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?

No, I still don't see how you can have both your nipples sucked at the same time unless you have peculiar breasts or he has an unfeasibly large mouth.

Big tits, big nipples and a big mouth and it will probably work.

BTW, Phaedra, love the name (fellow Lee Hazelwood fan).

SconeRhymesWithGone hmmmm now I must go back to my novel and change all references to a Texan astronaut to a Texas astronaut ...

And now am very worried about what other Americanisms I'm missing! I'm fine with nouns being different as they're obvious to me, it's the turns of phrase and things like you suggested above that are likely to trip me up

Penelope But if it is a British character saying Texan astronaut, that's ok. But an American will say Texas astronaut.

Another one that crops up from time to time. Where a British person would probably say, "I'm meant to be," an American will say "I'm supposed to be."

There was definitely an episode where the Oz staying down a year thing was explained -- I think he deliberately didn't quite fulfil the requirements to graduate so that he had to repeat his senior year.

Scone it's an American character! TBH the whole thing is tying me up in knots - at first the idea of having some American and some British characters was great in theory, but now I'm also struggling with what language to use in all the filler text as well as it's in third person.

Now off to look at meant and supposed ....

The Internet reckons that it wasn't deliberate but that he just had several Incompletes on his senior classes. He and Willow have a conversation about it at the start of Season 3.

Yy Oz def bollocksed up a year and dripped out then had to retake. Don't you know that?

See, you should never write about what you don't know. That's why Jane Austen never had any scenes that were just men, as she never experienced them.

Apparently Agatha Christie never meant Poirot to go on for so long. She wished she hadn't created him so old in the beginning. In one of her later books there are identical twins who become a boy and a girl of different ages.

I also have a vague memory of reading Robinson Crusoe where he gets shipwrecked, casts off his clothes to swim then gets onto another ship where he fills his pockets with food, but I might have misremembered that.

I think you're right about Robinson Crusoe.

On editing apparently Dame Iris Murdoch wouldn't allow it but her publishers did secretly proof read them and edit out things like fantastical tube journeys on the Jubilee line or catching the Inverness train from Paddington. Not that I've ever got to the end of any novels by her.

I did struggle mightily with one (can't recall which) beyond it had been written by someone who seemed to have no idea about how cars worked. It also featured lengthy unintentionally comic descriptions of characters' clothes written by someone who clearly had no interest in clothes.

I think you're right about Robinson Crusoe.

On editing apparently Dame Iris Murdoch wouldn't allow it but her publishers did secretly proof read them and edit out things like fantastical tube journeys on the Jubilee line or catching the Inverness train from Paddington. Not that I've ever got to the end of any novels by her.

I did struggle mightily with one (can't recall which) beyond it had been written by someone who seemed to have no idea about how cars worked. It also featured lengthy unintentionally comic descriptions of characters' clothes written by someone who clearly had no interest in clothes.

I can have my nipples sucked together I like it.

I had noticed the Bridget Jones car - train thing. It annoyed me.

I read a book recently about a woman who lived in my home town. The author knew nothing about it.

One I've remembered for years.
A man was described as being so efficient he carried a calculator, so he could work out exactly 10% for the tip. I think that just makes him incredibly bad at arithmetic.

ilovesooty Robinson Crusoe builds a raft to bring items back from the ship to the island.

And a raft is what Magwitch would have needed in Great Expectations to get from the prison ship to the shore with irons around his ankle; instead Dickens had him swim!

I gave up on a haunted-house type story without even finishing the first sentence.

"The house was old, old beyond time; for over fifty years it had defied the wind and weather..."

My house is 63 years old.

Phaedra - did you ever read AN Wilson's memoir about Iris Murdoch? She was apparently clueless about a lot of things and was particularly puzzled by the rules to Mornington Crescent, which she could never work out.

Glad it's not just me who spotted the Bridget Jones thing!

Another one - bit dull, but anyway. There's a novel by Paul Torbay where the central character is adopted and he constantly refers to his "foster parents" rather than his "adoptive parents". It really niggled. I couldn't work out why the publisher didn't spot it.

I also squashed my breasts together to test the theory. Definitely possible, not very comfortable.

A good example of a book where nearly everything is wrong is Tom Clancy's "Patriot Games". I dare say he knows his weaponry but aside from that, what the living fuck.

That could still work, though:

"The house was old, old beyond time; for over fifty years it had defied the wind and weather alone since the last of the Fortescue family, who had occupied it for the last eight hundred years at least, had died."

I read a novel a while ago that was set in Sydney Australia. A couple of the characters sat on a beach and watched the sunset into the ocean.
Sydney faces East.

Surely quite apart from the abandoned car Bridget couldn't have caught a train on Boxing Day anyway?

Joss Whedon has a good ear for British dialogue because he spent two years at Winchester in his teens, but there is one awful bit where Giles refers to Wesley as having "as much sense as a blueberry scone". Blueberry muffin, yes, Giles has lived in California for several years now and is allowed to talk about USian things. Or fruit scones if you want to play up the Brit thing. But not blueberry scones. Shame on ASH for letting that past.

Mind you I read an interview with James Masters where he said he'd had helpful dialogue tips from ASH including the gem that actually Brits say "ass" like Americans, not "arse". The letter page was incandescent the next month with people saying, "no we sodding don't".

I thought the Bridget Jones thing was just something she makes up to put him down.

He says "I can get my car to drive you home" or something and she thinks, how pretentious, so she says "No thanks, I will be taking one of my trains in the morning." So I didn't think it was an inconsistency, just something she says to score a point. (And it is Boxing Day so she is talking about the following day should she actually be getting a train)

If I was asked to pronounce the word "ass" I would assume it meant a Donkey and pronounce it so. Even if I thought the context was such that it meant bottom, I would not pronounce it "arse" because "ass" for bottom is not as rude to Americans as "arse" for bottom is for the English. "Ass" is equivalent to "bum" for them. For us "arse" is ruder than bum. So I would be very careful.

treaclesoda

off topic - Oh I do it IRL too, I asked if someone could turn the sun down and was told in no uncertain terms that it was nto that person's fault the sun was so bright.

Back on topic

Yorkshire and Lancashire accents are diffeerent

Re the blueberry scone comment, isn't that the whole point? Blueberry muffin would make sense but not blueberry scone?

Now this is the moment where I lose not that I had any in the first place all credibility and you all laugh at me endlessly.

I always thought Jean Auel was a male French writer...

One thing that I have often noticed about books, films, tv programmes and even the news is that whenever any of them feature something or somewhere I know a lot about they get it wrong.
This has led me to believe that they get everything wrong all the time.