# I hate authors who can't be arsed to research **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 22, 2009, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922 "2009-07-22T22:49:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/81 "2009-07-25T03:05:00Z")
If you stretch ‘research’ to cover internal inconsistencies… don’t get me started on Brian Jacques. Bugged the hell out of me that he can’t even keep his own canon consistent from book to book after the first few, which I read starting in about middle school. Since a lot of the attraction for Little Liz was the mysteries of the Abbey revealed, you bet your sweet ass I noticed when he started mixing up names and even complete events. He couldn’t be arsed to reread his own books or make a cheat sheet, it seems. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/82 "2009-07-25T04:49:28Z")
Yeah, but Brian Jacques is writing from the standpoint of rodents. Mice only live a couple of years, even when mine wife feeds them special so they don’t escape and sit on her chest and take over her dreams. (DON’T ASK! Suffice it to say that she claims to know which hole at the carnival a mouse will hide, but that she cannot predict the Lotto numbers. IOW, COMPLETELY useless, unless one wants to win a stuffed animal. ☹ ) ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/83 "2009-07-25T04:53:24Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Well, I haven’t read any of the “Dark Tower” books, but I get the feeling Stephen King thought it was some kind of horrible, crime-infested ghetto housing project. Am I misreading that? > > In any case, Co-Op City is a privately built apartment complex in Baychester, in the North Bronx. It’s RELATIVELY new, and was built in the late Sixties/early Seventies on the site of what used to be a huge amusement park called Freedomland (I have only the vaguest recollections of Freedomland, but my parents took me there a few times when I was a toddler). When it was first built, the residents were mostly middle-class Jews, and a large percentage of them were retirees. > > Over time, the demographics have changed, and I’m pretty sure most of Co-Op City’s residents are either black or Puerto Rican today. But its residents are still largely middle-class or lower middle-class. The Bronx has become synonymous with crime and urban decay, in many parts of the country. Co-Op City is one of the most famus apartment complexes in the Bronx, so Stephen King may simply have used it as shorthand for “some horrible, impoverished hellhole in the ghetto.” > > Co-Op City isn’t Paradise, but it’s a decent place to live if you’re a black civil servant or a Puerto Rican nurse. Also - have you ever seen pictures of those giant, soulless Moscow apartment megacomplexes? Co-op City looks EXACTLY like that. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/84 "2009-07-25T06:42:48Z")
> [@AuntiePam](#): > > I doubt that anyone who lives in or who has visited the Northwest would refer to Puget Sound as the Pacific Ocean. It’s not a localism. I’ve seen Puget Sound from every direction and many viewpoints, and I’ve seen the Pacific Ocean. There’s no way to confuse the two. Look at [a map.](http://encarta.msn.com/map_701515825/puget_sound.html) See all the islands and peninsulas? You can see land from anywhere on the Sound. > > An author who has a character looking out a Seattle window and saying she sees the Pacific Ocean is an idiot. Or her character is an idiot. Yes, you may not be able to confuse the two, but still, the Puget Sound is part of the Pacific ocean, geographically, scientifically and legally. Same with the San Francisco Bay, the Sea of Cortez, and what not. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/85 "2009-07-25T06:46:48Z")
> [@3trew](#): > > It was Mr. Koontz’s “double barreled pump action” shotguns that got me. The only Koontz novel I ever tried to read involved an evil psychiatrist who was hypnotizing his patients into doing all manner of depraved sexual acts with him [actually the acts weren’t that depraved but he would have them convinced he was their father or their ex-priest or whatever when they were doing them] and into killing people for him. In addition to the “evil hypnotist” being a stock character more befitting of an Ed Wood movie, anyone who researches hypnotism even on the level of the wikipedia article can tell you it doesn’t work like that. The “trance”, when it works, is basically a relaxed state. It’s about like the way you feel after a massage or a warm bath and a glass of wine. You really can’t be compelled to cluck like a chicken, your arm _may_ feel heavy if you’re told it will but half of that is imagination and the other half because you’re sleepy. You’re almost certainly not going to be convinced you can fly. The people on TV entertainment shows who are “hypnotized” and suddenly believe they are Whitney Houston or Cher are faking- they want to be on camera and they’re not going to be if they say “I got nothin’”. I never finished the novel because it was just so lame. I’ll admit I had a slight bitterness moment on the “this guy makes MILLIONS” realization. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/86 "2009-07-25T06:53:57Z")
