My top pet peeve? Adult women wearing their hair down in public! I’m pretty sure that in Europe, from Byzantine times to the 1920’s this just wouldn’t happen for most women.

I won’t buy anything that is this lazily researched.

I know that I have very little patience with heroes and heroines who have crappy parents – my reaction (perhaps because my own parents had more than their share of flaws) is ‘get over it’. It doesn’t bother me when they have problematic relationships but are clearly their own people, but when it is used as an excuse for TSTL or nasty behaviour, I really reject the book. As Larkin observed, that’s what parents are there for (see This Be the Verse).

Oh, and re: Twilight: I couldn’t even finish the first book for the reasons that some of you mentioned. Another baggage issue, but there was no living with my best friend in high school when she got interested in a boy, so after I realized that I wasn’t going to get a coming of age story with romance as a side plot, but rather a girl getting unhealthily obsessed with a boy, at least from my perspective, I just couldn’t keep going.

I don’t deny having baggage, but my perspective is more a challenge to the author: “prove it.” Make me believe it, whatever “it” is. I’m actually pretty suggestible; I can be seduced, and all it takes it excellent writing. You will get me eating out of your hand with top-notch prose and characterization – I don’t care if you have John Adams deliver the Gettysburg Address at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair; I probably won’t even notice the anachronisms. It’s the author’s job, IMO, to deliver a world I can believe in. If she doesn’t, if I start to see the seams here and there, I instantly become much more critical. It’s sort of like seeing behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz and realizing that there is someone in there, pulling the levers, and the magic – the chance for real magic – is gone and can’t be regained.

I think there’s something to this. I was thinking about this post today. There are very few books I will categorically refuse to read because of baggage, or because of skepticism. I am even willing to read about amnesia and virgin widows.

The only category that I am strongly resistant to is romances set against the backdrop of the Holocaust. I feel that if they do the subject justice, it’s very bleak, and if it’s not very bleak, I feel that it’s being trivialized. I’m sure that’s because I’m the grandchild of Holocaust survivors and because some of my family members’ lives were extinguished in the Shoah and that’s about as powerful as baggage can get.

Reading Eva Ibbotson’s The Morning Gift made me realize that even one of my favorite authors could not really treat the subject to my satisfaction, at least not in the context of a romance novel, and that makes me skeptical that it can be done. But that doesn’t mean that someone couldn’t prove me wrong.

But aside from that, I have plenty of other baggage in life that affects my responses to books, but not so much that I’m not willing to overlook those things if a book is well-written enough. Great prose and characterization go a long, long way toward seducing me as well, and making me willing to forgive a lot of other flaws.

I don’t think there is such thing as a perfect book, there are only a books that seduce us to such a degree that we don’t notice the imperfections. And sure, that’s harder to do if we bring in negative baggage, but it’s not impossible.

Funny that you mention Janine’s review of The Spymaster’s Lady, because I was definitely seduced by the prose in the first half of the book, and it wasn’t until the heroine began acting ridiculously, unforgivably stupid and out of character that I awoke from the spell that that lovely writing had put me under. And then I began to see some of the things Janine pointed out as flaws that were there from the very beginning.

So, in one sense, authors have a lot of leeway with me. But since there are very few Kinsales or Ivorys out there, on a practical level, I think (know) that I am a very critical reader. Maybe I don’t give some authors “a fair shot”, but I’m not sure how to change that, even if I wanted to.

AnimeJune: I couldn’t understand a lonely heroine who would intentionally distance herself from people who wanted to befriend her.

Yeah, the characterizations are rather problematic too (and not only with Bella, but nearly everyone else is written to look bad in order to make certain sparkly characters look good. . .which I think is simply weak writing). Mostly, though, it’s the continual victimization of many of the female characters, and especially Bella, that I really dislike. I could live with a antisocial loner, or even an antisocial loner who is also a Mary Sue, if she weren’t so. . .anti-Buffy. Also, I dislike the controlling and manipulative nature of Edward, who gets away with everything because he sparkles or it’s all “for Bella’s own good” or whatever.

I dunno. Personally, I would consider this more a flaw of the writing than ‘baggage’, but maybe it is my hang up. I like my female characters to have agency, and not be so passive or TSTL. And for my male characters to not be such awful examples. Unless it is deliberate and there is (a lot of) character growth/redemption or something (which I really do not think it is in the Twilight series).

But, you know, I’m still planning on reading the last book. . . I want to see how it ends. So, there is some part of it that works for me, or I’d just stop reading it. Possibly, I’m still waiting for this series to get better.

how can I know if I have got it wrong? Should I stick to “Writing what I know” or can I find a way to get it right?

Have other people read it? See what they think? I don’t think it’s necessary to stick only to what one knows — I like the inverse of that adage, which is to “know what you write”, so you’re accurate and emotionally true, even if it’s about something you knew nothing about prior to starting the story.

One of my huge peeves is horse stuff that is inaccurate, but that’s only because I will very likely notice that something is wrong. But most of that is technical, and I can get over it if the rest of the story (ie, emotions) is compelling.

I am a nurse and this was just something that wouldn’t happen in real life.

LOL Shilo! I an a nurse too, and can’t bear to read medical romances at all- they just annoy me so much with the stupid inaccuracies. Historicals can often jar, too, with gross inaccuracies that the most minimal amount of reserach on the writer’s part would fix.

I love fantasy romances, and will willingly suspend all manner of disbelief, as long as the writer creates a world that is internally consistent. Unfortunately, so many aren’t!

On the other hand, I’m sure no writer sets out to create a book that will make readers want to throw it against the wall. The problem with ignorance is that we don’t always realise what we don’t know.

I will rarely read books featuring adoptees because authors often trivialize the emotional experience and I can’t relate.

I am writing a romance where the heroine is adopted. I hope and pray I don’t trivialise her experience, but despite reading the research about the effects of being an adoptee reasonably widely, how can I know if I have got it wrong? Should I stick to “Writing what I know” or can I find a way to get it right?

If I’m really bored I’ll read anything thats well written and has romance.