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?

Oh, I loved Bugs . It was so gloriously unconcerned by its own ridiculousness.

Sonic sold out big time but if I'd read that error years ago I'D have thrown a hissy fit SGB. I was a Sega fan and Nintendo were the enemy.

I think it's funny that a discussion of tap/faucet has prompted a reference to "elegant variation." If I find the need to refer to a water valve by one or the other of those names, the second reference in the same sentence would be a pronoun, I am fairly sure.

I've just been watching The Muppets Christmas Carol. Scrooge dutifully leans out the window to ask a passing muppet if the prize goose has been sold, and then suddenly starts talking about a turkey, and a turkey appears. Pah!

I loved it when Merlin came out on TV and everyone complained about Gaius wearing glasses, people throwing tomatoes at Merlin in the stocks but were strangely quiet on the topic of the fecking enormous dragon in the basement....

Oh and Orphan Black....where to start....

clones do NOT have identical finger prints....or in fact all look identical except the hair cut.

No!!!!!!!! Do NOT criticise Orphan Black! It's just not allowed.

Clones do not have identical fingerprints?

And they don't look alike?

But...... They're clones!

I did get very annoyed recently about the chairman/CEO of Nike writing a letter about how to pronounce it. And he was Wrong.

So is it to rhyme with 'like' or is it nighkee?

Scone, I mentioned elegant variation in reply to someone who said that they were taught to use lots of synonyms to write well, not specifically about tap/faucet.

Nike, goddess of victory.

According to wiki pronounced [n??k??])(not helpful)

The book which kicked this thread off had a character called Arianrhod.

(a)is that a real name?
(b)if so, how do you pronounce it?

I know, Kitty, but I think it was the tap/faucet issue that first led the thread into a discussion of use of synonyms in writing (that maybe the author of the potty training manual was American and alternating between tap and faucet intentionally). Apologies if I got that wrong.

cashmiriana Tue 29-Jul-14 21:42:00
As an aside, for all those Buffy fans, is there a place on MN where we can indulge our love? Our own little club (the Bronze, obviously) would be great. Even a spare crypt would do...

Ooh, that's good idea cashmiriana! There should be a separate board for all things 'cult' (not the religious kind obviously!)

I've noticed several people have nicknames that reference programmes like Red Dwarf, Sons of Anarchy etc as well and there might be others that I haven't noticed.

Yes, Arianrhod is a real name, in that it's a character in the Mabinogion.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianrhod

Erm, closest I can get to describing it is Arry Ann Rod. (Arry pronounced as in Harry but w/o the H).

Ooh yes please to a Buffy crypt!

obfuskate has it right on Nike. Bit like someone saying "knicker" in a cod French Allo Allo accent - knee-kair. But yes, the company has gone with the traditional schoolboy pronunciation. Which is still acceptable really as was customary usage for ages - there was a girl at my school called Nike and that was how she said it too - but yes, I was being pedantic

I agree with the cult tv/books/games section.
It would be nice to have a female friendly place to talk about Hitchhickers, Red Dwarf etc.

Did someone mention House?

How about him using the cane in the wrong hand, and then in series 4 a physio tells him to use the hand opposite his damaged leg, but he ignores her.

The blog which goes through episodes of House highlighting medical inaccuracies is Polite Dissent It's a delight

Another vote for a cult section - it's so refreshing to be able to have conversations with like-mindeds who are into niche things (and any fan of Red Dwarf is a friend of mine..)

Have been completely unable to get out of bed until I'd read this entire thread...

The slew of ww1 books that have hit the shelves to cash in on mark the centenary have contained some teeth grindingly bad research howlers. The Last Summer by Judith Kinghorn has a non-reservist signing up for the army one day, and being on a train to France about 24 hours later, with no training whatsoever. It demonstrated such a basic lack of understanding about the period that I skimmed the rest of the book (but couldn't help noticing the chunks that had obviously been lifted from Juliet Nicholson's excellent non-fic book The Great Silence...)

IceBeing never mind the glasses and tomatoes, don't get me started on all the dudebros who objected to the presence of Gwen and her family. If you take Arthur to be 5th/6th century, then you have had documented cases Black people settling in Britain for ~500 years by that point. Unlike dragons.

Abs WW1 dross makes my heart sink too. Possibly because the original literature coming out of it is so often so powerful, and those who have written well about it more recently (Barker mainly) have made such efforts to find useful perspective and to be accurate, that there is just no room for crap.

Abs I was thinking something similar recently about all of the books I've read recently that feel like paint-by-numbers Edwardian dramas that always contain the following:

• The feisty rich girl who becomes a suffragette and usually wears trousers
• The poor but lovely boy who dies in the trenches
• The awful wealthy man who becomes a general (or the like - can't think what they're called)
• The awful wealthy woman who is usually foreign

I think I've read at least 3 or 4 different books with these basic plots now. It's so cliched now it's not even funny.