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?

purplemeggie Mon 28-Jul-14 06:50:48
kungfu -less grating errors? Shouldn't that be fewer? wink

Well spotted! I started to type something else, and then changed it. I hate the less/fewer error, as well. Although I did recently type a sentence and then sit staring at it for an inordinate amount of time, because I couldn't work out the less/fewer thing in that particular context. It felt like it should be 'less' in that construction, but would ordinarily be 'fewer.' I changed the sentence altogether eventually. [grammatical cop-out emoticon]

Like crushedparsley it's continuity errors that do it for me. The amount of times I've flicked back as i thought I've misread something only to find the author definitely said something contradictory two chapters before. No to introducing siblings when the author has categorically described someone as an only child. No to changing ages half way through. Just No!

Regarding factual errors...there was one book where an alcoholic character was supping up drinks before afternoon closing in a pub but the book was set in the UK in the 90s and the licensing laws changed in the 80s.

Oh but I like Kate Morton's books though!

Oh and as for Judge John deed interefering, what about the main character in Silent Witness? Has a pathologist ever decided to get involved in police investigations, tracking witnesses down etc?

I can always just use the Dr Who explanation of wobbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.....

wibbily-wobbily timey-wimey

Cooks making American biscuits in Regency/Victorian/actually any British time frame pisses me off.

Sarah Lark's Land of the Long White Cloud novels are hilarious. The river Avon running from Lyttleton to Christchurch? Clanger after clanger after clanger.

A pet peeve of mine isn't an error as such but just something that grates on my nerves: the fact it is seemingly impossible to have any book or tv series or movie that is set in or around 1912 without someone dying on the Titanic.

I worked in a London pub in 1990 and we still had afternoon closing. Some just kept it on for a while, also it was still law on Sundays for ages after the law changed for the rest of the week.

Quote "(children in the wrong year for their age, year 7s in primary school etc)"

Brian, in the Scottish education system, P7 is the final year in primary school. We don't have a Reception class just P1-P7.

I'm not too pedantic either, but tatties and zippers in medieval stories annoy me too.

Not medieval, but I tried Susannah Dunn once, Awful!

She explains that she prefers to use modern language and names, but young Tudor ladies saying they were at school together and calling their parents Mum and Dad?

A poster mentioned something about it being ridiculous that a Year 7 child would still be in Primary School. Here in Scotland kids leave Primary after P7, usually at age 12, so not ridiculous.

Oops XPost with Tabby!

I was so annoyed at a mistake I found in a very complicated novel that I had waded through that I wrote to the author and pointed it out.

The mistake was putting the heroine's maiden name on her tombstone, a vital part of the plot, instead of her married surname which she had for many years.

In due course I received a letter from the author thanking me for pointing it out and admitting that she had never considered the fact that the surname would have changed on marriage. She also sent me a copy of her next book which was equally confusing so I gave up on it.

I don't think I've ever stopped reading a book because of this, but it is annoying!

Most recently, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Really enjoyed it. BUT....Welsh children do not use 'taking a piss' for joking, it is 'taking the piss' FFS! TWICE this was used, and twice it annoyed me . Similar to Audrey Niffeneggar second book, can't remember the name, where raccoons knock over a bin. In London. Hampstead IIRC.

I also didn't like the language used in Miss Peregrine's...there is an element of time travel to it where some children are caught in a time loop in 1940. They all talk like kids now .

One book I remember reading as well where the author made a great point of her having a blue passport as she was a diplomat rather than the normal red one. But the book was set in the 1940s! I remember seeing my mum's old passport; it wasn't that long ago that we started using red ones.

I liked the The House at Riverton though and don't remember any glaring inaccuracies. Although, maybe it's just because for the most part, I enjoy history but am not great with dates!

I have moaned to so many people about this, bit the pivotal 'clue' to solve a mystery through a series of 4 books turned out to be that old Brown eyed parents can't have a blue eyed baby bollocks.

I am awful at biology and even I know that's not true! I was so incredibly annoyed.

Interestingly, drudge, in certain parts of Scotland women are buried in their maiden names (eg Elspeth McDonald, wife of Hamish McTavish) so that could be cultural. It certainly makes genealogy easier...

I had to proofread an American trashy romance that involved the main couple being shipwrecked on an uninhabited island in the Maldives. The whole thing was very improbable, but what really grated was, after they had been rescued (swept into the sea by the Boxing Day tsunami and picked up by a fishing boat, natch), the police in Male, capital of the Maldives, bring the starving couple tacos to eat. Tacos! Though I could be wrong and Male could have a thriving Mexican takeaway business. I flagged this up as something for the editors to change, not sure if they ever did (often it's not worth it on cheap buy-in titles).

I remember seeing my mum's old passport; it wasn't that long ago that we started using red ones.

My first passport was blue (no idea where it is now) that was 1983 so it would have been valid until 1993 and I don't think the red ones were even thought of.

Anh just thought of one - burning witches. Well technically burning witches in England, I believe they were burned in Scotland and I have no idea about Wales, NI or Ireland but witches in England were never burned - that was heretics.

I remember reading a book once where the (American) characters had trouble watching 'Billy Elliot' because of the "Scottish" accents.

The Liars Gospel. An alternative telling of the Jesus story. Fine until the scene where women prepare food; chickpeas, peppers and a dish of roasted tomatoes.

It may be traditional Middle eastern food now, but it's only been so since the Conquistadors brought tomatoes back from South America

Oh I don't know, kungfupannda, I got quite concerned about Richard Hannay on his flight across the heather.

But I was a hardcore traveller myself at the time, and excretory logistics were well up there on my planning list.

Someone two pages ago mentioned Deborah Harkness..... ARGH! that book gave me the rage. It started off reasonably well and then turned into a pathetic Twilight love story.

Anyway can't remember the title but a few years ago I read (or started to read) a book set in Renaissance Italy, where a girl finds herself pregnant after sleeping with the artist who was painting her portrait. I seem to remember it was loosely based on the story of Filippo Lippi and the girl was a nun.

she goes into labour and the scene veers into a line by line description of giving birth as found in any modern pregnancy book. Down to the fact that she felt her contractions increasing until they were every two minutes.

Love the thread btw. The outrage at the fire starting glasses was fab.

What's wrong with that?

It's a physical process, would it have been very different?

I read a book recently by a British author who had an American character saying things like "a Texan senator." Americans would say "a Texas senator."
We use the state name as an adjective, but we would say, "he is a Texan." This sort of thing is indeed a minefield.

It's a physical process, would it have been very different?

Not easy to time contractions without a watch/stop watch.