Things that just turn you off to a book

[Paradoxismminant]

Are there any things that just make you stop reading completely? For example, if I see certain phrases in the dialogue, I just stop reading because I cannot stand awkward dialogue.  

[Bokusenou]

I know what you mean! I can't stand poorly written or other certain types of prose. Like I tried to read "The Da Vinci Code", and gave up because I couldn't stand reading the prose. I can see how awkward dialogue could turn a reader off, but I guess the style of the prose is the most noticeable thing that turns me off. That said, I heavily favor British prose when reading most books (probably because I grew up on classic literature), to the point where I wonder if I put up with too much before I dismiss a book as bad if it's written by a British person. sweatdrop  

[Paradoxismminant]

Bokusenou

I know what you mean! I can't stand poorly written or other certain types of prose. Like I tried to read "The Da Vinci Code", and gave up because I couldn't stand reading the prose. I can see how awkward dialogue could turn a reader off, but I guess the style of the prose is the most noticeable thing that turns me off. That said, I heavily favor British prose when reading most books (probably because I grew up on classic literature), to the point where I wonder if I put up with too much before I dismiss a book as bad if it's written by a British person. sweatdrop

Oh no, literary racism XD.

No, I'm just joking. But that's kind of interesting. It's interesting to me how you can often tell where the author is from by how they write.  

[Bokusenou]

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

I know what you mean! I can't stand poorly written or other certain types of prose. Like I tried to read "The Da Vinci Code", and gave up because I couldn't stand reading the prose. I can see how awkward dialogue could turn a reader off, but I guess the style of the prose is the most noticeable thing that turns me off. That said, I heavily favor British prose when reading most books (probably because I grew up on classic literature), to the point where I wonder if I put up with too much before I dismiss a book as bad if it's written by a British person. sweatdrop

Oh no, literary racism XD.

No, I'm just joking. But that's kind of interesting. It's interesting to me how you can often tell where the author is from by how they write.

LOL, yeah, the weird thing is I'm American, but because I grew up reading classic British children's lit, I think I just might be more used to British prose. ^-^;
I don't have any preference when it comes to nonfiction though. What about you? ^-^ Have any regional/country preferences when it comes to literature? I think genre preferences might be more popular.

*nods* I can tell if someone's British or American by their prose, and sometimes you can tell where an author is from if they use dialect in the dialogue. I can usually tell when a work has been translated from another language as well, but I'm not sure if I could distinguish other places (i.e I've never read work by an Australian author). With Japanese literature, most works are written in standard/Tokyo dialect, so it's harder to tell what part of the country an author is from.  

[Paradoxismminant]

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

I know what you mean! I can't stand poorly written or other certain types of prose. Like I tried to read "The Da Vinci Code", and gave up because I couldn't stand reading the prose. I can see how awkward dialogue could turn a reader off, but I guess the style of the prose is the most noticeable thing that turns me off. That said, I heavily favor British prose when reading most books (probably because I grew up on classic literature), to the point where I wonder if I put up with too much before I dismiss a book as bad if it's written by a British person. sweatdrop

Oh no, literary racism XD.

No, I'm just joking. But that's kind of interesting. It's interesting to me how you can often tell where the author is from by how they write.

LOL, yeah, the weird thing is I'm American, but because I grew up reading classic British children's lit, I think I just might be more used to British prose. ^-^;
I don't have any preference when it comes to nonfiction though. What about you? ^-^ Have any regional/country preferences when it comes to literature? I think genre preferences might be more popular.

*nods* I can tell if someone's British or American by their prose, and sometimes you can tell where an author is from if they use dialect in the dialogue. I can usually tell when a work has been translated from another language as well, but I'm not sure if I could distinguish other places (i.e I've never read work by an Australian author). With Japanese literature, most works are written in standard/Tokyo dialect, so it's harder to tell what part of the country an author is from.

Hmm, personally I don't really have a preference, probably because I come from a very international background. And yeah, dialect makes a lot of things super obvious xd

Yeah, I've noticed a certain...unliveliness (?) to a lot of translated works. Like it feels more formal?  

[Flarityxx18]

I cannot STAND girly, romantic, seemingly perfect books. They can have one, MAYBE two, of those qualities, but not all three. Like Twilight, for instance. I loved it when I read it, but now I sold my copies because I'm just so disgusted with the series.

