Mistakes in books

[VictoryLap]

Almost every book I've read over the past few years has mistakes in it and it really annoys me! Anyone else?
I could understand if it was someone self publishing an ebook or something but these are Sunday Times Bestsellers etc. And not just one error, but multiple ones throughout.
I don't remember this happening so much several years ago or perhaps I am just more tuned in to it.

@MimiDaisy11

The worst mistake I noticed was in a Hemingway novel which are supposed to be classics so you think would be edited well. A female character who is English says some dialogue referring to herself as Scottish. And it’s not that they meant British instead of English as this character has a friend who is Scottish, and they even make a joke about Scottish people hating English.

Just goes to show that ‘sloppy editing’ was as common back in Hemingway’s days as now.

Classics don’t get changed post-humously. Any ‘mistakes’ like this (not typos etc) stand for eternity!

Could this be a sign of standards slipping in schools?

When it's punctuation, quite possibly.

Sometimes mistakes in titles, police etc are made by American authors and the UK publisher hasn't picked them up. But UK authors are guilty too.

Honestly there is so much wrong with The Dinner Guest that ‘sew his wild oats’ ranks low down on my list of complaints.

The ending makes the introduction of one of the female characters totally nonsensical and I’m still mad about it.

@Scarydinosaurs

Honestly there is so much wrong with The Dinner Guest that ‘sew his wild oats’ ranks low down on my list of complaints.

The ending makes the introduction of one of the female characters totally nonsensical and I’m still mad about it.

Yes!

I felt it was going somewhere about half way through but so much of it was just unbelievable. And not one character had a redeeming feature.

Jumped about all over the place and characters appeared out of nowhere then were never seen again!

Yes!! The idea that the son would have a personality transplant midway through…just ridiculous. All of it made less sense by the time they tied up the endings.

I listened to it rather than read it, so at least the errors didn’t upset me!

There are a lot of proof copies around. If you buy from a charity shop then it's likely it's a proof copy. I don't understand how a decent publisher can allow mistakes like the ones above. There is such a stringent editing process that it seems almost impossible. I would always write to the editor about errors in a paid book.

I don’t think it’s anything new - I have always noticed mistakes in books, since I started reading Enid Blyton, aged four, who is dreadful for it, probably because she churned out so many. I think it’s hard to find any book without at least one mistake.

I just finished The City We Became, which annoyed me by having a British character speak like Spike from Buffy (ie like no Londoner I have ever heard) and throw “pound notes” when the book is set in the present day. It annoyed me more because the intro made a big thing about all the sensitivity consultants the author had apparently employed to make sure she represented all cultures fairly. ( that’s a bit tongue in cheek, I do recognise getting British culture wrong is not the same as stereotyping, say, Native American culture.)
.

Enid Blyton.... is dreadful for it, probably because she churned out so many.

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, of the Chalet School, is known for her continuity errors. But she wrote so many books, over such a long period, often at the rate of two, three or four a year. Keeping track must have been virtually impossible.

One of the things that irks me is when an author picks names for characters which are utterly wrong for the time. I read a crime novel recently which was published in the late 1980s and featured a group of teenage boys, born in the early 70s, and the names included Len and Norman. Those names would have been very old-fashioned when I was a child and I am well over 10 years older than the characters. The author was thinking of names that were in use when he was a boy, I think, before WW2.

One of the things that irks me is when an author picks names for characters which are utterly wrong for the time.

Oh yes. Historical romance authors are especially prone to doing this. Or giving characters names that are quite wrong for their social background. An English aristocrat with an Irish name, for example.

I think it’s hard to find any book without at least one mistake.

I think it’s genuinely impossible. And people who work in publishing are pretty inured to it!

Yes! The names! When people of different generations have the same "type" of names. Like the mum and daughter being Tiffany and Brittany. When the mum should be Linda because nobody aged 50 is called Tiffany

I work in publishing - please do send them in! Often we work at such breakneck speed there these things slip though, and the people who work on the editorial side of things are looking after 20+ books at a time, it’s inevitable things get missed…

Yes yes to names! Two recent, literary, highly-acclaimed historical novels spring to mind: Blood and Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, set in the late eighteenth century with a character called Marilyn, and Hurdy-Gurdy by Christopher Wilson, a jolly yarn of the Black Death featuring the Widow Caroline. I can’t take a book seriously with an error like that.

