(no subject)

[nolly]

Time to a) fire the copyeditor and b) thwap the author (who shall remain nameless) soundly:

"What I could see of the apartment could have been imported from 429-B Baker Street."

Comments

[srallen.livejournal.com]

That makes my brain hurt in ways uncomfortably close to a migraine.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I'm torn between stopping now -- not just this book but the series it's in -- and wanting to watch for further wreckage while seeing how it ends.

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

[grin] Your "wtf" icon reminds me of Sherlock Holmes' pipe.

I like it.

[baxil.livejournal.com]

Ow. Just ow.

Well ... um ... at least they got the correct street, and the correct side of the street?

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I suppose...

[redbird]

That leads me to suspect that they never hired a copyeditor in the first place. (It seems less likely that they did, the copyeditor caught it, and the author wrote "STET" in large letters.)

Also, yes, in some sense our job is to know everything, but it seems reasonable to think that the person putting a Holmes reference in their book is at least as responsible to know about it as the person doing the copyediting.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

You're probably right about it not being copyedited. I suppose I'm willing to believe a memory glitch from the author, whereas it's the copyeditor's job to catch this sort of thing, unless I misunderstand the role. And it's hard to fire an author, esp. one who sells well. (Also, I've met and liked the author as a person, whereas I have no idea who the copyeditor was, if anyone.)

[agt.livejournal.com]

Hmm, was the apartment furnished in suburban Ikea fashions? That's how I figure 429 Baker Street, London, UK would be appointed. (Yes, there are several Baker streets in the greater London amalgamation :-) (No, I don't think so-- the author should be thwapped.)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

"Dark woods, fancy scrollwork, and patterns of cloth busier than the makeup girl at a Kiss concert filled every available inch of space with Victorian splendor."

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

The prose...it's so PURPLE!!!

[nolly.livejournal.com]

It doesn't consistently cross my purpleness threshhold, but I can see how that sentence, on it's own seems that way. Or perhaps you've got a lower threshhold than I.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Argh. its. not it's. Have not finished morning caffeine yet.

[allaboutm-e.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's an alternate reality Holmes home?

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Maybe...but the reality in the series isn't that alternate...

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

I find the most horrible spelling errors that get into published books these days. And newspapers, as well. It seems like they would rather run the text through a spell-checker than hire someone to edit the copy. When you're talking about "hollowed" ground, that is one thing. But when "any" appears in place of "and", that's something else entirely. And it happens all too often. In mass-market paperbacks by people who are among the top authors in their genre, no less.

[frogpyjamas.livejournal.com]

Gah! Which series? I liked the Laurie King series.