I also hate books that just don't go anywhere and don't really fit into their genre, like Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. I LOVED The Dead and the Gone, but Life As We Knew It just fell flat, and I stopped reading it. I also looked up a summary of it and concluded that it didn't go anywhere from where I was, so I figured I really didn't need to read the rest of it. This whole series is an "end of the world" series, but Life As We Knew It just didn't seem like an "end of the world" book. The whole family was together, they got to do pretty much whatever they wanted, they had more than enough food, no one they knew personally died, and there was even a small romance between the main character and some guy she knew from school. The only thing that kinda goes along with the genre is that they don't have electricity or phone service. But that can happen to anyone if a storm rolls through. It just seemed like a regular fiction book, not a book where the world was ending, and I was expecting better.  

[Paradoxismminant]

CousinsSubmarineSandwich

I cannot STAND girly, romantic, seemingly perfect books. They can have one, MAYBE two, of those qualities, but not all three. Like Twilight, for instance. I loved it when I read it, but now I sold my copies because I'm just so disgusted with the series.

I also hate books that just don't go anywhere and don't really fit into their genre, like Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. I LOVED The Dead and the Gone, but Life As We Knew It just fell flat, and I stopped reading it. I also looked up a summary of it and concluded that it didn't go anywhere from where I was, so I figured I really didn't need to read the rest of it. This whole series is an "end of the world" series, but Life As We Knew It just didn't seem like an "end of the world" book. The whole family was together, they got to do pretty much whatever they wanted, they had more than enough food, no one they knew personally died, and there was even a small romance between the main character and some guy she knew from school. The only thing that kinda goes along with the genre is that they don't have electricity or phone service. But that can happen to anyone if a storm rolls through. It just seemed like a regular fiction book, not a book where the world was ending, and I was expecting better.

Ahhh, you despise Marysueness!

I understand. Yeah, I think sometimes when people do apocalypse books they don't really think of the full implications of what the situation would be like.  

[Bokusenou]

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

I know what you mean! I can't stand poorly written or other certain types of prose. Like I tried to read "The Da Vinci Code", and gave up because I couldn't stand reading the prose. I can see how awkward dialogue could turn a reader off, but I guess the style of the prose is the most noticeable thing that turns me off. That said, I heavily favor British prose when reading most books (probably because I grew up on classic literature), to the point where I wonder if I put up with too much before I dismiss a book as bad if it's written by a British person. sweatdrop

Oh no, literary racism XD.

No, I'm just joking. But that's kind of interesting. It's interesting to me how you can often tell where the author is from by how they write.

LOL, yeah, the weird thing is I'm American, but because I grew up reading classic British children's lit, I think I just might be more used to British prose. ^-^;
I don't have any preference when it comes to nonfiction though. What about you? ^-^ Have any regional/country preferences when it comes to literature? I think genre preferences might be more popular.

*nods* I can tell if someone's British or American by their prose, and sometimes you can tell where an author is from if they use dialect in the dialogue. I can usually tell when a work has been translated from another language as well, but I'm not sure if I could distinguish other places (i.e I've never read work by an Australian author). With Japanese literature, most works are written in standard/Tokyo dialect, so it's harder to tell what part of the country an author is from.

Hmm, personally I don't really have a preference, probably because I come from a very international background. And yeah, dialect makes a lot of things super obvious xd

Yeah, I've noticed a certain...unliveliness (?) to a lot of translated works. Like it feels more formal?

Yeah, the thing about translating something, is that you often need to struggle with either doing a literal but awkward translation of a sentence, or a more "creative" interpretation that strays from the original, but flows better in English. Most translations are somewhere between those two extremes, although most translators often lean towards one or the other. (Though I'm not a professional translator, I have translated a lot of stuff for Gaians, and offline friends. The hardest thing for me to translate is prose, because it's so subjective, which is why I usually don't take requests for it.)
It's so rare to find a translated book that doesn't sound like a translation, that the last time I found one ("The Neverending Story"), I was pretty stunned.  

[Paradoxismminant]

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

I know what you mean! I can't stand poorly written or other certain types of prose. Like I tried to read "The Da Vinci Code", and gave up because I couldn't stand reading the prose. I can see how awkward dialogue could turn a reader off, but I guess the style of the prose is the most noticeable thing that turns me off. That said, I heavily favor British prose when reading most books (probably because I grew up on classic literature), to the point where I wonder if I put up with too much before I dismiss a book as bad if it's written by a British person. sweatdrop

Oh no, literary racism XD.

No, I'm just joking. But that's kind of interesting. It's interesting to me how you can often tell where the author is from by how they write.

