Content How many X-ray mistaken identities can you find in your books?

[j.p.s]

I'm coming across quite a few mistaken identifications in X-ray entries in books bought from Amazon. For example, in Quiet: The Power of Introverts... by Susan Cain, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the book is listed as Benjamin Franklin and the driver that kicked Rosa Parks off a bus in 1955 is listed as a tennis player born in 1979. In SPQR by Mary Beard, both Julius Caesar and the emperor Augustus are lumped together as Caligula, and Cicero is listed as his younger brother.

Most of these errors, such as for FDR and the bus driver, are easy to fix, even for DRM infected books. Splitting the Caligula listings into separate listings for Julius Caesar and Augustus would be tedious, but once done, the fix would be quick and easy for anyone else with the book. I would like for this thread to be a collection point for these errors so that an organized set of corrections can be made freely available for download in a separate thread and/or wiki page and a git repository. A key component of the X-ray system is an sqlite3 database. It is very easy to construct an SQL statement that fixes the error.

Ideally, a report would consist of:
Title (not completely necessary)
Author (even less necessary)
ASIN (essential)
Name in book
Name in X-ray
X-ray entity number (value in entity column in entity description table)
Suggested source for description

However, I would like to encourage partial reports by people who spot errors but are unable or unwilling to make a complete report to make a partial report in the hope that someone else with the same book will supply the missing details. And I do request that even for complete reports that someone else with the same book confirm the details of the report.

So a report could be as simple as:
"In Quiet by Susan Cain, Franklin Roosevelt is misidentified as Benjamin Franklin"
or as complete as:
Title: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That ...
Author: Susan Cain
ASIN: B004J4WNL2

Name in book: Franklin (Roosevelt)
Name in X-ray: Benjamin Franklin (implied by description)
X-ray entity number: 9
Suggested source for description: Wikipedia

Name in book: James Blake
Name in X-ray: James Riley Blake
X-ray entity number: 103
Suggested source for description: Wikipedia

Super duper extra credit brownie points for the SQL to fix, such as:

/* XRAY mistaken identity fixes for B004J4WNL2
  "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That ..."
*/
-- Was Shelfari entry for Benjamin Franklin!
UPDATE "entity_description" SET text="Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 - April 12, 1945), commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century. He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression and World War II. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, realigning American politics into the Fifth Party System and defining American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century. He is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt was born in 1882 to an old, prominent Dutch-American family from Dutchess County, New York and attended Groton School. He went on to graduate from Harvard College in 1903 and attended Columbia Law School. At age 23 in 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, and the couple went on to have six children.", source=1 where entity = 9;
-- Was for: James Riley Blake b. 1979, American professional tennis player...
UPDATE "entity_description" SET text="James F. Blake (April 14, 1912 - March 21, 2002) was the bus driver who Rosa Parks defied in 1955, prompting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.", source=1 where entity = 103;

[j.p.s]

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez

Name in book: Island
Description in XRAY: "Atafu atoll in Tokelau A small Fijian island..."
Description: "Hispaniola, the location of the Dominican Republic."

Name in book: Bellevue Hospital, NYC, USA
Name in XRAY: Bellevue, city in Washington State, USA

Name in book: buenos dias (Spanish for "Good morning")
Description in XRAY: "Buenos Días a Todos (or Good Morning EE
veryone in English) is a Chilean television morning show which has aired on Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) since 9 March 1992."

[j.p.s]

"Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach

entity 6, Ronca
Description in XRAY: "Ronc�| is a comune (lumpfish) in the Province of Verona in the Italian region Veneto."
Description: "April Ronca, Associate Professor, Wake Forest University"

entity 20, Jon Clark
Description in XRAY: "Alan Jon Clark (born 22 September 1959) is a South African businessman."
Description: "Jon Clark is a space physiology expert."

entity 28, John Charles
Description in XRAY: "William John Charles, CBE (27 December 1931 �~@~S 21 February 2004) was a Welsh international footballer."
Description: "John Charles is a physiologist at the NASA Johnson Space Center."

