Quotation marks (a rant)

I am reading Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang. The book itself is fine so far. Good, not great. But holy hell this lack of quotation marks thing is driving me bananas! All the quotes are in italics! I get that there may be some off-beat kind of books where that sort of thing might be appropriate but there is nothing weird or off-beat about the narrative style in the Zhang book. The longer I read this book the more worked up I get.

I mean, who the hell was asking for this? Where was the demand!? Were editors and publishers getting a lot of feedback from their CUSTOMERS that they were sick and tired of seeing " everywhere??? Like what the hell, man? Or maybe they were thinking, "Hey, here's a great idea. We have a perfectly clear system set up for helping the reader understand when dialogue is occurring in a book but what would happen if we made it way more obscure and confusing? Our readers will love that!" Do you see what I did there? Can you tell how it's me writing something and not me quoting an editor/publisher? How could you tell the difference? Pretty goddamn clear, wasn't it!?

Ugh, sorry. No one in my circle is a big reader and I come off as looking like a weirdo if I rant about this anywhere else. Be warned editors: I like new books. I like old books. The world is chock full of both and I have absolutely no problem with sticking to just old books where apparently no one was stupid enough to go about reinventing the wheel!!!