LOL, yeah, the weird thing is I'm American, but because I grew up reading classic British children's lit, I think I just might be more used to British prose. ^-^;
I don't have any preference when it comes to nonfiction though. What about you? ^-^ Have any regional/country preferences when it comes to literature? I think genre preferences might be more popular.

*nods* I can tell if someone's British or American by their prose, and sometimes you can tell where an author is from if they use dialect in the dialogue. I can usually tell when a work has been translated from another language as well, but I'm not sure if I could distinguish other places (i.e I've never read work by an Australian author). With Japanese literature, most works are written in standard/Tokyo dialect, so it's harder to tell what part of the country an author is from.

Hmm, personally I don't really have a preference, probably because I come from a very international background. And yeah, dialect makes a lot of things super obvious xd

Yeah, I've noticed a certain...unliveliness (?) to a lot of translated works. Like it feels more formal?

Yeah, the thing about translating something, is that you often need to struggle with either doing a literal but awkward translation of a sentence, or a more "creative" interpretation that strays from the original, but flows better in English. Most translations are somewhere between those two extremes, although most translators often lean towards one or the other. (Though I'm not a professional translator, I have translated a lot of stuff for Gaians, and offline friends. The hardest thing for me to translate is prose, because it's so subjective, which is why I usually don't take requests for it.)
It's so rare to find a translated book that doesn't sound like a translation, that the last time I found one ("The Neverending Story"), I was pretty stunned.

I know exactly what you mean!

I used to do translating, and I always ended up trying to just make it all make sense...prose is especially hard. If there's puns and stuff, fuggedabout it! XD  

[Bokusenou]

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

I know what you mean! I can't stand poorly written or other certain types of prose. Like I tried to read "The Da Vinci Code", and gave up because I couldn't stand reading the prose. I can see how awkward dialogue could turn a reader off, but I guess the style of the prose is the most noticeable thing that turns me off. That said, I heavily favor British prose when reading most books (probably because I grew up on classic literature), to the point where I wonder if I put up with too much before I dismiss a book as bad if it's written by a British person. sweatdrop

Oh no, literary racism XD.

No, I'm just joking. But that's kind of interesting. It's interesting to me how you can often tell where the author is from by how they write.

LOL, yeah, the weird thing is I'm American, but because I grew up reading classic British children's lit, I think I just might be more used to British prose. ;
I don't have any preference when it comes to nonfiction though. What about you? Have any regional/country preferences when it comes to literature? I think genre preferences might be more popular.

*nods* I can tell if someone's British or American by their prose, and sometimes you can tell where an author is from if they use dialect in the dialogue. I can usually tell when a work has been translated from another language as well, but I'm not sure if I could distinguish other places (i.e I've never read work by an Australian author). With Japanese literature, most works are written in standard/Tokyo dialect, so it's harder to tell what part of the country an author is from.

Hmm, personally I don't really have a preference, probably because I come from a very international background. And yeah, dialect makes a lot of things super obvious xd

Yeah, I've noticed a certain...unliveliness (?) to a lot of translated works. Like it feels more formal?

Yeah, the thing about translating something, is that you often need to struggle with either doing a literal but awkward translation of a sentence, or a more "creative" interpretation that strays from the original, but flows better in English. Most translations are somewhere between those two extremes, although most translators often lean towards one or the other. (Though I'm not a professional translator, I have translated a lot of stuff for Gaians, and offline friends. The hardest thing for me to translate is prose, because it's so subjective, which is why I usually don't take requests for it.)
It's so rare to find a translated book that doesn't sound like a translation, that the last time I found one ("The Neverending Story"), I was pretty stunned.

I know exactly what you mean!

I used to do translating, and I always ended up trying to just make it all make sense...prose is especially hard. If there's puns and stuff, fuggedabout it! XD

Really, what language did you translate?

Yeah, usually with puns you either need to localize it (find a similar pun in English and add it in), or add a translation note. When it works, it works though. Like in Harry Potter in Japanese, a lot of the wordplay was translated into something which worked for Japanese, but wasn't literal, and as a result, it's just as funny a book as the original English one.  

[Angelique Sedai]

The main thing that turns me off a book is when they lead up a protagonist and then they suddenly kill them off towards the end (hence why I don't read GRRM).
I can't handle the intense disappointment so I just stop reading...  

