Just for fun I went back and checked
Code Girls, and it also has some "context" in terms of dialogue and thoughts. The author provides an Author's Note at the beginning, though, detailing her reliance on interviews, recorded oral histories, documents, etc. And she indicates that she includes dialogue only when it was related to her by someone who was present, or included in one of the oral histories. So I would think quite possibly, the same is true of thoughts that she included - that she has an interview or an oral history where the person involved says that is what they thought? I can quite imagine someone saying "I thought he was a little crazy" in an interview, or "John smiled and said to go ahead with the plan" or things like that.
When I look at
Smashed Codes, there is quite an extensive bibliography at the end, including interviews, letters, and lots of other documents. I agree that a tilted head is unlikely to come up in conversation, unless as someone's persistent mannerism, and can't say anything about the frequency of use of "smashed codes" in the text, but is is possible that there is some basis underpinning some of the other stuff? In a scholarly paper, I'd expect to see things like that footnoted, but these are not scholarly papers.
Just wondering...
Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I'm not astrangerhere, but I didn't think it very good either. It's been a while since I read it, but the biggest flaw was the fictionalizing; it described people's actions in a fictional context that has no factual support - people smiling or tilting their heads and so forth, and, far worst of all, characterizing their thoughts. In addition, the author was prone to engage in hyperbole that got tired; the "smashed codes" of the title was done to death.
|