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.

which is DD's terrible horrible no good very bad library book, not diary! I'd shoot her if she were this vapid.

Kanola, the "try and" was spoken - the "seagulls" not.
I do understand that in speech, "could've" sounds like "could of", but the of/should is not something I have seen in books (loads on social media alongside " breath" when "breathe" is meant and many other irritations.

Fwiw I went to a failing inner London school in the 1980s, teachers were mostly terrible, we never learned grammar and my parents were older and had their own education disrupted by the war, so I have dragged my educational abilities up over the years from a low baseline. And before anyone mentions dyslexia, none of my dyslexic friends make the 'common' grammar errors in anything they write.

@WeatherwaxOn

Poor grammar and incorrect terminology annoys me. I've been reading Agatha Christie today and three times I have come across the expression "try and..". Its try to. As in attempt (in the examples I encountered in the text someone was being encouraged to do something, so they should "try to"). Also, "seagull". There is no such bird. There are many species of gull, none called seagull. If in doubt, "gull" is correct.

I wouldn't argue with Agatha Christie or her original editors. I agree with a pp that 'try and', although annoying, is OK left in dialogue – I tend to leave it alone. Also, I wonder if 'seagull' was more usual/acceptable when Christie was writing and being published? With classics, they very often don't get re-edited when being repackaged and put out again, so stuff like this may well just not have got picked up.

I have just finished reading an Australian thriller-type book about a family who move to an abandoned town to start a new life, but then disappear completely.

The back cover of the book is very clear - The Kane family are missing. Which made me wonder why the police officers searching for them the length of the book were looking for the McGuire family on every page.

"seagull" is a perfectly acceptable word. It's a synonym for (one of the meanings of) "gull"; as are "seamew" and (one of the meanings of) "mew".

"Try and..." may be grammatically incorrect, but everyone used it when/where I grew up.

"Try and" was first attested in the 14th century. I can't get worked up about something that's always existed in Modern English.

ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/try-and

@SnoopyLights

I have just finished reading an Australian thriller-type book about a family who move to an abandoned town to start a new life, but then disappear completely.

The back cover of the book is very clear - The Kane family are missing. Which made me wonder why the police officers searching for them the length of the book were looking for the McGuire family on every page.

Probably why the Kanes are still missing!!

A complaint I found on Amazon about mistakes in a book

@Nat6999

Has anyone read the original Chalet School books? They are full of mistakes like in one book Carola goes for a walk with the prefects & gets shown which house is Jo Maynard's but in the chapter before has been at the house visiting her father.

And names change spelling within a sentence, girls end up several years younger than people who were originally in a form below them, the same former CS mistress has two different married surnames, the beloved Matron changes identity and surname, groups of friends are suddenly in a lower form to the one they were in on the previous page, or characters age two or three years in the space of a chapter!

Try and do something?

Sounds like summat they'd yammer on about round here.

The odd error I can cope with. We should instead be lamenting the death of the letter H which does appear to have been taken away and shot if DS1 and his friends are representative of modern children.

I've just finished a book where the character's child has a sleepover and his grandparents' an hour away & the character goes home. The next morning he pops his head in the child's room to check he's still asleep.

Same book refers to the Shar of Iran.

Shuggie Bain (last year's booker prize winner) has the mistake of nurses standing outside smoking several years before they were banned from smoking on the wards.

It put me off the book, being that sloppy with googlable facts and dates.

@Pazuzu

Try and do something?

Sounds like summat they'd yammer on about round here.

The odd error I can cope with. We should instead be lamenting the death of the letter H which does appear to have been taken away and shot if DS1 and his friends are representative of modern children.

It’s still not an error if it’s in dialogue though. If every fictional character spoke in perfectly correct grammar there would be no space for characterisation and the dialogue would feel flat and fake.

Came across a good one in another old crime novel recently. Published in 1974, set in London. Character leaves his office on Wimbledon High Street early afternoon on a working day, hails a cab and is back home in Highgate in 20 minutes. For the benefit of non-Londoners that's not possible now without a blue light on top of your vehicle (pushing it even then) and I doubt very much if it was any different in 1974.

I listened to a Jilly Cooper audiobook recently where a character says "Christ!" in a drawn-out way, which JC writes as "Ker-ist!". The audiobook narrator pronounced it "Keh-rrist!"...

Another one was a 1920s murder mystery series featuring a plucky young heroine where the narrator was American and had got to grips with Brits pronouncing "ass" as "arse", but had unfortunately carried it to such extremes that the said plucky young heroine ended up "tiptoeing down a moonlit parse-ageway"

a moonlit parse-ageway
That reeks of a 'find and replace all' issue.

@IntermittentParps Yes, or whatever the audiobook equivalent would be! A character called Sebastian was also referred to as "Sebarstian", or "Barsty" rather than "Basty".

It's the Daisy Dalrymple series by Carola Dunn - she's actually British but has lived in the US most of her life. Perhaps she didn't get to listen to the recording before it went out

Ah, I hadn't twigged it was audio! Don't know what happened then, except that (generalisation ahoy) American ideas of 'the British accent' can be.. weird.
Google Adam and Joe's 'dog was lost in the fog' feature

I was literally just now reading a Twitter thread about 'misprints' in audio books, started by someone who heard the narrator referring to John Cage's celebrated 4'33" (ie four minutes 33 seconds) as 'four feet 33 inches'

@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 😂

This is why despite reallllly wanting to set my book in America, I’m setting it in England, as I just don’t think I will be able to convincingly write it having never actually spent any time there aside from a trip to Disney world 20 years ago…

I once read a book in which a character commanded an assembled mob to disburse!

He wasn't trying to collect money; the writer meant disperse.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

I once read a book in which a character commanded an assembled mob to disburse!

He wasn't trying to collect money; the writer meant disperse.

Fascinating reading all these comments. I get so annoyed with inaccuracies in fiction that could so easily be checked.
Years ago I read a novel by Ben Elton. He should have known better. The main character was a wheelchair user, in one chapter he was arguing at the ticket booth of South Kensington underground station as to why there was no accessible entrance to the platform. Making it impossible to travel by tube as he couldn't get down the steps to the platform. But the ticket office at South Kensington is down a flight of stairs and there was no explanation of how this wheelchair user got that far.
Wouldn't have been difficult for Ben to travel to DO station and check this out.
I commute to this station every day so this fact really annoyed me.

I recently read a detective book by a very well known author. Part of the plot hinged on one of the detectives checking the 1961 census. I'd love to be able to check it too, but it won't be released till 2061.

[quote SydneyCarton]@IntermittentParps Yes, or whatever the audiobook equivalent would be! A character called Sebastian was also referred to as "Sebarstian", or "Barsty" rather than "Basty".

It's the Daisy Dalrymple series by Carola Dunn - she's actually British but has lived in the US most of her life. Perhaps she didn't get to listen to the recording before it went out [/quote]
I usually fill in detailed questionnaires before mine are recorded but something always slips in! Loo-tenant instead of leftenant for lieutenant caught the US-based team out last time. They don’t usually ask for me to sign off on audio.