To get annoyed by a badly written novel with serious factual mistakes

[PhaedraIsMyName]

Author thinks the witness to a crime can decide who the Crown calls as expert witness.

Expert witness is a therapist who was treating the witness to the crime. Expert witness is married to a lawyer. Expert witness has been discussing the background with lawyer husband. The person accused of the crime is the crime scene witness'father. Author thinks the lawyer husband can represent the accused and this is not a conflict.

Lawyer husband is actually employed in a government legal department and author thinks lawyer husband can, whilst still employed, act as a defence lawyer.

It's tosh. Did nobody bother to edit or proof read it?

Is it just me who bothers about stuff like this?

I admit, I am sitting here writing lectures for English Lit undergrads and trying desperately to work out whether I can discuss Buffy in sufficiently elevated tones as to manage to work it in.

I am sure you can. You don't happen to be teaching a course on Sexuality and the Gothic novel?

The sad part is, I suspect as a cultural reference it'll be completely over the heads of this generation

I think you'd be surprised. DD1 is a mere teen and yet thanks to Lovefilm we are almost at the end of Series 6. And I was too old for it first time around. We have no shame.

treaclesoda

I know I was bantering back

We bought a book for my 1-year-old nephew called That's Not My Monkey and in the end couldn't give it to him because there were mostly apes not monkeys in the book.

Can I nominate this for quote of the day on MN?

This thread is brilliant.

Almost as good as Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

ooh WHAT did they get wrong about Wilkie Collins, Remus? (I love him)

My dad nearly headbutted the TV recently when a historical drama (something like Death Comes to Pemberley) had someone say to their spouse "We need to talk about us." Ahahahaha.

fatal - ohhh, yes. I love watching Lewis suddenly shifting from Famous Landmark 1 to Famous Landmark 2 with no sign of having walked the two miles and many dull, unaesthetic streets in between!

cash - thanks for the vote of confidence. I don't happen to be teaching that - I wish I were, it sounds much more fun! Why? Glad to know Buffy may still be intelligible.

I just think it is so good. As are quite a lot of things mentioned on this thread. I do love picking holes in factual errors, but I'd so much rather read/watch something inaccurate but great, than something plodding but technically correct.

Ooh, hello elephants.

Currently reading the decidedly non-fictional What to Expect When You're Expecting. Apparently, at week 16, baby will have a "whopping weight of anywhere from 85-142 kg"

The word whopping being something of an understatement there. I'm only 15 weeks, so I'm starting to get pretty nervous about next week. Nothing like having a fully grown man hang out in your uterus for a week

Hi LRD!

I don't watch much Morse/Lewis, but EVERY event seems to take place in the (private) garden of one of the colleges - think it might be Exeter - which overlooks the Radcliffe Camera. No matter whether the people invovled are from another college, or just wandered off the street or what.

Just thought of another one.

That bit in An American Werewolf in London where the guy gets off the tube at Tottenham Court Road and the werewolf chases him up and down the place before killing him on the escalator? Drives me batshit!

He gets off the northern line train so very near the exit!! . . . all he has to do is go up the stairs and take the escalator and he's out. But OH no, then suddenly he's running down the passage to the central line and . . . argh! It probably wouldn't annoy people so much now as the station probably looks completely different but back in the 80s it was so aggravating if you are a sad git like me

Wow, agh. Really gives special meaning to eating for two.

elephants - yes, and students are all terribly, terribly high-minded and quote poncey texts at every opportunity.

I watch Lewis and always feel that, as someone who lives in Oxford but isn't a member of the university, I should either be a cleaner or a druggie living on a canal boat.

Exactly LRD, and somehow the students are never eating wotsits while watching daytime TV in their pyjamas. They're always beautifully dressed or in sports gear, and only seem to know 1-2 other people in the college.

On a separate note, even further of the point, I always find it funny when someone says "Did [dead person] have any enemies? Anyone who didn't seem to like them?" and people always say "No! Of course not!" I mean - come on. There's always SOMEONE who doesn't like you, not many who go through life without pissing anyone off, ever.