I was reading a biography of someone who is autistic and there were two mistakes in it. It must drive the subject of the book crazy.

@Florabritannica

Yes yes to names! Two recent, literary, highly-acclaimed historical novels spring to mind: Blood and Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, set in the late eighteenth century with a character called Marilyn, and Hurdy-Gurdy by Christopher Wilson, a jolly yarn of the Black Death featuring the Widow Caroline. I can’t take a book seriously with an error like that.

Wikipedia says first recorded instance of Marilyn is 1510? Most popular 1920s onwards but absolutely not unheard of in late 18c.

Caroline - yeah, fair enough! But, OTOH, I’m not sure you’re supposed to take that book seriously, so…

One of the many things I love about my kindle is that I can report every single content error. I find it greatly satisfying. I've no idea if anyone ever reads them, but at least I feel I've done what I can.

Completely agree with PPs: the wrong names for the period and the jarring Americanisms from English/Scottish people. If you are an American who writes a book set in the UK, surely you should ask a British person to at least scan the dialogue.

@NoSquirrels I am a boring pedant but I’d love to see some examples of Marilyn from the late eighteenth century.
Point taken about Hurdy Gurdy, but still…

@VictoryLap

The most recent mistake in the book I'm currently reading (The Dinner Guest) is that they say "sewed his wild oats"

There were a few other errors earlier in the book but I've erased them from my memory.

There must be some quick way of alerting authors or publishing houses to these things.

hilarious 😂

I downloaded the sample chapter of The Flatshare, and was enjoying it well enough until I got to a bit about the hero (who works in a care home) helping one of the elderly residents trace someone he knew in the war. Apparently they had served in the trenches together, which came as a shock to me and made me wonder if I'd missed the book being set in the 1980s or something, as no one in a care home these days would have been old enough to serve in WW1...

Nope, apparently she meant WW2. A fast moving war in multiple theatres with no trenches. How did no one pick that up?

(I didn't buy the whole book.)

The Dinner Guest had me constantly ranting. I’ve never read a book with so many errors. Ages and dates changing as well as typos. I started to think I was being trolled by the library I’d borrowed it from or something.

In journalism, as mentioned above, the mistakes are because sub-editor roles have been slashed almost everywhere and most get their journos to proof their own stories. They become word blind after a while, and they have targets (sometimes up to 10 stories a day) so I forgive that.

Books wise, yes, I have noticed it. Random ? in the middle of words, random misspelt words. Once I saw a name that had never appeared before and never appeared again – I assume a character name change.

I quite like spotting them tbh.

A book set in Stalin’s USSR had a plot line involving someone paying school fees. Mind boggling.

I work in publishing - please do send them in! Often we work at such breakneck speed there these things slip though

Would that be an acceptable excuse in any other industry? Imagine it - 'your new fridge might not work properly because we're too busy at the factory to quality check them - please just let us know.' 'The interest on your mortgage might be wrong because we're short staffed at the bank - just let us know.'

Your industry shouldn't be relying on readers to do its work for it. If you are over-stretched, whoever is in charge needs to hire more people. Proof-reading can be done from home, so no excuse not to,

@ArblemarzipanTFruitcake

I work in publishing - please do send them in! Often we work at such breakneck speed there these things slip though

Would that be an acceptable excuse in any other industry? Imagine it - 'your new fridge might not work properly because we're too busy at the factory to quality check them - please just let us know.' 'The interest on your mortgage might be wrong because we're short staffed at the bank - just let us know.'

Your industry shouldn't be relying on readers to do its work for it. If you are over-stretched, whoever is in charge needs to hire more people. Proof-reading can be done from home, so no excuse not to,

Please tell my bosses that- it’s not up to me! Plus no one is going to die if there’s a typo or error in a book. We take in confidence what an author supplies and catch what we can. It’s not an exact science.