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.

I wish Lidl did home delivery. Maybe they was like a utopia Britain where Lidl delivers.

Can’t be doing with the shopping experience there, it’s like the grocery scanning olympics.

Maybe that was like

The Russians had trenches in WW2 and there was also trenches in the Korean War as my dad spent time in more than one.

Thanks, @Rhannion, yes, they were used in many very famous battles, including the Battle of Kursk- it was an altogether impressive feat, both the digging and the summer victory over the Nazis.

I know for a fact that some authors dislike having errors detected, get angry and defensive, and eventually pretend they knew and were using creative licence (often after angrily insisting that they had been right).😁 Anyway- STET!!!

So sometimes errors get through despite the very best effort of the copyeditors.

@stayathomer

I could understand if it was someone self publishing an ebook I self publish ebooks, read about 30 times throughout the process, have 5 readers and I pay an editor and proof reader. Please please don't make comments like this (am sorry if I sound cranky but this attitude is so prevalent. Just because our books aren't in print and aren't literarily commended doesn't mean they're not quality products). And the reason for mistakes now (it's generally thought) is that the publishers have cordoned on that the only way to make money now is quantity so while they try to keep quality, they're also working with almost impossible turnaround times so they have in some cases a year to promote and get into awards etc

I'm very sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.

By the way it's "cottoned on" not cordoned on.

I can live with the odd typo or punctuation error - its content error which irritates me. Factual errors in science and technology are commonplace from writers who would automatically check geography or historical events in their research and they jar, breaking the spell of the story.

I also find novels set in history where the characters act with fully 21th century middle class liberal values nonsensical. Victorian servant girls raped by the titled master did not get justice with sympathetic policeman believing them, then a male, property owning jury convicting the titled lord. They were generally thrown on the streets and blamed for their own situation.

If writers want to create fantasy there is a whole genre available for making up their own societies and social mores.

I read a book recently where the main character was supposed to be English but the narration (written in 1st person) was so full of Americanisms that I thought it was actually set in America with an American main character until I was a bit further along in the book and realised they were talking about Norwich. It can seem really pedantic and snobby to complain about things like this but it's so jarring when it happens that it really pulls you out of the story and makes the characters stop feeling real.

My favourite bit was when the protagonist buys some chewing gum in a pub and it's cinnamon flavour. I mean, I just don't know where to start with that one 😂

There was one I read a few years ago (can’t think of the name of it now) which was set in the Lake District. The characters went to their local beach and looked out over the North Sea.

Yes. AN Wilson wrote a book set in New Zealand. It was utterly English in its language and presentation and neuroses, to the point of being laughable.

@PlanktonsComputerWife

The Russians had trenches in WW2 and there was also trenches in the Korean War as my dad spent time in more than one.

Thanks, @Rhannion, yes, they were used in many very famous battles, including the Battle of Kursk- it was an altogether impressive feat, both the digging and the summer victory over the Nazis.

For the military history pedants (I am one, so no shade implied!) here is the relevant section from the book. It concerns the backstory of a minor secondary character:

Mr Prior's pain lessened enough that he could start telling me about the man he fell in love with in the trenches: a dark haired charmer called Johnny White, with the chiselled jaw of a Hollywood star and a twinkle in his eye.They had one fraught, romantic, war-torn summer, then were split up. Johnny White was taken to hospital for shellshock.

Now, quite apart from the rather flippant idea that such a setting would be in any way romantic, the mention of trenches and shellshock definitely suggests that the author was thinking of WW1. Though of course, I have to admit I didn't read on to discover if Johnny White and Mr Prior had conducted their romance against the backdrop of the Battle of Kursk.

@HilaryThorpe

I am enjoying The Thursday Murder Club, but am unreasonaby annoyed that it starts in Waitrose in Tunbridge Wells. It doesn't have one. I am disgusted.

Are you, in fact, ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’?

I suspect a joke…

Impoverished housemaid shivering in an attic during WW1. Gets up to investigate strange noise. Pulls on pair of tights.
Jolts into present and stops reading
Don’t care that it’s just light fiction, you have to be able to believe it
Pedantic and proud

Fair enough, @elegy. I do not think your average Soviet soldier likely to have penned the above. What horseshit it is altogether. Twinkling eyes in the trenches? Shades of Lawrence's twinkling buttocks?

