Havig just finished Sense and Sensibility, I’m now in the middle of an old collection of Ellery Queen stories. Sort of Encyclopedia Brown for grownups, thus far.
Me too. When I’m reading something really good and I’m really into it, I’m not just reading. It’s like the story’s flowing into my mind effortlessly. Any little tic in that flow can yank me right out of it. Outside distractions are okay to a point and can usually be ignored. I used to have to be very careful reading while riding the city bus to work or I’d slide on right by my stop.
And it’s not really the writer’s fault. The writer’s job is to tell a story. It’s up to the publisher to make sure the book is ready for me to enjoy, without errors, before I get my hands on it.
The editor should certainly catch both the obvious and the not-so-obvious errors, but if the author had any pride in his work and weren’t a lazy SOB, he would’ve caught most if not all of them already. I found numerous factual errors in Jay Winik’s NYT historical bestseller April 1865 - just blew my mind. I couldn’t take the book seriously at all.
I just downloaded The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft.
Looks like it might do me for a while.
And I also got McCammon’s The Ark. Didn’t find on this thread with a search.
I was surprised too. This book isn’t a POD romance or fantasy – I’d call it “literary”. Without looking at the publisher’s name I assumed it was Random House or, ya know, somebody big. It’s from a small press – River City Publishing, out of Alabama.
It’s really an exceptional story, and the book deserved better.
I was talking mostly about typos, with Khadaji’s post fresh in my mind. And pure fiction. Of course details are important in fiction too, and they are indeed the writer’s responsibility. Mostly.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown without regard to its (so I hear) many factual errors. As an ex-catholic I don’t believe a bit of it anyway. 
Ha! When I got to that part, I stopped and reread the dialogue, thinking I had missed something that would suggest that the character was using colloquial speech, or was, um, …lightly educated. But no, I think it was an editorial error, too.
It really is an excellent book, but before I tell everyone to rush right out and read it, I’ve got to say that it is also one of the most depressing books I’ve read in ages. You have been warned.
If this book has a happy ending, or even some resolution, I’ll be disappointed. It’d be a cheat, written that way just to preserve our feelings. 
Something else that bugged me (but just slightly): St. Claire tells his wife he’s off to help his dad with farrowing, but not to call him on dad’s house phone because it was disconnected – dad didn’t pay the bill. If his dad is paying him $1,000 to help, he has money for the phone bill. Why not just say that they’ll be spending all their time away from the house, with the pigs, so use the cell?
It never ceases to amaze me how well he wove the delicious and despicable Flashy into real history. The novels are great. I am devasted by the fact that he never wrote about Flashy’s experience in the Civil War - I would love to read about his meeting with Robert E. Lee, and what each thought about the other. My guess is that Marse Robert would see right through Flashy, but not say anything at all. McClellan, however, would probably put Flashman on his staff, which would allow him to demonstrate his “valour” in overcounting the enemy. And Grant would simply scare the hell out of him.
Just finished Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, which I cannot recommend enough.
My Episcopal priest said succinctly and accurately, “There’s a reason The DaVinci Code is on the Fiction shelf in bookstores.”
I didn’t think it was anything else. Did it have that “this is a work of fiction” disclaimer?
Does Brown say it’s a history?
That’s just part of the conspiracy. 
I don’t have the book in front of me, but Brown says something about the authenticity and historical accuracy of the book in a message at the beginning. Obviously it’s 95.3% jive.
Actually, it’s to make it (the book) easily anailable to the millions of non-intellectuals who will enjoy a very good read.
You guys should read it, instead of reading about it. You can do that without enriching Dan Brown any.
Not directed at you, SS.
I started Penrod by Booth Tarkington. Dropped it when he wrote something about how only 12-year-old boys and “coloured people” were able to turn off their minds. That’s a good observation about 12-year-olds, but the rest of it struck me as UNobservant and patronizing. Maybe I’ll go back to it when my snit is over.
I’m re-reading Katherine by Anya Seton. It’s been years – hope it holds up.
I’m kind of struggling to finish my current because many of the characters make disparaging remarks about Jews. Mind you, no doubt it is accurate for the time period, but it detracts and has gotten old.
Two books that I have been waiting for for a long time just arrived for me at the library: Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes and Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann.
What to do? What to do?
Finished To Kill A Mockingbird. Upon reflection I’m glad I read it on my own and not in school where the curriculum would doubtless analyse and explicate all the satisfaction out of it. A dvd of the movie to be borrowed sits in front of me as I type this on one of the library’s public computers.
I did put down Mockingbird for two days in order to finish the latest Russell/Holmes book, The God of the Hive. Big spoiler:major character death… * or is it?*
These are questions for Jman and Shirley and for the thread readers at large -
I loved Pride and Prejudice and Zombies but was disappointed with Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter. The former by all accounts hewed closely to the original story while the latter included winking references for modern readers. (The worst of these IMO was a trio of monster slayers working for the young monarch, at least one of whom dies horribly. Their names? Hudson, Hicks, and Vasquez. Oh, and guess which one was the woman. So what I want to know is, is the Lincoln story told in an authentic-to-the-period manner, or is it more Twenty-first Century in style? And I never read the original P&P but as I said I loved the zombified version, so I’m wary of a prequel that isn’t built on an Austin platform, as it were. Does DotD read like an Austin novel that just happens to have zombies?
Okay, where did the phrase “a lovely romp” come from, anyway? I hear and read it so often that there has to be more to it than meets my eye.
Christopher Reich’s “Rules of Betrayal” -fine thriller