Bookworm by Lucy Mangan

[TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross]

I’m reading this and have just got to the moment which mentions the need for a Ladybird book on Maintaining Your Sanity on Mumsnet Given the Impossibility of Staying Away from Mumsnet.

Lucy: If you are on here, your book is JOYOUS. We have a LOT of childhood reading in common!

I think it’s fine to criticise the error.

Lucy’s editor may well have read TLTWATW long ago and not remembered. Or she/he may have grown up elsewhere and have different childhood books.

It’s ingrained in me because we had all the Chronicles on audiobook, on repeat through childhood. But, whilst I certainly read Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and Charlotte’s Web and all The Famous Five and all the Chalet School books, I absolutely wouldn’t remember them without error.

But you might check if you were going to write a book about them?

Well, that’s when you contact the author and point out the clanger - couldn’t be easier, given SM. Reviewers will also typically note significant errors of fact.

Agree completely. It was as if she'd seen a movie version and hadn't even read the book.
And yes- made me wonder if the rest of Mangan's book was genuine.

Not many people would remember every detail of books they read 20 - 40 years ago. I really don’t think the editor/editors would notice the error, it just wouldn’t be on their radars. They would assume that a Guardian columnist of 20 years has good recall and is being truthful, is my take.

Yes I would!

But I will confidently assert to you that Joey’s triplets are called Len, Con and Margot and I wouldn’t feel I needed to check it. I allow there is a possibility that I have misremembered, but if I was writing about a book, and I felt strongly that I remembered something, I wouldn’t look it up.

I would look up the names of Joey’s other children, because I know I don’t know them.

If you confidently asserted to me that Joey’s next child was called Katharine, I wouldn’t know but I probably would believe you - if I was your editor - as it sounds very plausible.

Good question. Which one of the three ‘singleton’ boys was the eldest? Stephen, Charles and Mike? Followed by the matchymatchy Felix and Felicity, then ‘Second Twins’ Geoff and Phil, and are we including the disappearing Marie-Claire?😀

Genuinely cannot remember (though the rather implausible fecundity rings a bell!)

Stephen, then Chas and then naughty Mike!

And a set of Richardsons, Erica and an assortment of other waifs and strays😂

Reading is an imaginative act especially as a child
Entering whole worlds via reading is the point rather than an exact plot line recounted? Maybe as a child that's what the child reader Lucy experienced?

It's clear from this thread that most of us do remember, @mylovedoesitgood . The editor should have checked.

I am not sure how many books feature in Bookworm, but I assume more than 10. Is it the job of an editor to read all of them?

@SheilaFentiman , I didn't say the editor should have read them. I said the editor should have checked.

How can the editor check without reading the books in question? (Whilst this error is earlyish in the book, I'm assuming that the author alludes to several events in lots of manuscripts that may be early or late in the narrative)

How can an editor, or several, check everything in a book? They don't have the time.

@SheilaFentiman , @mylovedoesitgood , in your browser, type 'Who does Lucy meet when she first goes to Narnia?'.

I'm an editor, and this would be the very least I would do.

You’ve forgotten Cecily the only singleton girl after Felix and Felicity!

Would you do it for every single mention of every single aspect of every single book?

Genuinely interested - how much time do you have per book for this sort of editing (as opposed to sentence structure etc)?

@SheilaFentiman , Yes. It's part of the job.

I wouldn't have needed to check that one because I have read the book a few times, but any error like that will be spotted by many readers, and it diminishes the credibility of the author and the publisher.

A quick google hasn't told me how many books she referenced, but did say that the list at the back of the book of all those she mentions comes to 12 pages. Given the economics of publishing, would you have time to check all of those? Impressive if so!

Look, I don't think it's brilliant that the mistake made it to the final version, but I presume that does happen from time to time. The poster who first raised it took the view that she didn't believe LM had actually read the book, given the mistake, and that seemed an overstatement, on grounds that e all forget things (and honestly, if she was making up books she had read, she probably would only put in plot points verified by google!)

Also an editor, and I have had to argue with an author that the image he was describing was a cheetah, not a leopard.

I didn't win. He had apparently described it as a leopard in several previous works already and didn't want to be inconsistent.

Glad someone else remembered poor overlooked non-twinny Cecil.

@SheilaFentiman , it's called doing a job. It doesn't take that long to check something.

LM probably misremembered, but that is no excuse.

Mistakes happen, and they particularly can happen in books on short schedules where corners have to be cut. Shouldn’t happen, of course, but it does!

@Ddakji , mistakes do happen, but that one is one that shouldn't have happened.