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It Doesn't Work Like That - Books That Get it Wrong
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MrsJoseph *grouchy*
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Aug 16, 2018 10:35AM
Speaking of - we're thinking of taking a day trip to Philly for a staycation. Any suggestions?
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MrsJoseph wrote: "Ahhh. I've only been to Philly a few times. Mostly at night for shows, lol. My idea of Philly is...lots and lots of alleys and a lack parking. "Depending on where you are, there are lots of parking lots. But they're $$$.
As for suggestions - I mean, historically there's the obvious. I actually work right across from Independence Hall, so you could come visit me. ;)
As Allison said, there are about a billion museums. Franklin Institute is cool if there's an exhibit happening. Art Museum is always popular.
Slightly off the beaten path, I like to recommend Eastern State Penitentiary - especially if you like creepy, allegedly haunted locations. ^_^
colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "I will say that when I visited Lexington - Kentucky's second largest city - for the first time I, Philadelphia native that I am, said to my now-husband, "This is what passes for the big city for yo..."Like Crocodike Dundee visiting NYC. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2AoNuz1...
Which always struck me as weird. I mean, Australia has some pretty big cities. It’s not like the jumbo jet landed in the outback on top of Uluru.
People think that “no cities” thing about Africa, too. Like it’s all mud huts and savannahs, with some deserts for variety. In Captain America: Civil War the movie opens in Lagos, Nigeria, and I saw people saying it was a made-up place because it was a city in Africa. o.0 I was like, guys, it’s literally bigger than New York City.
colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "Ahhh. I've only been to Philly a few times. Mostly at night for shows, lol. My idea of Philly is...lots and lots of alleys and a lack parking. "Depending on where you are, ther..."
^.^
hmmm ...
Trike wrote: "People think that “no cities” thing about Africa, too. Like it’s all mud huts and savannahs, with some deserts for variety. In Captain America: Civil War the movie opens in Lagos, Nigeria, and I saw people saying it was a made-up place because it was a city in Africa. o.0 I was like, guys, it’s literally bigger than New York City."I consistently have to remind people that Africa is a continent and not a country, lol. We blithely toss out the name "Africa" as if we are saying "Ireland" or "Spain." But it's a whole freaking continent and it has a shitton of countries - most of which we ignore if nothing bad is going on. SMH
Jacqueline wrote: "Good to hear I don’t have to translate for you Allison lol"I like the fact that here in America most people don't understand British English ... the curse word filters on my work email and instant messages totally ignore UK slang. He, he. Wankers.
colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "I will say that when I visited Lexington - Kentucky's second largest city - for the first time I, Philadelphia native that I am, said to my now-husband, "This is what passes for the big city ..."First time I went to Philly was in 1972. I was expecting a small New York, but found out it was just a large Baltimore. Disappointed.
Size is relative.
But back on topic ... one of the only books I started and did not finish was about the first trip to Alpha Centauri. So many improbabilities and misunderstandings of science that I threw it across the room. I forget the name of the thing. I remember too much about it, though. Like they were going to slingshot around their destination star to aid them in coming back to Earth, only they weren't sure if it was going to work ... uh ... Newtonian physics too hard for you? You can calc your mass, your velocity, your distance from the star, the density of the star ... seems like something you might be able to calculate ahead of time? SMHEmbarrassing.
CBRetriever wrote: "American accents are all over the place:wash = wash most places but in some parts of the NE sounds like warsh
creek = creek (long e) or crick
coyote =coyote (Ki-ote) or coyote (Ki-o-tee) dependin..."
Yes they most certainly are, but the all have a drawl to my ear, although my husband's has one of the least I've ever heard--he's from northeastern NJ about 20 miles from the Delaware water gap. By that I mean that was my first impression when I heard him speak for the very first time.
Canada also has a variety of English accents and inflections (only discussing anglophone Canadians), particularly in Newfoundland.
