Books

In the English translation of tender is the flesh, the word lava comes up a lot. Flesh burned like lava, eyes like icy lava. Just a lot of lava comparisons lol, it took me out of it a bit at the time

Stephen Erikson in the Malazan books “must needs” to use certain words and phrases endlessly, causing my eyes to turn “lambent” with recognition whenever i see them. I am now so used to them my soul is “gelid” without them.

I tried the ACOTAR series (got to the 3rd book and had to stop) and Sarah j Maas CONSTANTLY uses the term “vulgar gesture” for some reason. That was part of the reason I had to stop.

the Invisible Life of Addie Larue - Palimpsest. It drove me crazy!!

I find in a few books where the author gets stuck on a word for a few chapters then moves onto the next. Like they are testing the word around the house for a week then move onto the next word.

I learned a new word today.

Try to surmise what it is.

I'll give you three surmises.

“Judder” in Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet ugh.

Philip K Dick uses “ersatz” probably 7 or 8 times in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Steven Erikson in the Malazan series uses the word "silt" or "silts" enough to be noticed.

Lovecraft. Eldritch.

The Dresden Files series has a lot of them, but it’s been years since I read them so I’ve forgotten a lot. One that I definitely remember is the word “Serpentine”, used to describe an attractive woman. Either the way she moves, or her figure. He uses it for pretty much every scene used to describe an attractive woman in the series, and there are a lot of them.

Celia S. Friedman: "He said softly".

I recently read, the Devotion of the Suspect & learnt the word "Conjecture" many times.

I love Terry Pratchett, but you could often tell which was his current “pet” word at the time of writing. “Gingerly” is one that got around, but there’s plenty of others he loved too.

Micheal Moorcock is probably on commission for 'sardonic'. Looking at you, every description of Elric ever.

Ayn Rand overuses “impertinent.” Very annoying. But then her prose is pretty ordinary. It’s the plots that are interesting.

Stephen King and "fluorescents". He has a very specific way of describing light sources in general, but man you'll catch this one a lot. Haha

“Smirk.” It’s usually an automatic DNF.

It’s a lazy trope to have the love interest lean against the doorway and give the protagonist a smirk. And it’s worse when they do it over… and over… and over again.

Anne Rule uses the word "albiet" so many times!!

George r.r. Martin uses "shone" a lot too. Everyone brushes their hair until it shone lol

Hyperion Cantos - “gossamer”

Expanse series - “constituent atoms”

There was this book on Kindle Unlimited and while the book was a fun, light, read, the characters smirked.

How often did the characters smirk? Sometimes two or three characters would smirk on the same page. I counted six smirks in one chapter.

People do smirk. But good grief, there was an entire village in the UK where the only possible facial expression seemed to be the smirk.

As a rule, one or two smirks per novel would seem to be a good average.

Kawaguchi says “vegetative state” like 10 times in 10 pages in the new Before the Coffee Gets Cold. But he’s notorious for repeating himself anyway

I’m teaching a YA book by Alan Gratz and boy does he love the word “churn.”

Ann Rice's Vampire series always used the word "preternatural". It got to the point where I would kind of look forward to finding it.

The Southern Reach series by Jeff Vandermeer (Annihilation, etc.):

Terroir: 37 times

Banal: 20 times

Mote (as in dust mote): 11 times

Somewhat rarely used words that I would have overlooked a couple instances of, but just so heavily used in these books that it was laughable.

I was reading a book where characters kept shrugging and so I looked up the word shrug in the search bar and it appeared I think 34 times. Which for a 200 something page book feels like a lot.

Also another book had the main character’s friend and his husband show up quite often and they were always referred to as “Dave and his husband Steve” after the 5th or 6th time I was well aware who Steve was

The characters in The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie shrug as a reaction to almost anything and they do it ALL the time. Love those books but damn that got annoying fast.

Steven Erikson uses skein, ochre, potsherd and flagstone a lot

Stephen Donaldson - inchoate

My main man Stephen King tosses out SMILED WANLY or WAN SMILE in damn near every book at least once. If I come across that phrase in non King books it almost feels like a shout out to him he uses it so much.

Also, I love when he uses goose flesh instead bumps.