I thought it might be fun to have a place where we can share any poorly written, but perhaps also funny, sentences that have spoiled our experiences of reading books, whether fiction or non-fiction. For me, a badly written sentence can be jarring, and ruin the immersive experience that I hope for when reading a good novel.
There’s no rush to come up with any. My thinking was more that we could just share them here, whenever we happen to notice them.
I’m referring here to books that have gone through professional proofreading and editing, which should have addressed these kinds of issues. This isn’t intended as a place to name or shame any authors, or to criticise books that haven’t gone through professional editing (eg some self-published titles).
I’ll start with an example that I read last night, and which, for me, conjured a very different image from the one the author intended:
“She’d loved that week, photos of Ryan splashing in the sea and grinning at the buffet now plastered all around their house.”
It sounds as though someone had thrown food from the buffet all over the place!
Optionally, we could also have a go at fixing them:
“She’d loved that week. Photos of Ryan splashing in the sea, and of him grinning at the buffet, were now plastered all around their house.”