We do have some pretty big cities in Australia. But to be fair Croc Dundee came from the Northern Territory and the cities and towns up there aren’t built up. The big cities are mostly on the east coast with Adelaide and Perth on the south and west coasts respectively. The bulk of our 25 million people live along the east coast and around the bottom to about Adelaide. We live in an eastern state but we’re in the bit that nobody lives in. Where it’s at least 100km to the next small town (less than 1000 people mostly with a few between 2000 and 3000). The place I go to for the cinema and my nails has around 50,000 people. It’s the final frontier really. West of there is nothing. Just us chickens 🐓 hehe When you get to the middle where Croc Dundee was filmed the Stations (Ranches) are bigger than the cities.
Eastern Massachusetts is amazing--it's a lot like England in that most towns have their own accents. So people eat lobstah in Boston but not in the rest of the state. There is even one town where the residents pronounce it phonetically, but the rest of Eastern MA pronounces it differently. But NYC has accents for each borough has its own (if there are more than one per borough, I have no idea).Plus, where else in the States (Massachusetts) to you have a town called Peabody that rhymes with CBD ? (emphasis on first syllable).
Of course, England has some interesting pronunciations of place names, some of which have made it to New England.
Trike wrote: "colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "I will say that when I visited Lexington - Kentucky's second largest city - for the first time I, Philadelphia native that I am, said to my now-husband, "Th..."Australia and Africa have cities? Canada isn't covered with snow year round? Canadians don't have a national health insurance?
MrsJoseph wrote: "One of the things I hate is the way Southern places are often depicted. It's always one extreme or the other. -Accents change from state to state and sometimes from county to county, so there is ..."
My Grandmother lived on forty acres of farm land with the city all around. Created some rather humorous encounters.
MrsJoseph wrote: "Trike wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "There ARE cities in the South. Every city does NOT have to be a metropolitan in order to be a city. I grew up in a Southern city, not "the country.""You know, I ha..."
Pitcher
He teed off on that like he knew I was going to throw a fast ball
Catcher
He did. I told him.
Trike wrote: "colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "I will say that when I visited Lexington - Kentucky's second largest city - for the first time I, Philadelphia native that I am, said to my now-husband, "Th..."Dundee was from Northern Australia, Not really thick on the ground for cities up there, More sheep than people. I think Darwin is about the biggest.
Jacqueline wrote: "We do have some pretty big cities in Australia. But to be fair Croc Dundee came from the Northern Territory and the cities and towns up there aren’t built up. The big cities are mostly on the east ..."Yes, but you can’t get to America from Darwin. You have to fly out of Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne. Pretty sure they have escalators in those. (By that I mean they do. I’ve been to three of those cities.)
yes. but it wouldn't have shown as much culture shock with being in the US if they'd show the escalators in one of those cities
Karin wrote: "But NYC has accents for each borough has its own (if there are more than one per borough, I have no idea)."Even worse, the accents go by neighborhood, and sometimes by street.
My dad is from Brooklyn and one of our neighbors in Ohio was, too. Turns out they grew up just a few streets apart (the Italian neighborhood versus the Jewish neighborhood) but had very different yet clearly New York accents.
The weirder thing was when a guy visited one year and, upon hearing their accents, pinned down where they grew up to the street. That’s how specific and granular the dialects are.
Although I had that same experience out on the Great Barrier Reef, talking to some folks from Melbourne. Both the husband and wife grew up there but had very distinct yet clearly Australian accents, so it must shift neighborhood by neighborhood there, too.
Karin wrote: "Plus, where else in the States (Massachusetts) to you have a town called Peabody that rhymes with CBD ? (emphasis on first syllable)."
Massachusetts town names are crazy. Every time I encounter a new one I think of the Monty Python skit: “It’s spelt Throat-Warbler Mangrove, but it’s pronounced Luxury-Yatched.”
Leominster looks straightforward: leo + minster. Nope! It’s “lemon stir.” When my cousin the nurse was working at Paul Newman’s Hole-In-The-Wall Gang Camp, we wanted to get together for dinner. So I told her that halfway between Connecticut and New Hampshire was the town of Woostah. She called me back 5 minutes later to say she couldn’t find it on the map. I was like, “Oh, sorry, it’s Mass. The town is spelled Worcester.”
