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?

YADNBU! I really, really hate when authors haven't done a lick of research. I once read a book where a character drove at high speed from Devon to Dublin. I assume there was just a conveniently timed ferry waiting at Holyhead, or something...

Depends what stage it was. If he'd meant it in the context of the actual tournament we've just had they don't go to penalties in the group qualifying stage.

Is it just me who bothers about stuff like this?

Nope, drives me crazy too.

I tried reading 'clear and present danger', so many error.

No Mr Clancy we do not have the same rules in UK hospitals, people are not put ina wheelchair and wheeled to the front door.

And driving through London on a Christmas morning, nope you will not fine loads of people getting bread, as for catching a ferry?!!!

That's when I stopped reading.

I'm like this with the TV too.

The odd bit I can understand, and sometimes if it is clearly for artistic interpretation eg in the film of 'in the name of the father' where the solicitor is reading out evidence in the court - fairly sure that would be a barrister but I can understand it in more in a film but it still annoys me.

I have just read a book including people with CJD ( mad cow disease though I hate that term) and their symptoms weren't right and it really annoyed me!

I find Jodi Picoult a horribly lazy and trashy writer.

There was one of hers which had a character flashback to the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, where the Scots marched under the Union Jack.

Put it down then and there.

She is also guilty of horridly clunky British dialect, which just reads completely wrongly to a Brit.

I still haven't got over the one I read recently where a mother living in the dark ages was lovingly peeling potatoes for her sons.

Potatoes seem to be a big problem for novice historical novelists setting their stories in medieval Europe. Coffee is another New World food that appears inappropriately from time to time.

This wasn't a novel,but I sometimes download childrens books to my Kindle,so I can read something new to children when babysitting. I downloaded a book about wildlife of Africa,and the author had written a chapter about tigers.

Ok, can I be really geeky? Good.

I mostly enjoy Jill Paton Walsh's continuations of Dorothy Sayers' Whimsey novels and the last one is good.

But, the plot relies on a detail of medieval palaeography that is completely implausible. What's worse, it's not actually specialist knowledge, just sloppy thinking.

Love the peeling potatoes. Reminds me of Jean Auel, who sets her prehistoric novels somewhere in what would be modern-day France, but has everyone merrily eating North American animals and plants. Well, I suppose they might have migrated?

Oooh I've got one. I used to love Maeve Binchy, I grew up on her books and my mum loved them too. Then they got progressively sillier and I didn't mind that for a bit, as they still had that familiar feel...

Then I picked up the one set on a Greek Island somewhere where a tragedy takes place in the first act. There is a funeral, much weeping and wailing and a German tourist has taken it upon herself to teach the local children to sing "the lovely German hymn, O Tannenbaum" at the funeral.

Either she had sneakily written it so the German tourist had planned a massive pisstake or Maeve Binchy genuinely thought it was appropriate to sing about Christmas trees at a funeral.

Cash your story reminds me of a related pet-hate of mine in books...continuity errors. Once read a book with a glaring continuity error where someone was suddenly randomly in a car. Must not have just been me as someone had irately written "What car?!".

The biggest issue with the Jean Auel books is that she gives so many characters blue eyes and blonde hair.

Apparently, blue eyes were more common amongst prehistoric people than used to be thought. But I don't think with blond hair (or infallibly irritating songs!).

And then there are the clothes. Women wearing panties/knickers when they didn't in that time period; Scottish highlanders gallivanting about in kilts with buckles, etc. in the middle ages.

And my personal favorite: one in which a medieval lady got her zipper caught in something--and it wasn't a time travel one.

YANBU.
I read something by I think Patrick Gale who according to the blurb on another book writes women well or somesuch.

The lead character is a girl who gets a period and goes swimming. All well and good but then she tries tampons for the first time later on in the book.

Just felt that was a basic detail and didn't read any further. Nor have I read any more of his books.

A zipper? Seriously?

My dad cannot stand Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes as he maintains the way she boiled a kettle on a peat fire was completely impossible and wouldn't have been made like that during that time. Put me off it after that.

The peeling potatoes one sounds familiar, what was that?

I read two books, one after the other. One had a peasant grinding horse chestnut flour in England the 13 th century and the next had the Tradescants introducing the Horse Chestnut to England in the 16th century. Well one of them had to be wrong.

Milk Yes, seriously. It was years ago, pre-kindle, one of my step-mother's huge cache of old paperbacks.

I got a book out of the library once and every time it said should of someone had crossed out of and wrote have. I did chuckle.

Horse Chestnuts are the Tradescants. Also, they'd make revolting flour. I reckon the other author meant sweet chesnuts.

Also, I have been on MN too long, because I think I remember you posting this before?

I love the zipper one.

Well done LRD I think I did. Still gets my goat obviously.

I love historical fiction, and though I have a degree in British history, I am not a complete pedant and can handle some historical inaccuracies (I watched the whole of the Tudors), but it's the details that really bother me. OK, so Henry VIII had a sister named Margaret who married the King of Portugal and then married Charles Brandon, but at least make sure that what they wear and eat is authentic.

The clothes, the clothes - yes that one gets me.

Watching penny dreadful with a friend, I can put my belief aside for vampires, werewolves and Dr Frankenstein making more than one monster - but the clothes! Little girls did not have printed polyester/polycotton pinnies.

Street children did not have clean hair and boots, they probably had bare feet.

And the way they address each other, no she would not be Miss Vanessa Ives, she wold be Miss Ives and you would not be addressing her as Vanessa on second meeting even if you are hunting vampires.

one of the Robert Galbraith books has Strike watching live premiership football match on a portable tv at 3pm on Saturday.

just wouldn't happen. no matches are shown live at 3 and premiership matches shown live are either before or after 3pm.

The House at Riverton. Too many to list. Written by an Australian with a poor grasp of history and period.