Mistakes in recently published fiction books

[Danascully2]

Has anyone else noticed poor proofreading in published books recently? I'm not talking about the finer details of colon vs semi colon etc but words in the wrong order, or in one case the same sentence twice in a paragraph (I'm confident it was an error rather than some sort of artistic choice). My 8 year old could have spotted them. I understand it's tricky to proofread a whole book but I presume it is somebody's job to do just that (editor?).
Or have mistakes always slipped through occasionally and it's just chance that I've had quite a few recently?

I used to write fanfic - one was expected to have a beta reader of the appropriate nationality who would pull you up on those mistakes (as well as the usual grammar etc.). Readers were very picky and didn't hesitate to let you know if you were wrong.
I'm British and was very much into X-Files. For instance for one story I had to find out about the differences between UK and USA domestic plumbing - it's so much easier and safer running details past a local person than researching it yourself!
US writers who wrote The Professionals fanfic were notorious for not realising how long it can take to drive between places in the UK even though to them the distances look quite short.

Didn't Tolkien say something about dwarfs vs dwarves? I assume he is the authority!

I have stopped reading historical fiction, especially 2nd World War stories about resistance because there are so many mistakes and inaccuracies in them.

Or almost any novel set in the Second World War. Sometimes they start off well enough, then half way through the author has forgotten there's supposed to be a blackout, or characters are jumping into their cars and driving here and there.

Film, not book, but the opening of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe showed the children being evacuated from London in the Blitz. The mass evacuation of schoolchildren happened on 1-2 September 1939 - before the war (in the UK) had even started. The Blitz started a year later.

Yea I see that. I am not doubling down on my point - I’m happy to be wrong, but it was really jarring. I think it might have been ‘sally asked her husband where her sneakers were as she was going out for a run’. Nobody in the UK would speak like that.

I used to write fanfic - one was expected to have a beta reader of the appropriate nationality who would pull you up on those mistakes

I used to belong to a LiveJournal community where (mostly US, mostly fanfic) writers could ask British people about life in Britain.

I remember one quite long thread in which I and another English woman were trying to convince a lot of Americans that most British people did not have fridge freezers, or even fridges, in the 1930s!

Sometimes they were starting with such basic misapprehensions about Britain and British life that it took quite a lot of toing and froing to unpick what they were actually asking.

But there were some interesting discussions too.

He said his fan put way more thought into the geography etc of the Disc than he did so when routes between place didn't make sense etc it would always be spotted. But he always had magic as a get out.

Well, that’s a massive sweeping statement based on a few examples!

I'm a published author and apart from edits with the editor, there are three - four proofreaders who go through the books before they're published...seems to have worked for mine! Maybe other publishing houses are skipping this bit.

Fact-checking is something completely different, though.

I loved that community, and the specific Harry Potter one (though I wrote in an entirely different fandom. Or maybe I loved it because I wrote in an entirely different fandom…) Was that HP one called hp_britglish? Did any of them survive the demise of LJ? There was also one for people who wrote historical fiction that involved detailed discussions of how far you could reasonably get on horseback in a single day on specific types of terriain.

The most interesting part for me was almost never what people thought they were asking about, but, as you say, the ‘unknown unknowns’ or unspoken assumptions. Like British Muggles assumed to be living in a world of homerooms, hall passes, jocks and GPAs.

A book set in the Lake District where the character’s house overlooked the North Sea.

@SlightTickle

I belonged to a community called Britpickery and I think one or two others the names of which I've forgotten.

As well as HP, there were quite a lot of people writing Merlin in a modern setting.

Assumptions that the UK had the same kind of racial segregation as in the US South came up at times.

UK police officers do not (routinely) carry guns and do not 'read people their rights' was another one.

I remember a discussion about exactly how one would travel from a village somewhere in the north of England to Paris at some date in the past, and how you would get money when travelling.

Well I spot something in almost every modern novel I read. And so do a lot of friends. Also pps here are agreeing they no longer have time to read texts as well as they would like. I am in no way blaming the provider or copy editor btw.

I'm currently reading You are Here, one of the main characters is a copy editor and David Nicholls gives a very good explanation of the difference between a copy editor and a proof reader. He also makes it clear that the copy editor 'suggests' changes which the author may then choose not to make.

I was coming with that one!

@WarrenTofficier has it got any errors in tho? 😀

Well I say reading but I'm actually listening too it so I can't see if there are any spelling mistakes.

I'm not familiar with the coast to coast walk so I've got no idea if there are any in the route but I did hear an interview with him in which he said the walk is factual but the pubs/hotels etc they visit are fictional because he didn't want to describe somewhere real as awful (or indeed fantastic because if people went and it wasn't they would blame him.)

I used to Britpick fanfic back in the day and was in that livejournal community too! There was an excellent fact checking community - I remember sharing info about how small museums work and about election counts at different points.

I read a book a few years ago where an English character was at a US high school. She had been sent there because she had Asbergers and in the UK she would have been sent to an institution(!) and had received an expensive sports car for her 16th birthday... There were more besides but I gave up at that point.

One of the Agatha Raisins that was published after MC Beaton died had obviously been left without being properly copy edited. There were clunky “3 word phrases” left in the text that should have been searched and replaced by whatever-it-was that hadn’t been researched or decided. “Expensive French perfume” was the obvious one. Gah! (It wasn’t a very good book to start with).

“Expensive French perfume” was the obvious one.

Though I've read that authors/publishers sometimes do that rather than use actual brand names, because brands can become dated, or even discredited. And you have to know enough about perfume or cars or whatever to choose a brand that's appropriate for the character.

(Though the typical Mills & Boon hero always wore an expensive Rolex.)

Though I've read that authors/publishers sometimes do that rather than use actual brand names, because brands can become dated, or even discredited. And you have to know enough about perfume or cars or whatever to choose a brand that's appropriate for the character

I’ve seen it done deliberately, but not to this extent and not in any of the previous books in the series.

Just think of all the discussion it would have saved if Richard Osman had used 'top end supermarket' instead of Waitrose!

@EastCoastDweller
hey, it's actually the "In Death" series by JDRobb. Hence my username (Eve Dallas is the main character). Police procedurals set in future (2060s) New York. I love them, apart from that one silly mistake.

Yes I have noticed there are a lot more and my spelling and grammar isn’t very good to start with. My Mum who is very good at English notices more than me.

In There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak there is a section set in the 18th century which says that ‘much of the rubbish in the Thames ended up in Oxford’. Well no it wouldn’t unless the Thames mysteriously started to run backwards. I nearly stopped reading at this point which would have been a pity as it’s a very good book.

I've just finished reading a book where the author goes to great lengths to describe the character getting a cold can of soda out of the fridge, and on the next page, sipping at her rapidly cooling coffee.