I need to vent

[tdu000]

This is really silly of me but I have had to stop reading Kazuro Isiguro's book "The Buried Giant" because of the mention of rabbits. Rabbits are not native to the UK and were introduced by the Normans (and I wish they hadn't) for hunting purposes. So a book about England in the Dark Ages (even a fantastical one) shouldn't have rabbits. I know this

Comments

[stmargarets]

I didn't know that about rabbits!

Oh, just hand it back and say that you "couldn't get into it" or "I couldn't accept the world building." Life is too short to read books (or sit through movies) that irritate you.

And it's a legit criticism.

Other than these irritants of life, how are you and yours?

[tdu000]

Rabbits do seem as if have always been if England but they originate from the Spain/Portugal part of Europe and the name Spain actually means "Land of Rabbits" - yes it really does! Or at least Ispania means that in Carthaginian.

Life ticks on. 2016 seems to be being a bit of a struggle without any concrete reason for being so. Nothing to actually complain of but not particularly great either.

[stmargarets]

I've found since turning 50 (3 years ago) everything just seems harder. I don't know if it's the hormones, stage of life, or what - but it just is.

I see Sydney has had a lot of rain. Hope you are high and dry!

[tdu000]

Having had no rain for what seems like months, it is catching up this weekend. Very wild and windy. We are high, so no problems with flooding. I have to drive an hour to work today and I'm not looking forward to it. Sydney roads are so smooth (you can tell they've never heard of black ice or snow) that they can be awful in the rain. I think I will have to take Dave's 4-wheel drive, as it doesn't skid as much as my car dies, but I really hat driving it.

[megan29]

I didn't know that about rabbits, either, but I completely relate to being irritated by shoddy authorial research. I once threw out a romance book (unfinished) b/c a character - purportedly a music lover - kept listening to Chopin's *symphonies" (they even had phony numbers). Any half-assed music lover knows that Chopin is famous for NEVER having written a symphony. Which anyone can also find out by googling it, if one bothers.

I also find myself incapable of reading almost any book where the character is a mathematician. The amount of misconceptions and downright ridiculous ideas about this profession is astounding.

That being said, I wonder how many stupid ideas *I* acquired in fields I know nothing about, by reading equally shoddy books but without realizing it.

[tdu000]

I can't watch medical dramas. Pre the arrival of Little Tyke, I used to work in hospital pathology labs and TV medical drama producers and writers seem to have almost zero idea of how hospitals are actually run.

I do understand that the author doesn't know everything, but surely editors are supposed to check these things. That bit about Chopin is really bad - not nearly as obscure as including anachronistic rabbits in a book.

[alkari]

I have a very similar thing about movies and TV shows in which the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman cavalry have the riders using stirrups!

[tdu000]

I didn't realise that they didn't have stirrups. I quite understand why that would be annoying. Of course my father always grumbles about the wrong breed of cattle grazing in the fields.