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

@OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow

We love the Slough House books, but there’s a pretty significant slip up in the first book that the whole reason that River Cartwright is in the Slow Horses hangs on

What is it?! We love Mick Herron too - but I've never noticed this!

And the reviews are invariably by Marian sodding Keyes. That woman must be reading new releases from the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed at night.

@VickerishAllsort you need to come over to this thread!

And the reviews are invariably by Marian sodding Keyes. That woman must be reading new releases from the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed at night.

I never really notice, because i hurl them back on the shelf (1). But one day last week i got really annoyed enough to speak to the sales person: there was a blurb. Oh frabjous day. They had stuck their fucking giant price sticker over it. Fuckers.

(1) actually i carefully replace them

Don’t get me started on Waterstones’s fucking stickers! Those things could survive a nuclear apocalypse.

The context, creepy though it invariably is, gives an idea.

Middle school - time for a girl to have her first sweet little boyfriend.
Junior High - time for her to have her first kiss and unsuitable boyfriend who is dumped either by her or frightened off by her Dad, after which she runs off, but Daddy rescues her from him by the end of the story when she cries into his manly chest 'I'm so sorry Daddy, you were right!'
Sophomore - probably a virgin at the start of the book/film, definitely not by the end if she wasn't lying about it in the first place.
Freshman - fucking all over the place. A place generally covered with red plastic cups for some reason.

I had a Tracey and a Colin in my class at secondary school in the 90s. Both the only one in the year but they existed.

There was a Sandra a year below us too.

It wasn't all Claire and Joanne

Is Peggy Welsh? I didn't pick that up. I thought she was cockney. Oh well, in that case.... It annoys me more that Alys is always referred to and addressed as 'Kid' to be honest. Nice book though. I enjoyed it.
She does refer to a 'Road trip' in the 1950s though.

The parrot was awful. Magical realism has a lot to answer for.

@Bideshi - Peggy- shortened name for Margaret. For what it's worth - my dad had a cousin called Peggy - would have been born late 1920s - dad's family came from South Wales - although they later moved from the area and his cousin lived in London. I don't know if the name Peggy is generally associated more with one area than another .

Peggy is the 2nd pirate in the Swallows & Amazons books, the first of which was published in 1930

No it's not. My grandmother from Pitlochry was Peg. Born 1900. I think it was pretty general. There were several people with Auntie Peggy's when I was at school (Northamptonshire).

Oh dear🙄Greengrocer's apostrophe. Sigh.

She was only about 9st 7lb as well, wasn't she? I found that aspect of the book really unsettling, claiming an adult female should weigh less than 10 stone.
Bridget isn't meant to be 5ft nothing is she? She wouldn't have been the least bit fat. Helen F should have made her 12 stone at the very least.

Haha, likewise
I mentioned it to my mum and she hadn't noticed, then I googled and couldn't find any mention online either ! I'm glad I'm not the only one !

A true proofread should be the absolute final check before a book is published. Literally the proofs with all the layout, page numbers, chapter headings, running heads in place are checked.

Nothing should be going to an editor after being proofread. Or more to the point, no book should be proofread before it has gone through at least one round of editing.

Not sure what stage a beta read would be, but it should be much earlier than at proofreading stage where nothing other than actual spelling/grammatical mistakes should be fixed.

This.

I don't give a shite if Stephen King thought the book was amazing. Just give me a blurb.

But that’s the point of the book. She’s obsessed with 90s size 0 conditioning. The whole point is that Bridget isn’t the least bit fat. She’s obsessing over nothing.

My concern is, that as the book was massively popular, even before it was made into a film, is that gullible women would believe that weighing less than 10 stone in adulthood was expected. Someone told me recently that in the reprints, her weight is in kg, not stones and pounds, and a more realist weight for an adult woman fretting about being overweight.

I mean I think that’s a lot to put on a novel. In that case I suppose it should be changed so as to not promote heavy drinking/poor relationships etc.

How can you tell??? (Asking for a friend.)

How about Patricia Cornwell and the weird passage of time?

Where Lucy ages approximately three years for every year Kay ages?

I thought it was just me that noticed that!!

Thank you!

I mean she must be 60-65 but she is still shagging Benton every time she sees him.

(Less said about her being matey with the guy who attempted to rape her the better! The last book was awful, killing off a ton of lesser characters via covid!)

I read it when I was around 21-22 and didn’t ‘get’ that we were supposed to think that she was being daft for obsessing about her weight when she wasn’t actually fat. I took it as she was a bit fat at her tiny weight and it made me feel quite panicky because I had a bit of an eating disorder but still weighed more than her (I have always been a fair bit heavier than I look. I look very unwell at 9.5 stone whereas that’s an ideal weight for many women of my height). I remember the feeling of shame that I was heavier than a ‘fat’ character even though I barely ate. I wasn’t an unintelligent person, I just lacked the awareness of that sort of wryness at that age. I think I’d have understood what I was meant to think more if I’d been over 30 when I first read it.