Definitely got escalators in the airports. Now. But when Dundee was made Brisbane definitely didn’t have them and they probably would have left from Brisbane. Can’t remember. It’s been a while since I saw the movie. But Dundee 2 was made in 1988 and I was at Brisbane airport in early 1991 and it was still an old single story fibro building so there’s every chance that he might not have seen them before. And you still had to leave by the stairs and walk across the tarmac no matter how big your plane was. It’s different now though. Very nice. I’ve flown out of there a number of times since.
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Well, I do love the TV shows/movies set in Houston that show some relief (hills usually) in the scenes. Houston is flat as a pancake. There once was a TV show set in Houston that showed an opening scene coming over a hill as Houston came into view.....Criminal Minds, the TV show, is notorious for using LA for everyplace the team goes to.
CBRetriever wrote: "Well, I do love the TV shows/movies set in Houston that show some relief (hills usually) in the scenes. Houston is flat as a pancake. There once was a TV show set in Houston that showed an opening ..."It’s always hilarious to see shows set in Miami or Chicago and you can clearly see mountains in the background. If it’s mountains + palm trees, it was shot in LA. If it’s mountains + rain forest, it was shot in Vancouver.
One thing that people don’t know, and this is something only locals would notice, is that NYC is actually a little hilly. For some strange reason, movies and TV shows never take advantage of that. There are some amazing vistas down certain streets.
Spider-man: Homecoming is a recent example that I felt missed a trick there. Peter Parker lives in Queens and they clearly shot quite a bit of the movie in the burrough, but there’s nary a hill in sight. Forest Hills in Queens must be a good hundred feet tall. Walking up Queens Boulevard is as exhausting as any street in San Francisco.
Now that I think of it, there was one flick that showed off New York’s hills, the Jenna Elfman/Ben Stiller movie, um... googling... ah! Keeping the Faith. That’s because Ed Norton actually lived in NYC, so he knew great locations. https://youtu.be/1V388ePOVtM
Another thing that’s weird is that in movies you never see blondes in New York, but walking down the street there are blondes everywhere.
Air crash investigations.....jet plane but the engine they were showing wasn’t a jet engine.
Jacqueline wrote: "Air crash investigations.....jet plane but the engine they were showing wasn’t a jet engine."Yes, that's one of my son's pet peeves (I might have mentioned interiors vs exteriors of airplanes, but don't recall). He knows a LOT about flight and airplanes--he's been a fan since he was 5 and is now 18. Once he is a professional trumpeter he plans to get his pilot's license. He wasn't going to get a full or really large scholarship to a flight program, but did for trumpet.
Trike wrote: "Even worse, the accents go by neighborhood, and sometimes by street...Wow, by street, but I can believe it given how many people can live on a street or a block there and all of the different cultures and nationalities.
Massachusetts town names are crazy. Every time I encounter a new one I think of the Monty Python skit: “It’s spelt Throat-Warbler Mangrove, but it’s pronounced Luxury-Yatched.."
Yes, exactly. But many of these town names and pronunciations came straight from England and it's even worse there. I can no longer remember the real spelling of a name pronunced Fanshawe, but it doesn't look remotely the same. I'm not sure if that's a place name or just a human name.
Here's one--using the wrong terms when you set a story somewhere.If you are writing about logging in British Columbia or Washington State in fiction and use the term lumberjack, you get an F for research. I never even heard the term growing up and it's one of the top 3 industries in BC. They are LOGGERS. Not only that, but that is only the general term. There are fallers, for example. Plus, the people who rate the logs for their value are Scalers.
Also, there are logging trucks but not log trucks. The list could go on and on.
The same goes for any industry--learn the local terms and have locals check your work. Locals who aren't smart alecs who are messing with you. Plus, GO THERE AND VISIT.
Even better, write what you know, although with Fantasy they you don't have to know nearly as much!
That said, I'm very fond of the Alan Bradley Flavia series even if he lives in Canada, but then I don't know if he's butchering anything over in England and the audiobooks help make the weaker installments more enjoyable.
PS Also, inventions--get it right. eg Marconi did not succeed in figuring out how to send voice by radio signals and in the end bought a license to manufacture radios based on what Fessenden figured out.
