# Errors in Books That Make You Shake Your Head
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [December 10, 2014, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830 "2014-12-10T07:42:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)
#### Post date: [December 11, 2014, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/61 "2014-12-11T23:24:10Z")
> [@Cicero](#):
>
> Does anything get proof read any longer?
[Cracked.com](http://Cracked.com): [6 disturbing things i learned writing your textbooksl](http://www.cracked.com/article_21131_6-disturbing-things-i-learned-writing-your-textbooks.html)
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### Author:  [@TPWombat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TPWombat)
#### Post date: [December 12, 2014, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/62 "2014-12-12T01:46:43Z")
IIRC Larry Niven allegedly had Louis Wu moving\* east\* around Earth, using teleportation booths, in order to make his birthday last as long as possible in Ringworld. Corrected in the second edition.
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### Author:  [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)
#### Post date: [December 12, 2014, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/63 "2014-12-12T02:50:54Z")
> [@CGav8r](#):
>
> I think that there might be a difference between a 9mm round and a .9mm round.
Ah, yes, the infamous .9mm bullet, right along there with the deadly .20mm cannons I’ve read about the Luftwaffe using, as well as the 50mm machine guns in the P-47. :smack:
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [December 12, 2014, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/64 "2014-12-12T02:53:39Z")
> [@TPWombat](#):
>
> IIRC Larry Niven allegedly had Louis Wu moving\* east\* around Earth, using teleportation booths, in order to make his birthday last as long as possible in Ringworld. Corrected in the second edition.
Which is why my personalized First Edition (the paperback) is worth so much. 😉
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### Author:  [@sco3tt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sco3tt)
#### Post date: [December 12, 2014, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/65 "2014-12-12T03:12:52Z")
> [@JohnT](#):
>
> Continuing the Stephen King pile-on…
>
> In **11-22-63** throughout the book the city of Killeen, Texas is consistently misspelled as “Kileen”. In addition, the protagonist keeps referring to how he can smell the oil production facilities in Midland, TX while in Dallas, even though the two cities are 330 miles apart!
Also found in that book:
[QUOTE=Stephen King]
“How would I convince her of such a thing? … By telling her that the Dallas Texans – not yet the Cowboys, not yet America’s team – were going to beat the Houston Oilers 20-17 this fall, in double overtime?”
[/QUOTE]
King evidently believes that the Dallas Texans later became the Dallas Cowboys. In fact, the Cowboys already existed in Dallas at the time of the narrative (1962), both teams having been founded there in 1960 as part of the AFL/NFL rivalry that was heating up at the time. The Texans moved to Kansas City to become the Chiefs in 1963.
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### Author:  [@Your\_Great\_Darsh\_Face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Your_Great_Darsh_Face)
#### Post date: [December 12, 2014, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/66 "2014-12-12T09:01:35Z")
> [@Patch](#):
>
> Ah, yes, the infamous .9mm bullet, right along there with the deadly .20mm cannons I’ve read about the Luftwaffe using, as well as the 50mm machine guns in the P-47. :smack:
The Jug was an impressive gun platform, but I think eight 50mms would have been beyond even it. 😃
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### Author:  [@Made\_in\_Macau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Made_in_Macau)
#### Post date: [December 12, 2014, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/67 "2014-12-12T17:16:00Z")
World War Z - I just finished listening to the audio book (vg) and the only description to elicit an ‘ewww!’ from me was not zombie, death or cannibal related; it was the pregnant Russian woman saying she had a special job to do for the mother country as she looked down, smiled “and patted her womb”!
MiM
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### Author:  [@DZedNConfused](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DZedNConfused)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/68 "2014-12-21T14:38:05Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#):
>
> This was the start of a grand tradition of Mystery Writers Getting Utah Geography Wrong, which I have commented on here before.
Sad how many Utahns get out geography wrong as well.
I remember rage ranting to my co-worker while reading \*\*Fire Sale \*\* by Sara Paretsky. On one page, VI says it is seven-thirty, less than 10 pages later it is six thirty and then another 10-15 it is seven thirty again. And the whole evening wraps up at around 10 with a good half day of detecting done in the prior 3, 4 or 5 hours…
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/69 "2014-12-21T14:53:08Z")
In Spanish there are three days/times called _Pascua_: Easter, Pentecostes and Christmas. THE _Pascua_ is Easter, but the word refers to all three festivities.
I recently read a book, Jesús Sanchez Adalid’s “_Treinta doblones de oro_”, which is a story of how the so-called Cristo de Medinacelli (an image of the Crucified) came to get that name, of how it was taken captive and rescued.
The people in the book take part in the Easter Thursday parades in Seville. Some fifty days later, they are… having _Semana Santa_ (Easter) in Morocco. At a guess the author had written _Pascua_ and the editor changed it. Why do I think it wasn’t the author?
