In last weeks discussion I talked about bookish pet peeves I have when it comes to the exterior of a book, and why it matters. This week, in a similar fashion, I am going to continue that discussion by talking about what things bother me inside of the book (not including the actual story).
What bothers you when it comes to books? Do you have the same issues as I do or are you are you not easily bothered?
Here we go!
SMALL FONT
As I have said many times before, I pretty much read ebooks exclusively, and one of the main reasons I do so is because of font size. The font size of physical books is painfully small, and as someone who has worn classes for most of my life and has a pretty bad prescription, I would prefer to have a large font so that I don't strain my eyes. That's why ebooks are fantastic, because they have a wide range of font sizes for accessibility reasons (and I can split the screen so I can read while watching something too). I get that a lot of the time it can't be done, especially when it is a long book, but the font could be sized up even just a tiny bit to make reading easier.
BOLDED WORDS
A lot of authors like to do something fancy when a new chapter starts. It could be making the first letter of the first word a different fancy font, or it could be bolding words in the first sentence. I get what you're going for, but I don't like it because for some reason it just confuses my eyes and brain. I especially don't like it when the bolded words continue for half of the sentence and then stop. The first word alone was fine, you don't need to bold more than that because then it just looks odd.
BOOK SIZE
What I am talking about here is not the size of the physical book, but the page count and when authors don't utilize it well. It bothers me when a book is on the shorter size but should have been longer in order to fully flesh out all the characters and storylines. On the flip side, when a book is too long and filled with a whole lot of nothingness (like anime and its filler episodes), I would have preferred it to be shorter. As someone who wrote a lot of essays during my schooling, I can get how hard it is to reach the perfect page count, so I give the authors a little bit of credit here, but as an author you should know how to either condense your story to not drag it out, or give it the length it needs to feel complete.
CHAPTER TITLES
This one is a bit of a doozy, but I will try my best to explain it. Chapter titles are tricky, you can either simply title them by number, by time and location if it is non-chronological, or by giving it a name. My minor beef with titles is that it set ups the chapter, and when it is not done to my liking, I find my enthusiasm dips a little bit. Numerical chapters and titles when it is a characters name to show whose perspective it is does what it needs to do, but it is a bit bland.
Now, chapter titles, I have a love hate relationship with. If done right, I think it can really hype you up for what is to come. If done wrong, however, then can ruin the chapter. I recently read a book, and I honestly can't remember what book it was, but the chapter titles spoiled how each chapter would end which...was extremely disappointing. I didn't want to know what would happen before it happened.
EXTRA
I am going to end off with something that I actually like that probably bother a lot of people. When I see the page count on my ebook I always get a bit worried because of how long it is. When I check the chapters though and find out that the last 100 pages are full of extras such as appendices and excerpts, I am a happy person.
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