LRD, what's that paleo- jobby you mentioned?

Yes, and they're always in candle-lit halls using the correct knives and forks. Not drinking dodgy red wine out of mugs.

What's what paleo-jobby? The Jill Paton Walsh writing Dorothy Sayers?

Yes, the Jill Paton Walsh one.

Never had the pleasure of seeing Women Talking Dirty but can imagine my eyes rolling out of their sockets at Helena BC living in a million pound flat.

However... as any true Edinburgh pedant knows, it's Ramsay Garden, not Ramsay Gardens.

Don't think anyone's mentioned it - there's a bit in the first Bridget Jones book (which was obviously knocked together in a hurry) where she drives up to the Midlands for the turkey buffet on Boxing Day. Mark Darcy asks her if she wants a lift back to London and she replies no, she already has a train ticket.

I sometimes think I am the only person who has ever spotted that.

Sorry, "palaeography".

I have never noticed that about Bridget Jones! Always assumed it was so she could get pissed, but never thought about the poor car being left there. Although I think it's Hertfordshire or something (isn't it? same as in P&P?), not the midlands, so not very far at all by train.

Well, it's actually a good read, though there's some appalling setting-the-scene dialogue initially. I can be a total pedant, though.

The plot is about a manuscript kept in an Oxford college library. It's from the seventh century, and it's a Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.

We're told there are shitloads of seventh-century Boethius manuscripts kicking around, and this one is only valuable because Alfred the Great might have annotated it (??!). This is a really romaticised view of MS scholarship - it sounds like the 1950s or earlier. Because basically, you care about a manuscript even if someone famous didn't write in it.

I admit, it annoys me that the college librarian has Peter put on cotton gloves to touch it, because they don't do that (the natural oils in your skin are actually good for the manuscripts, and you're more likely to be cack-handed wearing gloves). Though I suppose maybe they did in the past.

But the main thing is, there's someone who thinks they've made a great discovery by noticing that the manuscript gloss is written in different-coloured inks. There's a whole huge plot-point where they use a camera to photograph the page (er ... bollocks would anyone let you use flash, even then) and they see which letters appear first when they put it in developing fluid. They demonstrate some of it is written in darker ink, and this is considered water-tight proof of two different writers.

This is absolute nonsense. It's really obvious - if you hand-make ink, it's going to come out in different colours every time. It's got fuck all to do with who's writing.

Sorry! elephants I wasn't objecting to your terminology, I just couldn't remember the whole thread.

Ah yes, Lewis. Entire episodes of them marching up and down Brasenose Lane

Ok. 'French' characters who say 'allo' instead of bonjour.

Also in Hollywood/ TV tosh foreigners of the same nationality speaking English to each other. It drove me crazy in Revenge- having Olivier Martinez speak English to his daughter accent was torture. His French accent is awful.

In one of David Lodge's earlier books he has identical twins of different gender. In a later book one of the characters is a twin and says something along the lines of "can you believe it, I read a book which has identical twins of different genders".

I have a 2nd hand book in which a pedant has made corrections about types of weapons. One of the corrections has been crossed out as he's corrected himself (I'm assuming it was a man).

Ha LRD - obviously Hewlett Packard hadn't turned up with their patented ink-blackiness-ometer in the scriptorium that day. Bastards.

I'm sure you know this, but I only found out recently that the laws (Acts) are still written on parchment. At least I think it's parchment, because they mention sheep, but the website confuses me by talking about vellum which is surely tiny baby calves isn't it?

Yeah, I think they're confused, and you're right.

I think they way they talk about 'parchment codices (or booklets)' is odd too, because while a codex might refer to something unbound, doesn't it usually mean a book with a binding, not loose leaves?

Cashmiriana Each potential had a Watcher, didn't they? My question would be why, when all the potentials congregated in Sunnydale, were there no middle aged or elderly proto slayers.

(Actually, I know why - not photogenic enough - but I thought that was a plot hole.)

I think they mean they're the same thing LRD. E.g. "Giles, or The Fittest School Librarian of All Time."