> [@BiblioCat](#): > > By that logic, the body of water you can see from downtown Baltimore is the Atlantic Ocean. :rolleyes: The Northwest Harbor? Yes, it is part of the Atlantic Ocean. Or rather it’s part of Chesapeake Bay, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. Every body of salt water that is coastal and not entirely landlocked is part of one of the 5 oceans. Thus I think we can all agree that the Puget Sound is not part of the Atlantic, Arctic, Southern or Indian Oceans. > **[Ocean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean)** > > The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. The ocean is conventionally divided into large bodies of water, which are also referred to as oceans (in descending order by area: the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Antarctic/Southern Ocean, and the Arctic Ocean), and are themselves mostly divided into seas, gulfs and subsequent bodies of water. The ocean contains 97% of Earth's water and is the primary component of Earth's h Ocean scienti... \*Smaller regions of the oceans are called seas, gulfs, bays and other names. \* Or straits or sounds or etc. (No, not rivers) ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/87 "2009-07-25T07:22:34Z")
Of course I’m way more bugged by inaccuracies in non-fiction books, and never more so than when it’s by somebody who should _really_ know better. Case in point: Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, formerly a history professor at Harvard and currently the freaking _president_ of Harvard, recently wrote a book entitled [This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War](http://www.amazon.com/This-Republic-Suffering-Death-American/dp/037540404X). It’s about the impact that the number of dead (roughly 2% of the population of the USA) had on the nation during the war and for a generation after. I noticed several small errors. For example, there was a memoirist named [John Allen Wyeth](http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/wyeth/menu.html) who I’m very familiar with from genealogical research: he was in the same unit as one of my ancestors and wrote one of the best accounts of their battles. Faust refers to him consistently as “the Confederate surgeon John Wyeth”. When she quotes him on medical conditions she’s quoting him as a Confederate surgeon, thus by implication she’s quoting him on the conditions of Confederate soldiers. The problem is that John Wyeth (who I’ll admit is hardly a household name, but still- I knew about him and I’m not a Ph.D. in history with emphasis on the Civil War like she is) did not become a surgeon until _after_ the Civil War. _During_ the Civil War he was not a surgeon or a physician or a medical professional or paraprofessional in any way; he was a cavalry private, purely and simply. Also if you know anything about the title of surgeon, during the Civil War it meant something completely different- surgeons then were more like battlefield medics today; they set broken bones, amputated limbs, and stitched you up, but they didn’t perform operations that involved incisions or the like. Wyeth was actually a surgeon in _our_ sense of the word- one of the generation of doctors who actually led surgeon to becoming far more respected. Most glaring is that his medical career was mostly spent in NYC. When he wrote about the differences in northerners and southerners in the operating room he was referring to differences _after the war and in_\* peacetime\*\*\*. This may sound like a nitpick, except that she’s quoting his battlefield memoirs as if he were writing as a medical professional- and he wasn’t at the time and in fact little if anything about his account _of the war_ has any medical insight. She also makes some type of comment to the effect of “only 1 in 9 southerners came from a slave owning family”. Now she’s not the only person I’ve read who made this comment or one very similar, but the problem is that it’s bollocks and a complete misread of the data. Only about 1 in 9 southern _individuals_ **owned** slaves- that is true- but far more grew up in slave owning families. Suppose in a hypothetical statistically simple city of 100,000 people there are 1,000 who own a house worth $1 million or more. This means that 1% of that city own million dollar homes. BUT, assuming that the average family size for their households is 3.5 members, then this means that 3%- triple that number- are _from_ households _grew up_ in million dollar homes. On the slave schedules of the U.S. Census before the Civil War one member of the family, usually the husband/father of course, actually _owned_ the slaves, but the family could be anywhere from just him/her to two dozen members. The number of people who _grew up_ in slave owning families was closer to a third of the white population on average; in Mississippi it was more than _half_. (We’re not talking Tara and Twelve Oaks families here- families who owned hundreds of slaves and thousands of acres- but about 1/3 came from families that owned at least one slave.) Now this, like referring to Wyeth’s career and medical studies, may seem nitpickish at first, but I don’t consider it so. She’s using this figure to discuss how most of the south couldn’t relate to slave owners when in fact the number who grew up with a slave in the house or on the farm is actually several times what she’s claiming. (I had many ancestors who didn’t own slaves themselves but grew up in families that owned them, and I would imagine there were many many thousands of southerners like them.) In other words the number of people who had first hand residential experience with slaveowning was a minority but it was a _big_ minority. There were other errors like this, but these are the two I remember offhand. While they were minor in and of themselves perhaps remember that we’re not talking about a paper by an undergraduate student or even by a grad student or a professor at a small liberal arts school but _the PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY_, somebody who has a very high beam and also an army of graduate students and other underlings who should have checked her research. (I wasn’t even looking for these errors and found them.) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/88 "2009-07-25T07:29:32Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > She also makes some type of comment to the effect of “only 1 in 9 southerners came from a slave owning family”. Now she’s not the only person I’ve read who made this comment or one very similar, but the problem is that it’s bollocks and a complete misread of the data. Only about 1 in 9 southern _individuals_ **owned** slaves- that is true- but far more grew up in slave owning families. Good point. Perhaps in her case it was more deliberate than a mistake? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/89 "2009-07-25T07:42:02Z")