Because he’s a priest :smack: If it was him, he deserves getting his ears pulled until they grow to the size of a donkey’s! The book is a pretty good read and it talks about parts of Spanish history that most of us know nothing about, very interesting, but that one bit oh my.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/70 "2014-12-21T15:04:19Z")
> [@Johanna](#):
>
> Continuing the Stephen King pile-on: In _The Drawing of the Three_, the chapters about a mob boss are riddled with phrases that are supposed to be Italian, but are ludicrously wide of the mark. King mixed up bits of French and Spanish with touches of English, plus stuff out of his own imagination, and tried to pass it off as Italian. I was glad when those painful chapters were finished; they hurt my Italian brain.
I see so many authors mistreating the languages of their foreign characters that when I find one who doesn’t I’d hug him till he needs CPR…
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/71 "2014-12-21T18:51:15Z")
Not a book, but right now I’m looking at a still from Criminal Minds, Season 1 Episode 19, “Machismo”. The mistranslation is typical of what you get from all kinds of media when the writers wing something in foreign languages.
The newspaper being shown says _una asesina serial mayor de edad aterroriza pueblos locales_.
This is being translated as “a serial assassin who’s killing elderly women in local towns”.
The actual translation is “an adult murderess terrifies local villages”.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/72 "2014-12-21T19:06:24Z")
Sarah Vowell made several errors in her (offbeat and otherwise very enjoyable) _Assassination Vacation_. I wrote a polite letter to her about them c/o her publisher, but never heard back.
Authors, politicians and journalists mess up the title of the top American judge all the time: it’s the Chief Justice of the United States, not “Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.” I even have a form correction letter I send out now and then!
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### Author:  [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/73 "2014-12-22T01:36:05Z")
> [@Made\_in\_Macau](#):
>
> World War Z - I just finished listening to the audio book (vg) and the only description to elicit an ‘ewww!’ from me was not zombie, death or cannibal related; it was the pregnant Russian woman saying she had a special job to do for the mother country as she looked down, smiled “and patted her womb”!
>
> MiM
That reminds me of explicit pictures promising (NSF work or the squeamish)shaved vaginas :eek:
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### Author:  [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/74 "2014-12-22T01:40:10Z")
> [@Made\_in\_Macau](#):
>
> World War Z - I just finished listening to the audio book (vg) and the only description to elicit an ‘ewww!’ from me was not zombie, death or cannibal related; it was the pregnant Russian woman saying she had a special job to do for the mother country as she looked down, smiled “and patted her womb”!
>
> MiM
Okay, I haven’t read the book, but to me that sounds like not an error but a wild case of figurative metonymy: No, the woman wasn’t literally patting her womb, but she was patting her swollen abdomen to indicate her womb which is down there somewhere. 😉
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### Author:  [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/75 "2014-12-22T02:10:31Z")
> [@chrisk](#):
>
> Okay, I haven’t read the book, but to me that sounds like not an error but a wild case of figurative metonymy: No, the woman wasn’t literally patting her womb, but she was patting her swollen abdomen to indicate her womb which is down there somewhere. 😉
Yea this, you’d have to be super literal to think she was really patting her uterus 🙂
Like when my wife was pregnant and she told me to come feel our son, well I was not literally touching him you know.
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### Author:  [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/76 "2014-12-22T02:36:16Z")
I’m still trying to figure out why Heinlein thought there were 48 chromosomes in humans (there are 46) in _Beyond This Horizon_. And then of course there’s the discussion of relativity that comes up whenever we discuss _Time for the Stars_.
Actually, I think I just figured it out. Apparently it wasn’t definitively determined that humans have 46 chromosomes until 1954 and the initial serial publication was in 1942. Plus all the other great apes have 48. I guess no one cares enough to fix it in newer publications.
It’d be nice if some of these self-published novels would get a couple of friends to actually read their manuscripts and do some basic copy-editing.
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### Author:  [@Barking\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barking_Dog)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2014, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/errors-in-books-that-make-you-shake-your-head/706830/77 "2014-12-22T03:31:45Z")
> [@asterion](#):
>
> It’d be nice if some of these self-published novels would get a couple of friends to actually read their manuscripts and do some basic copy-editing.
Frankly, I’d be shocked if the authors of [A Billionaire Dinosaur Forced me Gay](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MCVVH6G/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00MCVVH6G&linkCode=as2&tag=natdee-20&linkId=OH4TROIY3I2DF5BM) or [The Dildo in the Basement](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B0R6SWG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00B0R6SWG&linkCode=as2&tag=natdee-20&linkId=PHGG2HOO5LWUYF5W) have many friends. And if they did, they wouldn’t have friends anymore after making them read _that._
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