Yeah my Husband is a pilot. Has been for about 20 years. And he’s loved planes since he was little. He didn’t start actually flying until he was in his 30s. We have our own 2 seater sports plane. Rockets along quite nicely. Our kids have been flying planes since they were 10, 7 and 5. The instructor in our small country town used to take them with him if he had to do other stuff and let them fly the plane for most of the flight. They just didn’t take off or land. And then later they’d always fly some of the way when Hubby took them anywhere. It used to be funny when they were asked what they did on the weekend and they’d say that they went flying in a sort of disinterested way and everyone would be excited and ask about it and carry on but to our kids it was normal. The two youngest were Air Force Cadets and one weekend we had to take the Aero Club plane to another town for a competition that was on there. Hubby and our son took it over and Hubby and our daughter brought it back home a couple of days later. The other cadets were there and were taking to our daughter and were excited when they realised she would be going home in the plane. They wouldn’t believe it when she told them she would be flying it most of the way home lol It definitely impressed the boys. She was 13/14 at the time 😂
I hate watching plane things with him because he’s always whinging. That comment was from yesterday just as I was turning him off in my head and it stuck because I’d just opened this thread when he said it lol
In many books and movies with lots of fighting, they play off injuries too easily. Getting punched and kicked hurts. Being shot or stabbed is really painful and limits mobility, in most cases. There are too many cases where the mortal hero is treated more like a super hero.
Karin wrote: "Trike wrote: "Even worse, the accents go by neighborhood, and sometimes by street...Wow, by street, but I can believe it given how many people can live on a street or a block there ..."
More people lived on a single floor of my dad’s Brooklyn tenement than in the entirety of my mom’s Indiana town. My dad thought corn only came in a can and my mom had never seen a pineapple or banana. My grandma’s house didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing until WWII, when my mom was about 6.
Truly different worlds.
true in that people from the same countries tended to group together and their accents and expressions would be similar. There wasn't as much in the way of TV/radio broadcasts to expose people to other accents.
Did we mention the fact that in most movies, guns have minimal to no recoil? And that in some movies, the energy that should be in recoil is actually in the victim who flies through the air after a hit?
Dj wrote: "Trike wrote: "colleen the convivial curmudgeon wrote: "I will say that when I visited Lexington - Kentucky's second largest city - for the first time I, Philadelphia native that I am, said to my no..."Cattle, rather than sheep, in the Territory...
My husband is a petrol-head and he gets so annoyed when someone on a top end motorbike just cannot get away from some cop in a Ford Crown Victoria. He says that even an average rider should be out of reach in about 10 seconds.
Suppressors (not silencers) on guns are another problem. They don’t chirp and only get to what I consider quiet if sub-sonic ammunition is also used. Even then you can hear the mechanical operations inside the weapon.
Esther wrote: "My husband is a petrol-head and he gets so annoyed when someone on a top end motorbike just cannot get away from some cop in a Ford Crown Victoria. He says that even an average rider should be out..."
Mission: Impossible - Fallout does an excellent job with its motorcycle/police car competition. The BMW is powerful but doesn’t handle great, and Cruise is riding on wet and/or cobblestone streets, so he can’t corner very well. Combine that with traffic and you even the playing field. A ton of CGI helps.
https://youtu.be/feootZPAdB0
Trike wrote: "Esther wrote: "My husband is a petrol-head and he gets so annoyed when someone on a top end motorbike just cannot get away from some cop in a Ford Crown Victoria. He says that even an average ride..."
Cruise is a big fan of MotoGP and has a few customised bikes so I am not surprised it was more realistic.
Tomas wrote: "Did we mention the fact that in most movies, guns have minimal to no recoil? And that in some movies, the energy that should be in recoil is actually in the victim who flies through the air after a..."Oh yes! This drives me crazy. And the people shooting with one hand... Or holding with one hand while shooting to the side...
MrsJoseph wrote: "Tomas wrote: "Did we mention the fact that in most movies, guns have minimal to no recoil? And that in some movies, the energy that should be in recoil is actually in the victim who flies through t..."
That 'gangsta style' of pistol shooting, when you hold your pistol with one side up, truly aggravates me and shows that the producers of the movie/TV series know nothing about handgun shooting. Such a shooting method makes it nearly impossible to shoot accurately at any distance but point blank: by twisting your wrist, you force it into an unnatural position that will make your hand shake, while your view of your gun sights will be compromised. A very dumb way to try to 'impress' viewers.