The novel **MASH** (basis for the movie but next to no kinship to the series) is one of many that I’ve read in which southern-speak was hopelessly mangled. On the first page of the novel there’s a southern character referring to another man, singularly, as “y’all” (e.g. “would y’all pass me that ketchup” when said to one person). Southerners don’t do this: y’all is plural, always, no exception (except when making fun of exaggerated southern accents by people who don’t know what they sound like and seem to think there’s only one or two anyway). I’ve read parts of several bad novels where it was clear the person had never visited New Orleans. They described something that seems like Disney New Orleans- jazz bands and wrought iron and the like that everybody knows exist in NOLA (and they really do exist there) but they also describe it as somehow glamorous and rich and sophisticated. In fact anyone who’s ever even so much as visited there in summer knows that it’s dirty and smells like a rotting jungle and it’s in the swamp. The hacks don’t mention the heat and humidity of the city, which are absolutely overpowering in summer (walking from an air conditioned building into the street the damp air hits you like a wall), and the people in the novels (and I’ve seen a couple of TV shows and movies as well [JFK comes to mind] either speak with a Caribbean island community college Kreyohl French accent OR the “would y’all pass me the pralines?” generic hack writer southern speak. Certainly you could find either of those accents there, but it’s a lazy lazy lazy writer who doesn’t know the city has it’s own accent (actually several of them) and that generally the people from there sound more like people from Brooklyn or Boston than they do people from Chattanooga or Shreveport (due largely to the flood of Irish, Italians, Jewish and eastern Europen immigrants that NOLA and northeastern seaports got but most southern cities just didn’t). ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/90 "2009-07-25T07:51:48Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The Northwest Harbor? Yes, it is part of the Atlantic Ocean. Or rather it’s part of Chesapeake Bay, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. > > Every body of salt water that is coastal and not entirely landlocked is part of one of the 5 oceans. Thus I think we can all agree that the Puget Sound is not part of the Atlantic, Arctic, Southern or Indian Oceans. > > [Ocean - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean) > \*Smaller regions of the oceans are called seas, gulfs, bays and other names. \* > > Or straits or sounds or etc. > > (No, not rivers) It seems clear that this author was guilty of sloppiness, whether or not she fell bass-ackwards into an accurate statement based on a strict reading of the definition of an ocean. It certainly would be amusing if the heroine said, “Here I am, looking out into the Pacific Ocean. You know, once someone tried to correct me by saying that it was really just Puget Sound, but I set him straight. Ah, fond memories. Now I’m off to seduce one of my co-workers.” ---
**Author:** ![congodwarf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@congodwarf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/congodwarf)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/91 "2009-07-25T12:37:35Z")
> [@lizardling](#): > > If you stretch ‘research’ to cover internal inconsistencies… don’t get me started on Brian Jacques. > > Bugged the hell out of me that he can’t even keep his own canon consistent from book to book after the first few, which I read starting in about middle school. Since a lot of the attraction for Little Liz was the mysteries of the Abbey revealed, you bet your sweet ass I noticed when he started mixing up names and even complete events. > > He couldn’t be arsed to reread his own books or make a cheat sheet, it seems. 😛 I’m confused. I’ve read all the Redwall books at least 3 times each, and I’ve listened to 5 or 6 of them on audiobook multiple times as well. I’ve never noticed inconsistencies (other than the fact that they keep saying Martin is on the tapestry. It’s not Martin). Of course, there are so many characters and events to keep track of over that many books. But, anyway - what problems are there? ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/92 "2009-07-25T12:39:08Z")
I hate it when the author has done **too much** research and feels they have to cram their story with hundreds of facts and figures to justify the time and effort they have spent on that research. I stopped reading Len Deighton novels because of that. I want to read a novel, not a book of trivia which might come in useful in a pub quiz. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/93 "2009-07-25T13:04:31Z")
Funny enough, Jean Auel is also guilty of See How Much I Learned! crammed into her books, plus she repeats herself. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/94 "2009-07-25T13:25:34Z")
