Don't you just hate it when you are reading happily along, lost in the world of a story, and suddenly a small detail or choice of word throws you right out of the story? This has happened to me three times recently, and I am still brooding about these three ridiculously small details, so I thought if I shared, maybe I could Put It All Behind Me. These things are so minor that they don't (or shouldn't, for crying out loud) materially affect the overall quality of the story--other readers might glide
happily over the same thing--so I'm not going to call out the books by name (though you might recognize them).
1. So we have just slipped in time back to the early 1940s, and our protagonist is going down the stairs to breakfast. She meets the maid, coming in with a basket of bedding from off the clothesline. BUT--I hang my own washing up on a clothesline, and you can't bring things in early in the morning because they are damp with dew (I have had to stick my children's socks in the microwave on occasion so as to enable them to go to school with clean, dry socks). Sheets and stuff you want to be really nice and dry (I have never microwaved a sheet). So I spent ages, absolutely ages, wondering if it were possible--the main character has slept late (but her mother is still eating breakfast), the sun rises very early in Maine in summer (but is it early enough?), maybe there was a stiff breeze, what did the family sleep on the night before--would they have had two sets of bedding (which implies more than just sheets...) etc.
2. A girl wants to give a vampire a memorable kiss, so she bites her tongue till it bleeds. I found myself chewing thoughtfully on my own tongue for several days--the tongue is quite tough, and to get a reasonable amount of blood you can't just nibble the side of it...but if you really bit down hard your teeth might go through...and wouldn't it just be so much easier to bite the side of your mouth, which I accidentally do a lot anyway, or possibly the lip, which is much more full of blood (as I have seen during the various occasions when my children fell on their faces)....
3. Benjamin Franklin thanks other gentleman for "leaguing" with him. What? Leaguing is a verb (!??!!) that might be used in the 18th century? Or is it one of those bothersome noun-into-verb things (I will never "gift" anybody anything) that are so prevalent these days? I had to stop reading and spent the rest of my bus ride brooding, and had to check the dictionary when I got home. I didn't find anything that convinced me Ben would have used it as a verb.
Feel free to share your own small bothers!
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Yes, this happens to me too! Fortunately, not recently so I cannot come up with a good example, but usually it has to do with schools and things that just would not happen in a school today. And I am not talking about sci. fi or fantasy novels in which a bit more suspension of disbelief is required, I am talking about realistic fiction and the author has not darkened the door of a school since he or she was in that grade. Maybe I am too sensitive about school scenes, but I cannot help it!
ReplyDeleteThe area of expertise pet peeves qualifies, I think, for its own special place! It is hard to read about things you know more of than than the author!
DeleteAnd I just got to the tongue biting part in the book, the title of which you did not mention, and arrggghh you are sooo right!
DeleteI'm glad I'm not alone! :)
Delete1- No, you can't bring things in from a line around breakfast time. I know that from experience as well.
ReplyDelete2- Biting one's lip to give a vampire an amazing kiss would also be easier than the tongue. Not kissing a vampire might even be a better choice. Can you really trust a vampire when it comes to a blood tasting?
3- to be in league with not leaguing with...making up noun to verb words is a little too common these days, but language is organic. It's one thing to do it in a contemporary novel, another to do it in a historical work. That bothers me a lot.
I also have a problem when a contemporary word is used in a historical work and that does happen a lot. I wonder if the author is trying to make a book more appealing to the reader or if it is just carelessness or poor editing. For example, in the 1930s, the word repurposed was not a word that was used to describe converting a useful object into a different useful object.
Yeah, words like that just make one doubt the author's understanding of the time period. Now I am wondering if I would be able to notice such things in the historical fiction books that are older than me...or if the reason I think standards were higher back in the day is because of blissful ignorance!
DeleteI got stuck on a sentence once where they were talking about a copse of trees. It completely halted me. Not being familiar with the word but seeing it numerous times in the story, I knew I needed to look it up. Who knew, copse means small group of trees like wood or thicket?
ReplyDeleteNot a word I use much myself, and I bet the book was English--they've got lots more copses than we do!
DeleteLeaguing? What a strange noun to turn into a verb.
