Perish the thought

I like to read. 
I especially like reading more when I've been writing more.  They seem to go hand in hand.  But there are some things about books that make me almost as looney as men who break up with you and then turn into stalkers (don't even get me started on THAT subject).

Things that drive me to consider books on tape (which I have never engaged in--not ONCE)

1) Footnotes.
Do you have any idea how annoying it is to be reading along  through a paragraph and then have to quickly dart my eyes to the bottom of the page to look down and read what could have easily been written (in between these handy dandy parenthesis!) With ( ) --bless their curvy arced hearts--  my eyes wouldn't have to jump around like they were playing air hockey and could concentrate on simply reading the words in a row.
Conclusion: Footnotes are pretentious.  Get over yourself and embrace the simplicity of parentheses before your readers grow violent and stage a book burning.

2) Lack of quotation marks.
I recently finished a book that housed ZERO quote marks.  So every time someone said something I had to try and figure out what was the actual quote and what was the narrators thoughts regarding what had been said.  BEYOND ANNOYING!  You think we ever could have gotten away with that crap in elementary school? 
Conclusion: Quotes were invented for a purpose.  Use them. Or I will be forced to ban all your grammatical rule breaking literature for all of eternity (and possibly even devote an entire blog to why no one should read your books.  HA!)

3) Typos.
I don't mean to sound like a TOTAL bitch (Ironically bitchy, yes, raving whore, no) but don't they PAY someone to proof books before they go to print?  Or for that matter who read one copy to check for errors before printing off thousands of copies?  Because the number of times I read there there is going to be... Or we would like a is pink cake... Were far too numerous to mention.  I think a monkey could have found at least half those typos, circled them with a red pen and clapped for a banana afterwards.
How do all these spelling errors happen?  Is there no one who can be paid to fix this problem?  Because I will volunteer myself for this job (provided I get a book contract as part of my pay).
Conclusion: Find a a way to nix the misstakes or or I will be forced will be forced to listen to books on tape.

Eeeeeeew.