That 'gangsta style' of pistol shooting, when you hold your pistol with one side up, truly aggravates me and shows that the producers of the movie/TV series know nothing about handgun shooting. Such a shooting method makes it nearly impossible to shoot accurately at any distance but point blank: by twisting your wrist, you force it into an unnatural position that will make your hand shake, while your view of your gun sights will be compromised. A very dumb way to try to 'impress' viewers.
I know I am super late to the party here, but here is a pet peeve I have: computer networking. There has been exactly one sf book I have read where the author seems to have a clue about signal and acknowledgement (syn/ack) in the way computers talk to each other. I think it is one of the big reasons I liked Newitz’s “Autonomous.“
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It's so nice when authors get details/industries right!
Lowell wrote: "I know I am super late to the party here, but here is a pet peeve I have: computer networking. There has been exactly one sf book I have read where the author seems to have a clue about signal and ..."Computer networking? It's ... all just a bunch of tubes, yeah?
];>
Lowell wrote: "I know I am super late to the party here, but here is a pet peeve I have: computer networking. There has been exactly one sf book I have read where the author seems to have a clue about signal and ..."Cryptonomicon is one of the few I've found with a moderately understable IT world.
The Atrocity Archives uses the right terminology and has its moments but it's rarely key to the plot.
I got a new one for you’uns, from Emily Eternal, which I 1-starred in my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...Here’s the part:
he has our flesh-and-blood hero and virtual heroine (the titular Emily) break into a house in Wolfeboro, which just so happens to be the retired police chief’s home. Okay, coincidence, that’s fine. The chief is a woman, which, all right, not outside the realm of possibility in a sci-fi thriller. And now she’s black.
Um.
Yeah, I’m a liberal in a mostly red state, and I’m a feminist, and I’m all about inclusion, but you can’t just ignore the reality on the ground. New Hampshire is about 95% Caucasian, and Wolfeboro is about 108% white. I’ve been there quite a bit and I’m fairly sure I’ve never once seen an African-American. I’m not sure any black people have even *visited* Wolfeboro. I mean, people there look at *me* sideways and I’m Italian with a last name that sounds like it might be Hispanic. In 2016 Wolfeboro voted for Trump nearly 2-to-1.
I’m just sayin’.
I mentioned this bit of the book to a fellow Granite Stater and her reaction in its entirety was, “Hah. No.” You need to get more than the science right, authors.
Portland, Oregon is 76% White, Oregon is even more white and Portland has an African-American police chief. African Americans make up about 7% of the Portland population and less than 2% of the state population. It feels weird to me coming from Houston.A lot of cities recruit their chief of police and other higher up police men/women from outside their jurisdiction, so I'd buy it.
A mayor would be another story, though
CBRetriever wrote: "A lot of cities recruit their chief of police and other higher up police men/women from outside their jurisdiction, so I'd buy it.."NH does, too. White men from Connecticut, white men from Maine, even a couple white men from Massachusetts. That’s the pie eater version of diversity.
Whenever Mass politicians move here to try and get into Congress, NH rejects them like the body rejects an infection.
Comedian W. Kamau Bell, who is a black man married to a white woman who grew up both in the South and the North, says that the different strains of racism are, “In the South you can be close but not high. In the North you can go high but not close.” Meaning white Southerners usually don’t mind black neighbors but dislike black authorities, while white Northerners don’t mind black authority figures but don’t want black neighbors. My experience bears this out.
So yeah, maybe a black woman police chief could exist in New Hampshire. But not in Wolfeboro. I can’t stress enough how *not* in Wolfeboro.
another interesting point is difference in the name of things. I read a book recently that was set in Texas and they were eating "biscuits" at each meal. Now here in Aussie land a biscuit is a small sweet item that you might have with for morning or afternoon tea.
Kateb wrote: "another interesting point is difference in the name of things. I read a book recently that was set in Texas and they were eating "biscuits" at each meal. Now here in Aussie land a biscuit is a smal..."So which one gets it wrong?
thank you CBR that makes more senseI wonder what other things are misinterpreted eg thongs in AUssie are a form of shoes , I think they are called flip flops in USA
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