ReplyDeleteI was in a pool league once, but never thought to league...
DeleteOh goodness. I have a laundry list (so to speak) of these, but I'll just speak in generalities. (After all, I'm a committer of other people's pet peeves.) Most of my peeves are historical, and fall into two categories:
ReplyDelete1. Even though something existed at a certain time period, that doesn't mean the majority of people used it, read it, talked about it, ate it, or had ever heard of it.
2. There's pretty good documentation of the historical ubiquity of misogyny, lasting right up until... er, next week, maybe. But historical novels for middle grades often show men and boys being very respectful of women and girls, interested in their ideas, sympathetic to their needs, etc., during historical epochs when women weren't regarded as fully human.
One writer who consistently gets the attitude toward women and girls right is Karen Cushman. And there are others, of course.
I wholeheartedly agree on your second! The first I hadn't thought about much before, but maybe I'll be able to notice it now too so as to share your pain :)
DeleteOh, Charlotte, how I love you.
ReplyDeleteYour mind works like a kid's, which makes you a good reader for authors-in-training.
I spent my girlhood getting clothes from the line, and I have to say that unless it's a super-warm morning with a prevailing wind, 9 a.m. is about as early as you can get them down -- and that's not crack-of-dawn-farm timing, but suburbia time. My own yard peeve in books has to do with getting eggs from chickens - CLEARLY sometimes the people writing these homey little scenes have never had to wade in guano and reach under a live bird for anything. I did it for years, and still never got to where it was just a single blithe sentence in the paragraph of my morning. Ill-tempered little hens have beaks.
Vamp-girl could have gashed her tongue on vamp-boy's fangs. That would've worked more easily than chawing down on her own tongue - it is indeed hard to bite your tongue hard enough to bleed, but mainly because we're really not geared to hurt ourselves, and we hold back on the full pressure of our jaws.
Of course, this is a girl dating a vampire; perhaps she's wired differently entirely.
And Ben would have said "Thank you for treating with me," or something. Because, by treaty, or agreement, which is generally the accepted archaic usage of that word, people allied, back in the day. No, league-rs need apply. I mean, come on. Even Spellcheck won't let you write that.
Okay, I'm enjoying this conversation way too much...
A smart kid, though.
DeleteViz eggs--clearly you have never had Rhode Island Reds. They have little interest in sitting around all day on their eggs, and in the three years we had them, I was never pecked. I did not, however, like how they would come up to the back steps where I was sitting drinking coffee in the sun, and start sharpening their beaks on the concrete...scrape, scrape, scrape, pausing only to fix me with their nasty little eyes....
I think that if the girl had cut herself on vamp boy's fangs, she would have been turned into a vampire, and she didn't want to be. So that wasn't an option.
Yes! We volunteered for a living historical farm for a number of years and their chickens, frankly, terrified me. The ducklings were really cute though, even if they did poop a lot.
DeleteYeah, those would have pulled me out of the story as well. I know there have been some like that for me, too, but I can't think of any off the top of my head right this second. All the same, when it happens it's always really disappointing and I sometimes have a problem finishing the book (especially if it happens more than once in the book!).
ReplyDeleteOne of my pet peeves is when girls in historical fiction or fantasy dress up as boys and think pants/breeches/trousers are the BEST because they're so FREEING. I've been wearing skirts all my life and whenever I wear pants it feels weird because there's so much cloth around my legs. Pants = freedom is a fairly modern idea, and historical girls should have at least an initial reaction of "this is weird!", in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteAlso, any time someone uses faux archaic language without the skill to back it up. It's not just throwing in a bunch of wherefores and thees.
I agree about modern skirts- I find them more comfy myself. I guess, though (as Anne also mentions below), that if you were wearing layers of starched petticoats and bits of architecture of assorted kinds under your skirts there's be more likelihood that pants would be liberating...
DeleteAnd I am totally with you on the archaic language. Some people should just not even try.
Well, it really depends on the time period. If you're talking mid-1840s, there are a ton of petticoats, all starched and very heavy. If, on the other hand, you're looking at medieval era gowns, there are fewer layers, and they tended to be used for warmth more than anything else (see a nice breakdown here). Corseting also depends a lot on the period--at certain points they were loosely laced, more like a back brace almost, while at other points (the 1890s!) they were laced so severely as to cause internal injuries.
