The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[issybird]

Using "high tea" to describe afternoon tea. It's worse in a British author who really should know better (as in my current read), but whatever the nationality it shows that someone didn't do his research/isn't all that familiar with the situation he's writing about.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Yes, but I didn't expect anyone else to mention the name of it.

EDIT: I am not changing it unless a moderator asks me to.

Sometimes it's a public service!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Yes, but I didn't expect anyone else to mention the name of it.

EDIT: I am not changing it unless a moderator asks me to.

Would you be happy if I put up spoilers for a book you want to read and refused to put them in a spoiler tag?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

Using "high tea" to describe afternoon tea. It's worse in a British author who really should know better (as in my current read), but whatever the nationality it shows that someone didn't do his research/isn't all that familiar with the situation he's writing about.

Mad. A British author that's very young might not know better as "High Tea" and "afternoon tea" are maybe slightly obsolete. I'm not behind in saying Wikipedia can be very inaccurate, but I'd agree with most of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_(meal)#Afternoon_tea
However such things are regional in the British Isles and even in England usage may differ between South West (Devon & Cornwall), Home Counties, Midlands, Yorkshire and Northumberland.
N.I. would be different East and West of the River Bann. I've encountered considerable difference between friends from Inverness and Glasgow (Scotland). High Tea and Afternoon tea are to me English institutions, but even to me Afternoon Tea is a snack you have out (and maybe in 1950s) and High Tea is later meal. But I've not heard the usage of either for maybe 45 years in daily life, only in older books maybe 50 to 100 years old. However likely certain classes of English in the South of England do it.

It's an odd thing to get wrong in a historical novel set 1900s to 1970 and maybe a strange thing to have in a contemporary novel, but I've got a bit out of touch with English people about 30 years ago.

Edit
Nowadays if out in the afternoon, you might say, "lets go for coffee", even if everyone drinks tea). My part of the world growing up had Lunch or Dinner at 1pm depending on size and teatime was the meal at about 6pm. But a posh evening meal was a dinner. Still is. Afternoon Tea and High Tea was something in books or the English had.
Growing up and as a young adult I only heard N.I. Unionists and in GB, only "people of colour" call themselves British. But the Unionists would often mysteriously be Irish if in Spain etc. GB people called themselves Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, English, Brummies (Birmingham), Yorkshire men. Almost never British. British for many for last 500 years was a synonym for Westminster, Empire or English. Elizabeth I decided England would be British at the suggestion of John Dee. It acquired the modern meaning from then on. It was because the Welsh had someone that claimed to have discovered the Americas and She wanted a prior claim in the French court! Though many in the English Court did have Welsh connections the title "Prince of Wales" is an English fiction and the recent QEII was QE1 of Scoctlant (see James).

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Would you be happy if I put up spoilers for a book you want to read and refused to put them in a spoiler tag?

I've been spoiled before, so eh.

Would say is a risk you take when you're hanging out in a forum about reading.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's an odd thing to get wrong in a historical novel set 1900s to 1970 and maybe a strange thing to have in a contemporary novel, but I've got a bit out of touch with English people about 30 years ago.

The novel's set in 1940 and the author was born in 1952 and has a Ph.D. in history. No excuse.

I know better and I'm younger and Yank.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Would you be happy if I put up spoilers for a book you want to read and refused to put them in a spoiler tag?

Depends on the book!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Would you be happy if I put up spoilers for a book you want to read and refused to put them in a spoiler tag?

I'd guess that the number of people who had serious plans to read this 20-year old novel in the immediate future and now it's ruined is nil. Obsessing about this for those who had longer-term, perhaps nebulous plans to read it is pretty much ensuring that they won't forget.

Actually, I have a certain sympathy for your position as I don't like being spoiled myself. But it happens, especially on social media concerned with reading. So long as it's not gratuitous or deliberate



you might as well get over it. In any case, a politely worded request might be more effective than a demand. Catching more flies with honey, etc.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

No, no, he might have a point. I was waiting in the queue to watch William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (the DiCaprio one) and remarked to my friend about

Spoiler:

them both dying in the end.

My friend was extremely cross. And I don't think she was joking.

I have to wonder about anyone who managed to get out of high school without having noticed that Romeo & Juliet was a tragedy.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I have to wonder about anyone who managed to get out of high school without having noticed that Romeo & Juliet was a tragedy.

That's why I didn't think twice about what I was saying. I thought Shakespeare and R+J in particular were so pervasive in Western culture (I'm in the UK) that even if you'd never read/seen it you'd know the very rough outline of the story at least. More than any of his other plays I would have thought. So now I try to be a bit more discreet about opening my big mouth. Obviously I failed here...

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I have to wonder about anyone who managed to get out of high school without having noticed that Romeo & Juliet was a tragedy.

Maybe they were aliens or slept through High School / Secondary School.
There are light hearted Shakespeare Plays that end happily, but the tragedies are usually subtitled such. Some stories such as King Lear have better endings in the sources. I think Nahum Tate's version is truer to the sources.

BTW, Julius Caesar gets assassinated. Cleopatra Dies. Macbeth doesn't go well for most of the characters (I like the Pratchett version).

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Yes, but I didn't expect anyone else to mention the name of it.

EDIT: I am not changing it unless a moderator asks me to.

Don't worry about it.

He routinely refuses to correct serious errors of fact.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

The novel's set in 1940 and the author was born in 1952 and has a Ph.D. in history. No excuse.

I know better and I'm younger and Yank.

OK, so High Teas and Afternoon Teas were real things in 1940 and still was very much when the author was a teenager. Weird. Is the Author trying to troll the Reader? Or grew up in some strange rural hamlet (maybe in Norfolk )

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I have to wonder about anyone who managed to get out of high school without having noticed that Romeo & Juliet was a tragedy.

I imagine some people could mistake it for a comedy.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I have to wonder about anyone who managed to get out of high school without having noticed that Romeo & Juliet was a tragedy.

I just read a funny James Thurber story, The Macbeth Murder Mystery. This synopsis is kinda crummy, surprising from The New Yorker. But you get the idea anyway:

The writer meet an American lady while he is staying at a hotel in the English lake country. She tells him she purchased a Penguin book called "The Tragedy of Macbeth", thinking it was a detective story, and was chagrined to find it was a Shakespeare play. She read it us there was nothing else to read, one night. She says that the real murderer was Duncan, not Macbeth or Lady Macbeth. The writer is amazed. He reads the play again himself but comes up with another solution.