entity 46, Ralph Harvey
Description in XRAY: "Ralph Harvey (Aug 9, 1901 – Nov 7, 1991) was a U.S. Representative from Indiana."
Description: "Ralph Harvey, planetary geologist, Case Western Reserve"

entity 67, Edwin Murphy
Description in XRAY: "Edwin Greenslade Murphy (also known as Dryblower Murphy or simply Dryblower; 12 December 1866 �~@~S 9 March 1939) was an Australian journalist and poet.
Description: "Edwin Murphy researches nutrition."

entity 88, Dennis Carter
Description in XRAY: "Dennis Malone Carter (c. 1820 - 1881) was an Irish-American painter."
Description: "Dennis Carter is a Professor Emeritus in Bioengineering at Stanford University."

entity 125, O'Hara
Description in XRAY: "O'Hara is an Anglicized form of the Irish name �~S hEaghra."
Description: "May O'Hara, Air Force dietitian"

entity 163, Art Thompson
Description in XRAY: "Arthur J. Thompson was a Major League Baseball pitcher in 1884."
Description: "Art Thompson, the technical director of the Red Bull Stratos Mission"

entity 193, Tom Chase
Description in XRAY: "Tom Chase (born March 6, 1965) is a pornographic actor"
Description: "Tom Chase, a senior spacesuit engineer at Hamilton Sundstrand.

entity 196, Norbert Kraft
Description in XRAY: "Norbert Kraft (b. Linz, Austria, 1950) is a Canadian guitarist, music teacher, producer and arranger."
Description: "Norbert Kraft is a physician who researches group psychology and productivity."

[j.p.s]

"The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life" David Quammen

entity 326, George Fox (count 141)
Description in XRAY: "George Fox (July 1624[2] – 13 January 1691) was an English Dissenter."
Description: "George Edward Fox (born December 17, 1945) is a researcher at the University of Houston."

entity 373, George Fox, the correct one, but description not from his Wikipedia article. (count 29)
label is "Institute for genomic research"

[j.p.s]

Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

The description for entity 35, a character referred to as "North Dakota" is for the US State North Dakota.

Entity 59, "Susan" is the same character as entity 56.

Entity 42, "Trevor Strathmore" is referenced 292 times in Xray, but 667 times in the book,

[j.p.s]

The Martian by Andy Weir

The occurrences of entity 103, "Arabia" (Saudi Arabia), are really occurrences of entity 65, "Arabia Terra", a region in the north of the planet Mars.

The description for entity 16, "Hermes", the spacecraft used in the novel to shuttle Mars mission crews between Earth orbit and Mars orbit, is for the canceled European Space Agency spaceplane "Hermes".

[HLS]

Nope, never saw an error

[j.p.s]

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States by Jeffrey Lewis

1. A number of South Koreans named Park are lumped into xray entity 200 along with the Publisher's address on Park Avenue in NYC on the copyright page for the book. The entity description is for Park Chung Hee, who is mentioned once in the book.

2. Some of the occurrences of entity 94, Major General Lee Jin-won are actually other characters named Lee.

3. The character John Sullivan in the book is the acting US secretary of State, while the xray description of entity 100 is for a John Sullivan who lived 1740 - 1795.

4. The xray description for Trump Tower in NYC is for a cancelled project in Philadelphia.

5. Entity 68, Ja Song Taek, has only 3 xray references, but is mentioned 29 times in the book.

[j.p.s]

This is slightly off-topic for this thread, but I did not see and X-ray errors in 2 of the books I've read so far this year, Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bergman and The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. That doesn't mean there aren't any, just that I did not find any. I don't go looking for any, I've just stumbled on some really bad ones just in the course of reading books, pretty much every book I've read since I've learned that X-ray information is only intially loaded for a book via a wireless connection, so it was a surprise that I didn't see any errors in those 2 books.

[Quoth]

Is it any more than a marketing gimmick that detracts from the flow of reading a book? You can look up a phrase or word in Wikipedia if you have WiFi, and generally via phone / tablet / PC it it's really important.
I don't think any book I've bought from Amazon actually has X-Ray, so maybe I'm mistaken and it's a brilliant idea. However, with my Author hat on (I've written 25+ books), it sounds obnoxious and worse than footnotes or Wikipedia articles with too many links that are not really anything to do with the actual article.