My biggest pet peeve is, and I’m sure this will be a surprise to anybody for whom my username is familiar, screwing up foreign languages. Setting aside all the ones who insist in having supposed Hispanics say “jodienda puta” or “jodiendo puta” (the actual translation of “fucking whore” would be “jodida puta”), then you have the ones whose Brazillian characters (who speak perfectly idiomatic US English half the time and then no speakee English the other half) do speak Spanish like a gringo; those whose Spanish sounds suspiciously like bad Italian; the ones whose French seems to have built by taking the author’s language and tacking -é at the end of every word… Seriously, is is so freaking difficult to get a decent translation for one or two sentences? In the age of internet? Really? ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/95 "2009-07-25T13:39:58Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Southerners don’t do this: y’all is plural, always, no exception (except when making fun of exaggerated southern accents by people who don’t know what they sound like and seem to think there’s only one or two anyway). Apparently there is a [small number of people](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%27all#Controversy) who claim it can be used in the singular sense. Your likelihood of running into one of them in that scene is pretty damned small, though. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/96 "2009-07-25T14:16:06Z")
> [@Snooooopy](#): > > It seems clear that this author was guilty of sloppiness, whether or not she fell bass-ackwards into an accurate statement based on a strict reading of the definition of an ocean. > > It certainly would be amusing if the heroine said, “Here I am, looking out into the Pacific Ocean. You know, once someone tried to correct me by saying that it was really just Puget Sound, but I set him straight. Ah, fond memories. Now I’m off to seduce one of my co-workers.” Very good. I’ve only been to Seatlle twice, but I can’t imagine any of the ferry captains saying - “We are going to sail accross the ocean to Whidbey Island”. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/97 "2009-07-25T15:14:12Z")
Look. I live in Seattle. No one but no one would refer to Puget Sound as the Pacific Ocean. It doesn’t happen. Yeah, it’s connected to the Pacific Ocean. So is the Columbia River. That doesn’t mean you can see the Pacific Ocean from Portland Oregon. Would someone in Texas look out and see the Atlantic Ocean? No, they’d see the Gulf of Mexico, and if someone said they were looking at the Atlantic Ocean we’d think they were crazy, no matter how much they insisted that technically the Gulf of Mexico is part of the Atlantic Ocean. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/98 "2009-07-25T16:59:51Z")
> [@Snooooopy](#): > > It seems clear that this author was guilty of sloppiness, whether or not she fell bass-ackwards into an accurate statement based on a strict reading of the definition of an ocean. > > It certainly would be amusing if the heroine said, “Here I am, looking out into the Pacific Ocean. You know, once someone tried to correct me by saying that it was really just Puget Sound, but I set him straight. Ah, fond memories. Now I’m off to seduce one of my co-workers.” Yes, and if \*\*amarinth \*_had quoted something like: "the heroine looked out of the window in her Seattle office, and then mentioned to someone she could see the Pacific" . Then B]amarinth_- could have said "that goes against the heroine being a native Seattle-ite, as no one who has lived here for any period of time calls that area “the Pacific ocean”-they call it “Puget Sound”\*, I’d have not quibbled. There are localisms, and if a character is supposed to be a native, the author should get them right. ---
**Author:** ![tnetennba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tnetennba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tnetennba)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/99 "2009-07-25T17:08:48Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > Funny enough, Jean Auel is also guilty of See How Much I Learned! crammed into her books, plus she repeats herself. I’m annoyed by books where the hero goes off to Rio or Paris and there’s a few action scenes at major landmarks with random infobits worked in. It’s obvious the author just wanted to write off their pleasure travel as writing-related research trips on their taxes and save money. I imagine them boasting about it to friends. “Set the next book in Australia to write off the trip. Heh heh heh.” It seems casually dismissive to fans and indifferent to the quality of the work. It’s especially common with series mystery authors (guess it wouldn’t work for fantasy or sci fi authors…) ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922/100 "2009-07-25T17:29:17Z")
A few weeks ago I read **The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie** by the Canadian author Alan Bradley. The book tells the story of a 11 year girl living in England in 1950 who solves a murder that takes place in the garden of her house, and is narrated in the first person. Unfortunately, although the author has got some things right, he falls down on quite a few basic aspects of life in the UK. For instance the author calls the medical man called to the house to view the corpse “The Coroner”. In England a coroner is someone who presides over an inquest. He should have been called the “pathologist”, or just “doctor” Other basic errors are include a notice on a library which says “open Thursday through Saturday”. In the UK that would read “Thursday to Saturday”. “Times of London” - we just call it “The Times”. “lumber” instead of “timber” and calling the land to the front and back of a house “yards”. we call them “gardens”. So the book is quite obvously written who comes from North America and not the UK. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-authors-who-cant-be-arsed-to-research/503922.md?page=6)