Hate when authors do this

[thinkponk48]

Don't get characters ages correct. In the book I'm reading a female character has been to university, worked as a teacher for a bit, met married and bought a house with someone and then had a child.

Eventually her son moves abroad for a job and she's an empty nester at 38! So ridiculous should be at least 45.

I know it's a silly thing but it's ruined the book for me

My ultimate hate in a book is in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. There is a character with albinism who is a sharp shooter.

I have a DGD with this condition. She is partially sighted and cannot see more than a few yards and that's not clearly. She will never be able to drive, let alone use a gun. She actually got better vision than most people with albinism.

Nobody with this disability could ever do what the character does in the book as they all have an under developed optic nerve. I lasted a few chapters as I was so upset at this depiction.

The book I'm reading is forever home by Graham Norton. I have enjoyed his other books but this is getting on my nerves

Yeah it did. It also had a heroine called Tracey. That didn't come in here until the 60s here either. You can always find exceptions if you go looking. Nevertheless an upper class gal in wartime Britain would have been Diana, Pamela, Caroline. Mitfordy sort of names or Churchillian daughters. Not hard to get right. It grated every time.
I suspect the rare occurrences of the name always had slightly witchy connotations which is why it was picked up for 'Bewitched'.
No Dorises in my classes at school in the 60s. Plenty of Lindas, Bridgets, Margarets and Rosemarys.

The film High Society (released in 1956 and set in the USA, east coast I believe) had a heroine named Tracey Samantha, and it is THE reason why Tracey became a popular girl's name here in the UK in the 1960s, that's what I read in my baby names book. And to a lesser extent, Samantha (although Bewitched also had something to do with that).

Probably Tracey was pretty much unknown as a girls' name, at least in the UK, before the film. The character was played by Grace Kelly and was very beautiful and sophisticated, so probably it was an image that parents liked.

Actually there was a character in Dickens named Tracy i think, but it was a man! (The Pickwick Papers).

Yes, I know that. The point was that the author clearly contextually meant hurricanes but used tornadoes instead because she had no idea what she was talking about. That's why it was funny.

Oh no, @OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow ! What’s the error? I love those books.

@NeverDropYourMooncup all the children stayed young didn't they (looking at you Ernest). A few new young children appeared, and that dreadful boy who killed the robin, but otherwise she had the same children from when she started teaching until she retired, bar a couple who got grammar school places.

There’s an author I gave up on because she ALWAYS refers to characters wearing “Converses” instead of “Converse” and they all shop at “Top Shop” instead of “Topshop”, it drove me bats.

I’ve been on both sides of this – as author and as editor, proofreader, copy-editor. The problem is no one is paid nearly enough or has nearly enough time. Most authors aren’t doing it as their day job and will get sent the proofed manuscript or the copy edits with a really tiny window to turn it around, alongside their day job/children/life/whatever; meanwhile the editors all have a million books on their plate and are close to burnout. None of us set out to do a terrible job!

What annoyed me about the first BJ book was that the author put an actual weight in there. So all the way through, she's losing and gaining, losing and gaining and calling herself fat etc, then we find out how much she actually weighs and it's a normal size. As a plus-sized person, I'd been able to imagine that she might have been like me, until that.

Is that the one where she’s a vapid LA heiress banished to a small port town and he’s a preternaturally giant and hairy sea captain who permanently smells of fish, and she also butt fingers him without consent? Top read.

@IWantAdventureInTheGreatWideSomewhere

"splice their commas and dangle their modifiers"

Sounds painful...

Ding ding ding that’s the one

Just thought of another one, but a bit out there as not many people have read it - I read a wonderful book called ‘A Step From Heaven’ years ago, all about a Korean immigrant family and their life in America. The writer was American. Unfortunately, I was distracted by the fact that all the way through the book, the protagonist’s younger brother calls her by the honorific that would only be appropriate for a younger sister to call an older sister, rather than the one appropriate for a younger brother to older sister. It sounds such a stupid thing, but it bugged me. If I (non Korean speaker) noticed that immediately, then why does the author not notice? Why have they not done the correct research so they don’t have native speakers of a language making mistakes a first year student of that language wouldn’t make?

My pet hate is when they use school years instead of ages.

American - "when I was in 10th grade"
British - "we were in year 7"

JUST WRITE THE FUCKING AGE FFS, WE'RE NOT ALL BRITISH OR AMERICAN.

not so much authors but i see there are some people from the publishing industry here:

Blurbs. I want the blurb back. If i see an interesting looking book i pick it up and either look inside the cover (hardback) or the back (paperback). And i expect a paragraph about the book's contents. But increasingly (or more accurately these days: exclusively) it is full of gushing reviews giving zero clue about the novel, and they are by a bunch of authors who are apparently making an industry out of gushing reviews of each others' books. It goes back on the shelf.

Why? why? I'm begging you: please stop it.

I think Alys is Welsh spelling of Alice - in which case it wouldn't be out of place if that's where the character originated .

In the movie 'The Lion in Winter', Henry the Tooth's mistress is called Alys or Alice. I looked her up:
Alys of France, (or Alice) Countess of Vexin (4 October 1160 – c. 1220) was a French princess, the daughter of Louis VII, King of France and his second wife, Constance of Castile.

It doesn't only happen where there's not enough money to pay an editor. Tom Clancy wrote a bestselling book with a sub-plot that involved domestic terrorists loading up a big truck with a fertilizer bomb and setting off towards their goal...

Then they are never mentioned again in the rest of the book.

He was one of the world's best selling authors at that point, so I guess editors were considered unnecessary :)

See that annoys me in mumsnet too, I have no idea what ages kids are supposed to be (my own school days were many years ago and then senior school was years 1-5 with 6/7 being 6th form/a levels)

Yes! Infuriating! Orrrrr when the twist is that two different characters are actually the same person, which has been undetectable up until this point because the author has cunningly given them a name that can have a seemingly unrelated nickname and they are known to different characters by the different names (e.g. Catherine/Kitty or Alexandra/Sandy or whatever). It gives me the MASSIVE PISS.

To add to the Dean pile-on, my friend's boyfriend is a 32 year old Dean.

This is going to bring shame on me but i can't resist. Not a book but on the Literotica site there are loads of stories about hot n horny millennial sorority girls called Pat, Jill and Barbara. It reminds me that all the authors are old boomer men typing them out one handed.

Hahah I think I went through a phase of reading a lot of easy-read chic lit where the MC was unlucky in love and moved to a small coastal village and opened up a mega successful boutique cupcakery….never mind that they probably only had customers during tourist season

That's the plot of pretty much every Katie Fforde book ever isn't it? (Apologies Katie if you read this)

Lots of countries (eg Ireland) don't even have fixed ages for school years. It's not unusual for there to be more than two years between the oldest and youngest of a secondary school year here, so even stating the year doesn't confer much information about the age of the child.

I can probably work it out approximately for American grade, but they also use words that Americans understand and nobody else does. Like wtf age is a child who is a sophomore or freshman, and what ages do they attend middle school/junior high/high school?

Did she marry the man who was slightly broken but turns out to be an ex navy seal billionaire recovering from some emotional trauma which she sorts out.