Quote:
Originally Posted by Lutraa
No apparent fact-checking resulting in egregious errors.
Authors who include lots of description but who don't bother researching and fact-checking really piss me off. Unfortunately for me, I will often forgive the first few such errors, only to see them accumulate as I get deeper into the book. Like many readers, it can be hard for me to let go once I'm more than a chapter or two into the book.
Current case in point: I'm reading the first book in the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley. So far he's got the sun rising particularly early in the morning due to summer time (AKA daylight savings time in the US) -- wrong, these seasonal time zone changes shift daylight into the evening, resulting in later sunrises. Then there's an architectural history error: the house the de Luces dwell in is the successor to an Elizabethan one burnt down by a pro-Catholic mob. The current house is Georgian. The implication is that the house burning took place around 1720 or later (start of the Georgian period), yet there was little in the way of pro-Catholic uprising in England by then. It was far more concentrated a century or more earlier (e.g. gunpowder plot).
Other authors have plants blooming at the wrong time of year, or growing in places they don't exist. Or anachronisms like devices and foods unknown to the period they are writing about (potatoes in 15th century Europe). Or women behaving in ways that just weren't part of their social reality. I'm a feminist but that doesn't mean I think my 23rd great grandmother in medieval Ireland saw herself as possessing individual rights equal to those of her male relatives or the clergy.
If you are going to include detailed descriptions and your book is general fiction, not sci-fi or fantasy, please research your geographical, historical, and sociological settings. Errors in these aspects lead me to believe you are a sloppy writer, with too little editorial support. With so many books to read and so little time, I am not patient with writers who don't want to bother getting their facts straight. I am correspondingly impressed with sci-fi and fantasy writing where the author has created and maintained a reality that is internally consistent where it breaks with the facts of my own reality. This shows a level of discipline that inclines me to invest time getting to know the book's reality.
|
Interesting. I probably wouldn't notice the plants that much or even daylight savings time
I am pretty sure there have been feminists long before Ireland entered the medieval period. I am sure they didn't see themselves as having the same rights, but I am equally sure that many women thought they should have those rights, just as today there are still many women who believe that women should not have any rights.
I liked the first Flavia de Luce mystery, but it never occurred to me that it was meant as a historical work. Light entertainment was what I expected and what I got. Give me wit and humor over historical accuracy any day, but I can understand why you would feel outraged if you thought it was a history book, especially if it was as riddled with such errors as you imply. Speaking for myself I have no problem with the authors altering the facts to suit the story, but when I find a books with a great story and accuracy on other times and cultures as well, I appreciate it twofold.
Helen