Mandy Eve-Barnett's Blog for Readers & Writers

Is there anything that makes you discard a book? Bad writing, grammar mistakes, poor characterizations, bad punctuation, language use (whether swearing or discrimination), or something else?

I have read several novels that needed quite a lot of editing but persevered as the stories were interesting. I had to switch off my editor hat though. For example, one novel had two characters that interacted but three quarters of the way through the book one main character’s name changed! I think the author/editor changed the name, for whatever reason but didn’t get all the way through the book. (Now that’s just lazy). It was very confusing as I had to go back and determine that is what happened. Unfortunately, this kind of lack of editing reflects badly on the author and readers may not read anything else they write.

Would that make you discard the book?

Another novel had lots of punctuation and grammatical mistakes and the old fashioned ‘double space’ between sentences, which went out of fashion with the typewriter age! Although, it was frustrating to me, I did persevere with the book as the story and its characters were captivating.

Again would you have continued reading?

What would make you discard a book?