Could You Be Anymore Annoying...

As you probably know by now I love and adore a lot of things.  I'm obsessive and addictive that way.  So it may come as something as a surprise to find out that there are some things that do kind of annoy me -  just a little - okay maybe a lot.

Not liking something is really okay because it would be a pretty boring world if we all liked or disliked the same things, so taking my inspiration from Scriven and Laura here is my list of things that bug the hell out of me.

Reality Shows

All of them.  Really.  They should all just die a fiery death

Action movies with romantic interludes

Please just because I'm a chick I don't need to have romance thrown just for the sake of it.  I'd see a romance movie if I did. I want shoot them up, blow them up and hold the smooching for another movie.

I hate you, you hate me but hey lets fall in love

I love a good love story but what really irritates me are shows like Bones and Castle and others where they hate each at first sight but you just know that the shows creators are planning on for them to fall in love - they just stretch it out for a REALLY long time. Come on people just jump each other and have sex in the 1st episode and then we can all be happy.

Literary novels (or Worthy Reads)

I know what you're thinking.  I'm a librarian so I should like books that win literary prizes like the Man Booker or classics like Wuthering Heights but the truth is I don't. 

I'm a trash reader. I've learned to accept it, embrace even. Trash is good people.

Hunger Games and Jennifer Lawrence

Sorry I just don't get the fuss.  Jennifer, I'm sure, is a lovely young woman but as far as wanting to see in her something whether it's Hunger Games or not I'm leaving the cinema and looking for something else.

Oh woe is me females

I lay the blame for this entirely on Twilight's shoulders.

And yes Bella I'm pointing the finger at you.  Get a back bone girl and tell both Edward and Jacob to take a hike.

Where have all the real men gone?

Twilight. Again. Really it has a lot to answer for.  How anyone could think that Edward Cullen was a romantic hero I'll never understand. Seriously the guy was basically a stalker. 

And the trend seems to have continued with a number of guys in YA fiction (Hunger Games - again) being all kinds of creepy or just plain wussy.  

Give me a man with a gun, a sexy smile and a bad attitude any day.

You all deserve to die

Not YOU, my faithful reader(s). I'm talking about the people in the publishing world who really, really annoy me. The ones whom, if I were ever so slightly more psychopathological than I am, I would wish to die in creatively horrible ways. Like being sandwiched in a very large slush pile that's due for the shredder...

Here's my list. What really gets your goat?

#1 - Books starring Jane Austen, remakes of Jane Austen, retellings of Jane Austen

Jane Austen has been a vampire. She has been turned into an erotic kinkfest. Her life and works have been pawed over, warped, twisted, worn threadbare, turned into every flavour of pulp. Zombies and sea monsters have been added to them. They've been placed in a modern setting minus all the best descriptions and language of their creator. The wonderful characters who leapt off the page have been flattened into stupid, cardboard, lifeless versions of themselves in absolutely pointless "modernisations". (Oo, what if we did Persuasion, but in a school? And an office! And in space...)

Keira Knightley has overbitten her way through Elizabeth Bennet. Miniseries have been written in which someone else gets Mr Darcy. For Mansfield Park's sake, they have BROKEN up the MOST ROMANTIC COUPLE in ENGLISH LITERATURE! I am saddened to report that even "decent" authors are getting on the bandwagon. Now that P.D. James and Colleen McCullough have had their turn, they're putting out six new retellings of the novels by the likes of Joanna Trollope and Val McDermid.
Can't you see the woman's exhausted?

No more.


#2 - Twilight readalikes

If I have to give a list of books similar to this series, you'll be reading all day. Ingredients include: paranormal love triangle (involves anything from werewolves to vampires to sexy giant squid - I actually came across a gryphon the other day. Still don't get the humanoid dragon thing, and falling in love with something that's half bird, half lion is just agin' nature.)

Second ingredient: boy who seems to hate the girl, but really burns for her despite her possessing no apparent personality at all.

Third ingredient: a girl who's new to town, who doesn't have any real friends except the one totally hot guy who's keeping a secret...

Sounds familiar? Oh, it's only about 300 recent books...(The Gathering Dark is one.)

Please don't make me buy any more. I'm begging you.


#3 - Titles that are a play on the character's name

Things like Grace Under Fire or Honour Among Thieves or Saving Faith or Hope Rises or April Showers...Maybe not April Showers, it sounds like a certain kind of movie. (Actually I just checked, there is one. But it's not what you think.)

You know what I mean, anyway - books where the main character is actually called Grace, or Faith, or Hope, or Victory, or whatever. Vomitorious.




#4 - Celebrity children's books

Some celebrities can write, apparently. I'm told the Hank Zipzer books by the Fonz aren't too bad, and nor are Jamie-Lee Curtis's. On the other hand - there are Madonna and Jordan, aka Katie Price. At least Jordan doesn't actually write hers. Hilary Duff did write Elixir, starring a young woman struggling with fame, and I mean this nicely, Hilary, but please go back to reading other people's lines. Even Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin and Weird Al Yankovic are guilty of some crimes against literature. Funny people, but not good writers. Fifty Cent has written a book. And has anyone read Modelland by Tyra Banks?

Here's the blurb: "Awkward fifteen-year-old Tookie De La Creme is invited to join the most exclusive modeling school in the world, where she must survive the beastly Catwalk Corridor and the terrifying Thigh-High Boot Camp in order to uncover Modelland's sinister secrets."

I'm putting on my fierce face.

Look out - coming up next, Monica Seles' new series about - yep, a tennis academy. Foul.

#5 - Titles that riff on other titles (that riff on OTHER titles)

We've had Fifty Sheds of Grey, Fifty Bales of Hay, Fifty Shades of Play, Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray, Fifty Shades of Feminism, and my personal favourite, Fifty Shades of Chicken.  

Give it a bone, will you? This turkey is well and truly cooked.