sherman will tell you that Charles Robert Sherman (Cump’s father) was not one of his children.
And yet the biographer states this twice. Not that it would particularly matter anyway since W.T. wasn’t raised by his father, who died when he was young, but by a foster-father whose daughter he (unhappily) married and thus even if his grandfather had signed the Declaration he wouldn’t have much influenced him.
An even more trivial error is in This Republic of Suffering: Death and Dying in the Civil War, historian and Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust more than once references the memoirs of Dr. John Witherspoon Dubose, who she refers to as a “Confederate surgeon”. He wasn’t- as a teenager/early 20s he was in Wheeler’s cavalry and after the war he became a surgeon and wrote his memoirs, but he wasn’t a medical professional during the war nor did he write his memoirs from a medical perspective as he is represented as doing.
Now, John Witherspoon Dubose is a minor historical figure who I know of ONLY because I read his memoirs while researching my own ancestors who were Alabama privates in Wheeler’s cavalry/ While his memoirs give good perspective about their daily life. Even so, this gets me worked up because
1- The writer is THE PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
2- She thanks an army of assistants and fact checkers, there shouldn’t be ANY errors
3- If I caught this error, what errors am I not catching?
While they don’t totally invalidate the substance of the book, it makes me unable to enjoy any new info gleaned until I corroborate it.
I admit it’s a me problem.
Animal torture to show how bad the bad guy is.
Loving descriptions of serial killings/human torture/murder scenes.
Obvious political or philosophical ax grinding.
Wooden, unrealistic dialog.
Being able to figure out the mystery before the halfway point.
Books without a single sympathetic character.
Not enough cussing. 
Though compared to Ramsay Snow-Bolton, Joffrey’s just a high spirited lad.
Mary-Sue, Wish Fulfillment crap.
I really like The Dresden Files but I wish Murphy would die for real, for good. I am so sick of “she’s five foot zero but unbeatable” or the stupid will they-won’t they between her and Harry.
And for xist sake stop with the “Monster X is unbeatable but Harry finds a way” or “Mab could crush Harry like a bug but she respects his courage so much”
ETA: Not just Jim Butcher but ANY author that does that kind of crap writing. I’ll save my screed on women characters for another time.
Ach, so many!
Anachronisms are the worst for me, and it’s usually some minor detail which could have been left out. Sue Grafton is the worst offender: she’s always creating things like 1973 Ford Fairlanes. Evidently, she is freezing Kinsey Milhone at some point in the past. It must be because Grafton doesn’t want to bother learning about computers and cell phones, either.
Parallel to this is FordTaurusSHO94’s complaint. I literally cannot read Tom Clancy’s books due to the endless gun descriptions. And, as above, get the car details right, or leave them out: I prefer the latter.
This mostly- it doesn’t ruin the books for me but it seems in the last few books Stephen King writes he has to insert his political views. It’s extremely annoying even when I agree with him…
Being treated like a dimwit who can’t keep track of where the plot’s going. *Sword of Shannara,[/i ] I’m lookin’ at you…
Sex scenes that use any of the following words:
turgid
shaft (unless the dick is black and private)
manhood
valley
limpid pools