This week’s theme for Top Ten Tuesday is a topic you’ve missed over the years and want to revisit… and strangely, when I did a couple of searches on my blog, I didn’t find any posts about my bookish pet peeves. So here goes!

1. Miscommunication. I think y’all know I hate this one, but it’s especially bad when it’s a couple or something, and you know they should trust each other — they’ve even given each other countless reasons to trust in the past. It’s the most annoying plot device, even if it really does happen in real life, because I just don’t want to spend time with characters who make the same stupid mistakes over and over.
2. “I like you just as you are… so I’ll make sure you never change.” That’s not actually love, guys. People change and grow and make free choices, and make mistakes, and you have to let them. It’s creepy as fuck when one character decides that they get to say what another character will do for the sake of their purity or whatever.
3. Insta-love. Unless there’s a reason, like you’re the reincarnation of Guinevere and he’s the reincarnation of Arthur and when you meet you feel the weight of your history, or… whatever, just something that explains it, something that gives it weight. Else it’s just a cheap way to add drama.
4. People are the real evil. I think this is true in many respects, but I hate it when a horror novel or something over-focuses on people being awful. I’m here for witches and ghosts and monsters, and not the human sort.
5. Privilege flipping. It’s been done well by someone, I’m sure, but most of the time it’s really tone deaf, and in some cases just wouldn’t work — e.g. a whole world where gay relationships are the only sort allowed. If that’s the case, then you have to address the issue of procreation, and then also deal with the way that changes society. If there are artificial wombs, fine, but it changes things as well.
6. Changing just one thing. In reality, it’d be like the first in a chain of dominoes. That’s why we have the whole ‘butterfly beating its wings’ saying; a small change here or there will change something else, which will change another thing, which will have a cascading effect. I don’t think there’s any choices we can make that don’t affect something. If I wear my purple socks today, I can’t wear them tomorrow, and I can’t have a conversation about my hedgehog socks today.
7. Stories where women apparently don’t communicate. Like somehow there’s all these housewives who just stay in their houses the whole time and never even cross paths to borrow a cup of sugar, or… It just makes no sense. Even if all your main characters are men (why?) then the female characters in the background will still interact with each other, and if not, there’d better be a good reason.
8. Narrators. Okay, narrators in themselves aren’t a pet peeve, but if you have someone narrating a story, I kind of want to know why they’re telling it. I love it when a story gives you context for the narrator narrating: this was an interview with x, this is y’s diary, etc. Otherwise, who the heck are they talking to? Themselves? And if they are, then why do they need to explain what their favourite colour is and how tall they are?
9. Just one exception. A character can read everybody’s mind… except one. No reason, it just complicates their relationship. If there’s a rule in your fictional universe, every exception needs to have a purpose. How does it drive the story?
10. Inquits. You really don’t have to look for a gazillion alternatives to “said”. They stick out like a sore thumb when you have characters yelling, bawling, crying, shouting, whispering, choking, gasping… “Said” is perfectly useful for attributing dialogue. If you’re using another word, it needs to be doing twice the work.

So there’s my somewhat random set of pet peeves! Share any? Disagree? Feel free to chip in!

This week’s theme from The Broke and The Bookish is “top ten things books made me want to do or learn”. Now I’m sure if I thought about it I could come up with some serious answers (like the way The Grey King by Susan Cooper always makes me want to learn to play the harp — or the way books on archaeology really make me reconsider my childhood dream of working with Time Team), but it’s waaaay too warm here, so you get the silly version.

1. Uprooted, by Naomi Novik. Magic! Obviously! I want to be able to dress myself or cook a meal with a word. That’d be really handy.
2. Magic Breaks, by Ilona Andrews. I want to be able to sword fight like Kate. I mean, okay, I am a total wuss about pain in reality, but I’d be badass anyway.
3. Hawkeye, from Marvel. Or countless other archers in my reading past, like Katniss. Because archery looks fun.
4. Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. I want to know when people are lying, like Lying Cat. Okay, that would probably actually really suck. Some lies really do smooth the way between people.
5. Whose Body?, by Dorothy L. Sayers. I want to rock a monocle like Lord Peter. And say things like “I’ll make a noise like a hoop and roll away.”
6. Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton. I want to be a dragon. That counts for this list, right? And I want to wear really cute hats. As a dragon.
7. The Sudden Appearance of Hope, by Claire North. Maybe not all the time, but I’d love Hope’s ability to be forgotten. Especially when I’ve just embarrassed myself.
8. A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. Studying dragons would be really super easy if I was a dragon (see #6).
9. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente. The title says it all.
10. Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie. I want to know how to make tea. No, really, I suck at it. Nobody likes my tea.

Anyone else done a silly version…?

This post is a little later in the day than usual, because apparently I suck at timekeeping. Sorry! This week’s theme is “books set outside the US”. Which does actually cover a fair old number of books I know, since I come from the UK, but I’ll see what I can do to make an interesting list!

1. Cocaine Blues, by Kerry Greenwood. This is the first book in the Phryne Fisher series, set in Australia. It’s a lot of fun, has LGBTQ characters, found families, and a proactive, capable female lead.
2. The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff. This is a solid historical fiction, based on real findings about Roman Britain, and suitable for just about all ages. The protagonist, Marcus, is injured seriously, early in the book, and throughout the book there are also excellent depictions of how he deals with the pain and disability.
3. Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch. Urban fantasy, but set in London and the surrounding environs, this is the start of a series which features Peter Grant, a police officer who turns out to be able to use magic and thus solve magical-related crimes.
4. Midnight Never Come, by Marie Brennan. This is historical fantasy set in Elizabethan England. I might not love it quite as much as the slightly-alternate-reality in Brennan’s Lady Trent books, but it’s awesome nonetheless.
5. The Sudden Appearance of Hope, by Claire North. This hops all over the place, but it starts in Dubai and spends a good portion of the time there and in other countries round the world.
6. Century Rain, by Alastair Reynolds. Most of the action takes place in an alternate version of 1940s France; some takes place in the future, in floating habitats in Earth’s atmosphere. (Guess who managed to mess up the environment.)
7. The Perilous Gard, by Elizabeth Marie Pope. Very fine historical fantasy, set in the reign of Mary Tudor. It’s partly based on the ‘Tam Lin’ story, but it also becomes something very much its own.
8. The Girl from Everywhere, by Heidi Heilig. Noticed how many of these are fantasy set in our world? It’s my thing, sorry. This one, too, set mostly in Hawaii and using mythical aspects of life in Honolulu.
9.  Glamour in Glass, by Mary Robinette Kowal. I’m not a huge fan of the first book of this series, but the second book took off for me. Alt-Regency, with an interesting form of magic…
10. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. This one is pretty popular, but I must put it in the list anyway because I love how very British it is (though it does feature other places in Europe). It’s a huge tome, but worth it, I promise.

Now let’s hope I find some time to visit other people’s posts for more bookshelf inspiration!