DeleteTrue--I'd rather wear a loose Medieval gown than nasty breeches things with codpieces...
DeleteI'm just so very very grateful to be living in a time of zippers, elastic, and lycra! =)
DeleteI can't stand Iain Pears's critically-acclaimed "Instance of the FIngerpost" because of historical inaccuracy about Quakerism. That's the area of expertise clause, and I try to be fair because after all, no author can possibly be an expert on all the areas that come up in stories. Who knows how many inaccuracies I've committed? Still, sometimes you just can't stand it.
ReplyDeleteMy brother's a geologist, and his pet peeve is all the scenes (especially in movies, but books sometimes, too) where people are right next to boiling lava, but as long as they don't actually touch it they're fine. In fact, just being that near it for a few minutes in an enclosed area would be hot enough to kill you.
My husband the physics major's favorite error (also very prevalent in movies) is when someone falls from high up and is stopped by a rope or something one foot from the ground. In reality they'd be just as dead as if they'd fallen from one foot lower.
Maureen, the skirts I wear so frequently are a very far cry from floor length gowns with several layers of petticoats. I think trousers would indeed be much easier to run, climb trees, and buckle swashes in, but I absolutely agree with you that the first reaction would probably be one of weirdness. Also, my understanding of historical costume from most of European history is that none of it wanted anything to do with freedom at all. Men and women alike were supposed to be properly constrained by their clothing at all times. Tailoring styles of bodices and coats, etc, were actually designed to force the body into the posture that was considered proper at the time.
As for the girl with the bloody kiss... ewwww... that's just disgusting! But then, I don't do vampires.
So much more relaxing to never read books in which you have expertise! Although so many areas in which I am not an expert (Cold War espionage, for instance) are just not appealing...
DeleteAlso, my understanding of historical costume from most of European history is that none of it wanted anything to do with freedom at all.
DeleteRight, that's part of my point--the historical fiction which features girls putting on trousers and thinking how much more free they feel is a modern attitude cast onto a historical character. At the same time, if you read Louisa May Alcott, you do see a very strong concern in certain circles with healthful costume--wearing clothes that are appropriate to the season and not laced too tightly, etc. The past isn't a unified idea any more than the present (as I'm sure you know!).
Tailoring styles of bodices and coats, etc, were actually designed to force the body into the posture that was considered proper at the time. My understanding--based on one college class several years ago, so please don't take me as an expert!--is that this would really depend on the time period! The reasons, as far as we can ascribe reasons to something like costume history, would depend on the opinions and morals of the society they lived in. I wish I could think of specific examples--the best I can come up with is the loose gowns which started to be worn in the 17th century (under Romantic negligence here). Far from confining, the whole intention was to create an atmosphere of sumptuous sensuality.
I will stop blathering on! I just find this topic fascinating.
Feel free to blather more! I find it fascinating too! My mind is now turning to kilts, and the men who love them for the freedom they provide....
DeleteIn Life As We Knew It by Pfeffer, the electricity goes out but the family keeps turning on the faucet and their well keeps supplying water. Drove me crazy. When I book talked it, I always issued the challenge for the kids to find the error.
ReplyDeleteAs a farm girl, every major error with farm life and animal care bothers me. Put a horse in a stall and don't come back to care for it for a day or so. Feed animals straw not hay. And so on.
And then there are the upside down knitting needles in the delightful Extra Yarn by Mac Bennett.
That I didn't notice, because of not having a well! But I guess even water mains would loose pressure pretty soon without electricity....
DeleteThese are the best comments ever. Entertaining and educational! It can be hard to avoid areas of expertise (I use expertise loosely) in books, since they tend to be things I like, but inaccuracies do throw me out of the story. I don't like it when books have smatterings of Spanish, and the Spanish is grammatically incorrect (as if Google translate wrote it). Are there no Spanish-speaking copyeditors??
ReplyDeleteOr editors with the sense to corral a Spanish speaking co-worker?
Delete