[Paradoxismminant]

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

LOL, yeah, the weird thing is I'm American, but because I grew up reading classic British children's lit, I think I just might be more used to British prose. ;
I don't have any preference when it comes to nonfiction though. What about you? Have any regional/country preferences when it comes to literature? I think genre preferences might be more popular.

*nods* I can tell if someone's British or American by their prose, and sometimes you can tell where an author is from if they use dialect in the dialogue. I can usually tell when a work has been translated from another language as well, but I'm not sure if I could distinguish other places (i.e I've never read work by an Australian author). With Japanese literature, most works are written in standard/Tokyo dialect, so it's harder to tell what part of the country an author is from.

Hmm, personally I don't really have a preference, probably because I come from a very international background. And yeah, dialect makes a lot of things super obvious xd

Yeah, I've noticed a certain...unliveliness (?) to a lot of translated works. Like it feels more formal?

Yeah, the thing about translating something, is that you often need to struggle with either doing a literal but awkward translation of a sentence, or a more "creative" interpretation that strays from the original, but flows better in English. Most translations are somewhere between those two extremes, although most translators often lean towards one or the other. (Though I'm not a professional translator, I have translated a lot of stuff for Gaians, and offline friends. The hardest thing for me to translate is prose, because it's so subjective, which is why I usually don't take requests for it.)
It's so rare to find a translated book that doesn't sound like a translation, that the last time I found one ("The Neverending Story"), I was pretty stunned.

I know exactly what you mean!

I used to do translating, and I always ended up trying to just make it all make sense...prose is especially hard. If there's puns and stuff, fuggedabout it! XD

Really, what language did you translate?

Yeah, usually with puns you either need to localize it (find a similar pun in English and add it in), or add a translation note. When it works, it works though. Like in Harry Potter in Japanese, a lot of the wordplay was translated into something which worked for Japanese, but wasn't literal, and as a result, it's just as funny a book as the original English one.

Spanish and I've attempted Mandarin too, but my written Mandarin isn't half as good as my spoken, haha. Sometimes there's not really an equivalent though D:  

[Bokusenou]

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

LOL, yeah, the weird thing is I'm American, but because I grew up reading classic British children's lit, I think I just might be more used to British prose. ;
I don't have any preference when it comes to nonfiction though. What about you? Have any regional/country preferences when it comes to literature? I think genre preferences might be more popular.

*nods* I can tell if someone's British or American by their prose, and sometimes you can tell where an author is from if they use dialect in the dialogue. I can usually tell when a work has been translated from another language as well, but I'm not sure if I could distinguish other places (i.e I've never read work by an Australian author). With Japanese literature, most works are written in standard/Tokyo dialect, so it's harder to tell what part of the country an author is from.

Hmm, personally I don't really have a preference, probably because I come from a very international background. And yeah, dialect makes a lot of things super obvious xd

Yeah, I've noticed a certain...unliveliness (?) to a lot of translated works. Like it feels more formal?

Yeah, the thing about translating something, is that you often need to struggle with either doing a literal but awkward translation of a sentence, or a more "creative" interpretation that strays from the original, but flows better in English. Most translations are somewhere between those two extremes, although most translators often lean towards one or the other. (Though I'm not a professional translator, I have translated a lot of stuff for Gaians, and offline friends. The hardest thing for me to translate is prose, because it's so subjective, which is why I usually don't take requests for it.)
It's so rare to find a translated book that doesn't sound like a translation, that the last time I found one ("The Neverending Story"), I was pretty stunned.

I know exactly what you mean!

I used to do translating, and I always ended up trying to just make it all make sense...prose is especially hard. If there's puns and stuff, fuggedabout it! XD

Really, what language did you translate?

Yeah, usually with puns you either need to localize it (find a similar pun in English and add it in), or add a translation note. When it works, it works though. Like in Harry Potter in Japanese, a lot of the wordplay was translated into something which worked for Japanese, but wasn't literal, and as a result, it's just as funny a book as the original English one.

Spanish and I've attempted Mandarin too, but my written Mandarin isn't half as good as my spoken, haha. Sometimes there's not really an equivalent though D:

Wow, Mandarin! I thought of learning Mandarin at one point, since most of the characters are the same or similar to Japanese (and I'm something of a kanji geek. XD), but the tones kind of scared me off, I heard the grammar is really simple though. You're amazing to be good at speaking in Mandarin! o_o  

[Paradoxismminant]

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Yeah, the thing about translating something, is that you often need to struggle with either doing a literal but awkward translation of a sentence, or a more "creative" interpretation that strays from the original, but flows better in English. Most translations are somewhere between those two extremes, although most translators often lean towards one or the other. (Though I'm not a professional translator, I have translated a lot of stuff for Gaians, and offline friends. The hardest thing for me to translate is prose, because it's so subjective, which is why I usually don't take requests for it.)
It's so rare to find a translated book that doesn't sound like a translation, that the last time I found one ("The Neverending Story"), I was pretty stunned.

