Pig tallow candles and the contract with the reader

Here's a nice interview with David Mitchell (whose Black Swan Green was one of my favorite reads last year). I love his discussion of the necessity of humor in literature ("it would be like bread that didn't contain water"), as well as the writer's contract with the reader and how "perhaps the contract defines the book." And this, from the discussion of historical fiction:

To get it right, you need to research and research and research. And then you need to hide all your research, otherwise something else happens. You get sentences like, "Milord, would you like me to light the sperm whale oil lantern or would you prefer the cheaper but smokier pig tallow candle?"

Heh heh. I've totally read books like that.

Mitchell suggests more than once that when the reader feels the contract has been broken, the appropriate response is to hurl the book across the room. John Gardner says the same thing in The Art of Fiction. Now I'm trying to recall if any book has ever been so bad that I have actually done this. The only one that comes to mind is Angels and Demons. But that's hardly the only bad book I've read. Maybe I need to work on my arm.