Neither I, nor my publisher is interested in generating so called X-ray information and how can any 3rd party generate it in a way that is accurate or would satisfy author or publisher?

[patrickt]

I usually read novels and occasionally use X-Ray to remind me of who a particular character, who hasn't been mentioned in 55 pages, might be. It gives me a quote from the last paragraph the character was in. If that doesn't do it I can open X-Ray and see all appearances of the character.

I don't use it often but it's handy at times. I can see where it would be useless in a non-fiction book, full of names of real people that appear once or twice, such as the driver of the bus that ordered Rosa Parks off the bus.

I wonder if anyone reading wondered who Franklin Delano Roosevelt was?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by patrickt

I can open X-Ray and see all appearances of the character.

Search does that on EVERY model / make of ereader I have.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

Is it any more than a marketing gimmick that detracts from the flow of reading a book? You can look up a phrase or word in Wikipedia if you have WiFi, and generally via phone / tablet / PC it it's really important.
I don't think any book I've bought from Amazon actually has X-Ray, so maybe I'm mistaken and it's a brilliant idea. However, with my Author hat on (I've written 25+ books), it sounds obnoxious and worse than footnotes or Wikipedia articles with too many links that are not really anything to do with the actual article.

Neither I, nor my publisher is interested in generating so called X-ray information and how can any 3rd party generate it in a way that is accurate or would satisfy author or publisher?

The sole topic of this thread is error in x-ray content, even how to correct such errors is off topic (there is a thread for that).. If you want to discuss any other aspect of x-ray, please find or start a thread on that topic.

[j.p.s]

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Some of the references to entity 4, Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr, are actually
entity 72, Lawrence Lacks, Henrietta's son.

Entity 33 is the person Johns Hopkins, but only 1 of the 30 Xray id 33
references are to him. The rest are to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, so
these should be for id 150.

The description for entity 128 is for the surname Hopkins, but all the
references are for the Johns Hopkins Hospital, id 150.

Many of the Xray entity 138 (Margaret Gey) are for Margaret, a cousin of
Henrietta Lacks.

David Lacks, entity 47 and Henrietta's husband, is frequently referred to
in the book as Day. None of these references are in Xray.

Entity 73, "Cousin Cliff", misidentified as Cliff Holman, is the same
person as entity 78, Cliff Garret, brother of Fred Garret and Henrietta's
cousin.

Entity 109, "(the) South", the southern United States, is misidentified as
South, a direction.

Most of the 5 references to entity 162, Joseph Kelly, are actually for
Howard Kelly or Jacques Kelly.

Entity 9, Ethel, is identified as the name Ethel, rather than the wife of
Henrietta's cousin Galen.

Some instances of entity 76, Henrietta's cousin "Crazy Joe" are Henrietta's
son Joe, AKA Zakariyya, entity 70.

Some of the instances of entity 92, Dr. George Gey are for other people.

The description for entity 161, Ruby Lacks, is for the gemstone ruby.

Chester Southam, chief of virology at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer
Research, mentioned 56 times in the book, is not in X-ray even though he has
a wikipedia page.

The description for entity 70, Zakariyya, should be more clear that he is
Henrietta's son.

There are only 28 xray references to entity 46, Henrietta's husband David Lacks,
probably because most mentions of him in the book refer to him by his nickname
Day.

The description for entity 36, Bobbette Lack's friend Gardenia is for the flower
gardenia.

The description for entity 2, Deborah Lacks' grandson Alfred is for Eadward
Alfred Little, (1859 - 1934), who is not mentioned in the book.

Some of the references for entity 15, Deborah Lacks' husband Afred are actually
entity 79 Deborah Lacks' son Afred.

The description (and name) for entity 154, Deborah Lacks' daughter LaTonya, is for Mary J. Blige.

The description for entity 75, Michael Gold, the author of "Conspiracy of Cells", is for Itzok Isaac Granich, whose pen name was Michael Gold.

[j.p.s]

Ready Player One by Earnest Cline

ASIN B004J4WKUQ

The entity description for id 234, MMO, Massively Multiplayer Online game, is for the MMO Report podcast.

The entity description for id 127, Crystal Key, an object in the novel, is for a graphic adventure video game from the year 2000.