I know exactly what you mean!

I used to do translating, and I always ended up trying to just make it all make sense...prose is especially hard. If there's puns and stuff, fuggedabout it! XD

Really, what language did you translate?

Yeah, usually with puns you either need to localize it (find a similar pun in English and add it in), or add a translation note. When it works, it works though. Like in Harry Potter in Japanese, a lot of the wordplay was translated into something which worked for Japanese, but wasn't literal, and as a result, it's just as funny a book as the original English one.

Spanish and I've attempted Mandarin too, but my written Mandarin isn't half as good as my spoken, haha. Sometimes there's not really an equivalent though D:

Wow, Mandarin! I thought of learning Mandarin at one point, since most of the characters are the same or similar to Japanese (and I'm something of a kanji geek. XD), but the tones kind of scared me off, I heard the grammar is really simple though. You're amazing to be good at speaking in Mandarin! o_o

The tones aren't that hard to master, especially once you get used to it c:. And yes, the grammar is ridiculously simple, and there's not even prepositions or anything XD. I'm good at speaking Mandarin because I'm Taiwanese and my family speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese in the house c: . I want to learn Japanese though!  

[Bokusenou]

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Paradoxismminant

Bokusenou

Yeah, the thing about translating something, is that you often need to struggle with either doing a literal but awkward translation of a sentence, or a more "creative" interpretation that strays from the original, but flows better in English. Most translations are somewhere between those two extremes, although most translators often lean towards one or the other. (Though I'm not a professional translator, I have translated a lot of stuff for Gaians, and offline friends. The hardest thing for me to translate is prose, because it's so subjective, which is why I usually don't take requests for it.)
It's so rare to find a translated book that doesn't sound like a translation, that the last time I found one ("The Neverending Story"), I was pretty stunned.

I know exactly what you mean!

I used to do translating, and I always ended up trying to just make it all make sense...prose is especially hard. If there's puns and stuff, fuggedabout it! XD

Really, what language did you translate?

Yeah, usually with puns you either need to localize it (find a similar pun in English and add it in), or add a translation note. When it works, it works though. Like in Harry Potter in Japanese, a lot of the wordplay was translated into something which worked for Japanese, but wasn't literal, and as a result, it's just as funny a book as the original English one.

Spanish and I've attempted Mandarin too, but my written Mandarin isn't half as good as my spoken, haha. Sometimes there's not really an equivalent though D:

Wow, Mandarin! I thought of learning Mandarin at one point, since most of the characters are the same or similar to Japanese (and I'm something of a kanji geek. XD), but the tones kind of scared me off, I heard the grammar is really simple though. You're amazing to be good at speaking in Mandarin! o_o

The tones aren't that hard to master, especially once you get used to it c:. And yes, the grammar is ridiculously simple, and there's not even prepositions or anything XD. I'm good at speaking Mandarin because I'm Taiwanese and my family speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese in the house c: . I want to learn Japanese though!

Interesting! Japanese grammar is pretty simple too. Now that I'm starting to learn Portuguese, I see just how spoiled I was with Japanese grammar (although Chinese grammar seems even easier from the sound of it). Wow, so you're a trilingual heritage speaker! That's pretty cool! Is Taiwanese very different from Mandarin? Japanese has a ton of dialects, some of which sound nothing like standard Japanese (especially the farther away you get from Tokyo. Like, most Japanese people can't understand Okinawa dialect, which sounds more like Hawaiian or something to me), but most Japanese people only know standard/Tokyo dialect, Osaka dialect, and their hometown dialect if they grew up somewhere else.

Japanese isn't too hard, and most of the characters are similar to Chinese (when I go to Chinatown I can make sense of all the signs, though nothing much longer than a sign). Plus there are a ton of good lesson websites out there, although Spanish probably has more resources in English, or better yet, learning a new language through your second one is pretty fun, if you know Spanish at about an intermediate level. (I'm learning Portuguese through Japanese and it's been pretty interesting. More so than trying to learn through English.)