@stayathomer

I could understand if it was someone self publishing an ebook I self publish ebooks, read about 30 times throughout the process, have 5 readers and I pay an editor and proof reader. Please please don't make comments like this (am sorry if I sound cranky but this attitude is so prevalent. Just because our books aren't in print and aren't literarily commended doesn't mean they're not quality products). And the reason for mistakes now (it's generally thought) is that the publishers have cordoned on that the only way to make money now is quantity so while they try to keep quality, they're also working with almost impossible turnaround times so they have in some cases a year to promote and get into awards etc

I am more tolerant of errors in self-published books because not everyone will be able to afford professional editing.

The real life (and death) people referred to weren't characters in the book - they were mentioned in a conversation about literary suicides. I am surprised that he made the mistake and that no one picked it up

On realism of names in books,

I think Tiffany and Brittany would be more believable if the characters are American. Singer/actor Tiffany of I Think We're Alone Now fame turned 50 2 months ago.

Caroline was apparently used as a Norman French name and came here with William the Conqueror, so it's not impossible that someone who died of or lived through the Black Death, though it became more common a few centuries later.

A friend has pointed out that families often used all the family names on the oldest children and that by daughters 4 or 5 they were more adventurous. Hence in Pride and Prejudice, the sisters include Elizabeth, Jane and Mary and then the youngest is Lydia. Writing this I did wonder where JA's older sister Cassandra's name came from, but according to Wikipedia she was named after their mother and her middle name was Elizabeth.

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

This irritates me a lot more than it should. Adult women in books set in the present day being called little-girl names like Evie/Ava/Lexi when in reality they’d be called Sarah, Emma etc. another example is Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicholson books, which are written and set in the late 90s/early 00s but feature teenage girls called Pamela, Jackie and Alison. The author herself was a teenager in the 60s and obviously just used the names of her contemporaries.

I'm very sorry, I didn't mean to offend you.

By the way it's "cottoned on" not cordoned on.

Ah my phone must have decided 'cottoned on' didn't suffice! (It just tried to change it again!! )

Oh, and on the subject of names - characters in a historical setting, in fact any time before the 1970s, using Christian names after being acquainted with someone for five minutes.

I’m not sure if this is the kind of mistake you’re talking about but ds has a Postman Pat book where they go looking for the Loch Ness Monster and they refer to Nessie as “he.”

@DameAlyson

Oh, and on the subject of names - characters in a historical setting, in fact any time before the 1970s, using Christian names after being acquainted with someone for five minutes.

Yes! See also: any book set in the 1980s onwards written by an older writer where the staff address each other as Mr Smith and Miss Jones. I was working in offices in London from the early 1980s on and this just didn't happen, except when junior staff were addressing very senior staff for the first time, and in most cases they were then instructed to use first names.

I can’t remember what it was called but I read a book where the main character, born & raised in Cumbria, suddenly talked about turning the faucet off.

Cumbrians don’t use faucet do they? It just seemed very odd… and then there’s the Amelia Peabody series where one Victorian character talks about ‘dropping by’ someone’s house and another says that somebody’s ‘sick at her stomach’.

@Nowisthemonthofmaying

I read a book recently where the main character was supposed to be English but the narration (written in 1st person) was so full of Americanisms that I thought it was actually set in America with an American main character until I was a bit further along in the book and realised they were talking about Norwich. It can seem really pedantic and snobby to complain about things like this but it's so jarring when it happens that it really pulls you out of the story and makes the characters stop feeling real.

My favourite bit was when the protagonist buys some chewing gum in a pub and it's cinnamon flavour. I mean, I just don't know where to start with that one 😂

I'm American, and I read a lot of British fiction. A similar thing often happens with British writers depicting American characters in their books. They use British English constructions or word choice that an American would not use. Of course, Americans who have lived in the UK might pick up a few over time, but first time or occasional visitors would not. And sometimes the Americans will be using language that someone from their region of the US would not. For example, no Southerner will call himself a "Yank."

I agree that it's jarring and pulls you out of the story.

A character described as wearing ‘pants and suspenders’ will conjure very, very different images for readers in the UK and US.

My all time favourite is the book I read set in Tudor England where a chipmunk runs across the Duke of Norfolk’s lawn so he shoots it.

Her research might have been lacking but her characterization was spot on because if there HAD been a chipmunk Norfolk totally would have shot it.