What fun: the man described variously as the "most powerful person in book publishing" and as a "bull-necked, shaven-headed former pop music salesman who cares little for literary London" has decided to reveal his pet hates about books.

Scott Pack – former head buyer for Waterstone's, now publisher at The Friday Project – has been blogging for the last week on what really irritates him. I wholeheartedly agree with Peeve Number Three, when rather than including a descriptive blurb on the back jacket of a book, the publisher uses a list of quotes "from various wanky publications".

"I have no problem with quotes. They are very welcome endorsements, especially if they come from people whose taste I respect, but they are no substitute for a neat little summary of the book's contents," Pack writes. "It happens quite a bit. I think it is shocking. There are enough barriers between readers and good books as it is without getting all enigmatic and highbrow. Tell me what the book is about, not what other people think about it, and then I might want to buy it. Don't, and I won't." Right on, Mr Pack.

He's also irritated by the tendency from some "contemporary literary novelists" to include "long show-offy" chunks of text in a foreign language, by the use in classics of "the action takes place in the town of F____

in the year 18____", and by introductions which give away the endings of books (it spoiled The Mill on the Floss for him).

Other posters have come up with more suggestions – when short books are printed in large typeface to make them longer, when books fail to name the main character ("it smacks of smart-arsery") and a bizarre antipathy to possessive titles: Flaubert's Parrot, Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

My partner hates it when I crack the spines of books – he likes them to look good on the shelves, I think you haven't enjoyed a book until it's been dropped in the bath, left in the rain, thoroughly mangled. My pet hates, on the other hand, are when that gorgeous-looking new book by one of my favourite authors turns out to be a reissue of old material I've already read, but I've been too dopey to spot this before buying it. And that enraging feeling when you've got halfway through something and realise you've read it before. And when you splash out on a new hardback because you can't wait to read it, only to see it's half price in Smiths.

What are yours?