S/O Reading Pet Peeves - How Accurate is This Book?

[Twik]

Or else they grew up and live somewhere with no snow at all, and do not understand the effect a two-week blizzard could have on even a northern community.

[Bexx27]

I don't think even PA/NJ gets heavy snow over two weeks without noticing.  Perhaps the author grew up in North Dakota or Buffalo, New York.   

I bet the book even has the federal government open.   

Well, the characters are noticing the snow and commenting about how much it's snowing, how they'd better get on the road soon, etc., but they don't seem to find it all that out of the ordinary. In real life, though, it would be a serious emergency situation and everything would be disrupted.

[Sharnita]

Asfar as the snow thing, it can depend.  If you get a day or two to clean up, then more snow, a day or two to clean up, more snow ... and  you are used to it then it is not that big a deal.

[Bexx27]

Asfar as the snow thing, it can depend.  If you get a day or two to clean up, then more snow, a day or two to clean up, more snow ... and  you are used to it then it is not that big a deal.

It's not a big deal in places where that weather pattern happens. It doesn't happen in DC. We sometimes get isolated snow storms lasting a few days, but snow and freezing temperatures are so rare here that it would just never snow heavily every few days over a 2-week period. If it did, we would all think the world was ending.

[wolfie]

I don't think even PA/NJ gets heavy snow over two weeks without noticing.  Perhaps the author grew up in North Dakota or Buffalo, New York.   

I bet the book even has the federal government open.   

Bet the author didn't notice that she had said it was snowing heavily for two weeks straight. Just thought it would something to that particular day and didn't stop to think about how many times she said it happened and what that would actually mean!

When I was in high school we had one week of heavy snow (I lived in NJ at the time). Not only was everything shut down but most places lost power and the plows couldn't keep up so if you weren't on a main street you were stuck. I remember going stir crazy by thursday (snow started sunday night) and how we dug our way out just so we would have something besides sandwiches and cereal to eat (no power = no stove). 2 weeks of that would have been hell.

[squeakers]

To go with this topic is a forum I ran across that I am guessing many of you wish the authors' of the Oops writings would have consulted ahead of time: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=66

Between this thread and that forum I should glean a ton more trivia that I will remember faster than my kids' names 

[Luci45]

I just read an ebook that I really got into. The language was clear and intelligent, there were no typos, and no grammar errors.

There was offspring of a human and an orangutan, kind of brain-hurty right there, but OK. Species with different numbers of chromosomes can produce offspring sometimes, and there were all kinds of awful experiments. The Apgar was 3/6. That led to a lot of interesting research on my part.

The hybrid was born in 1944. The Apgar rating was not created until 1952, and I very much doubt that Virginia Apgar in the US had a lot of contact with German doctors in 1944, even though she might have discussed it as something she was thinking about somewhere along the line with colleagues.

Apgar scores are in single digits, as far as I know.

Best of all, the author was a gynecologist and pediatrician.

I did learn that Apgar means three things. 1) the creator's last name 2) a mnemonic device for Appearance, etc. 3) an acronym for American Pediatric Gross Assessment Record.

[kglory]

I just read an ebook that I really got into. The language was clear and intelligent, there were no typos, and no grammar errors.

There was offspring of a human and an orangutan, kind of brain-hurty right there, but OK. Species with different numbers of chromosomes can produce offspring sometimes, and there were all kinds of awful experiments. The Apgar was 3/6. That led to a lot of interesting research on my part.

The hybrid was born in 1944. The Apgar rating was not created until 1952, and I very much doubt that Virginia Apgar in the US had a lot of contact with German doctors in 1944, even though she might have discussed it as something she was thinking about somewhere along the line with colleagues.

Apgar scores are in single digits, as far as I know.

Best of all, the author was a gynecologist and pediatrician.

I did learn that Apgar means three things. 1) the creator's last name 2) a mnemonic device for Appearance, etc. 3) an acronym for American Pediatric Gross Assessment Record.

When someone says their child had an Apgar of 3/6, that usually means the 3 (out of 10) is the score immediately at birth, and the 6 (out of 10) is the second score, when they re-measure after a short period of time.  The score usually goes up since the baby's health improves as his body becomes accustomed to life on the  outside, so to speak.

But yeah, the date is an issue, not to mention the human-orangutan crossbreed.  I hope that was science fiction!

[Luci45]

I just read an ebook that I really got into. The language was clear and intelligent, there were no typos, and no grammar errors.

There was offspring of a human and an orangutan, kind of brain-hurty right there, but OK. Species with different numbers of chromosomes can produce offspring sometimes, and there were all kinds of awful experiments. The Apgar was 3/6. That led to a lot of interesting research on my part.

The hybrid was born in 1944. The Apgar rating was not created until 1952, and I very much doubt that Virginia Apgar in the US had a lot of contact with German doctors in 1944, even though she might have discussed it as something she was thinking about somewhere along the line with colleagues.

Apgar scores are in single digits, as far as I know.

Best of all, the author was a gynecologist and pediatrician.

I did learn that Apgar means three things. 1) the creator's last name 2) a mnemonic device for Appearance, etc. 3) an acronym for American Pediatric Gross Assessment Record.

When someone says their child had an Apgar of 3/6, that usually means the 3 (out of 10) is the score immediately at birth, and the 6 (out of 10) is the second score, when they re-measure after a short period of time.  The score usually goes up since the baby's health improves as his body becomes accustomed to life on the  outside, so to speak.

But yeah, the date is an issue, not to mention the human-orangutan crossbreed.  I hope that was science fiction!

It wasn't described as such, but I kind of thought it should have been.

I forgot to mention that the hero got his clavacle and the knob of the upper arm broken, so his arm was bound to his body. He escaped through the small bathroom window and did some other climbing with no mention of the pain and difficulty of such moves with only one arm - I think I would say impossibility. He also broke through a door by ramming his body into it, and no there was nothing said about the jolt. Like a small guy like that could break a door down when I am pretty sure a huge fellow couldn't actually do it. The author hadn't forgotten the broken arm because the pain pills issued but not taken were important to another escape.

[Katana_Geldar]

People doing waltz in regency romance always bothers me. The waltz,method something a father does with his daughter at her wedding, was seen as making out standing up until the late 19th century.

[iridaceae]

People doing waltz in regency romance always bothers me. The waltz,method something a father does with his daughter at her wedding, was seen as making out standing up until the late 19th century.

Jane Austen had people waltzing in Emma.

[SpottedPony]

I don't think even PA/NJ gets heavy snow over two weeks without noticing.  Perhaps the author grew up in North Dakota or Buffalo, New York.   

I bet the book even has the federal government open.   

Even if the federal government was closed, there still would be guards on the tomb of the unknown soldier.  Though it be interesting to know how they would be dealing with the removal all of that snow from the tomb area. 

Spotted Pony

[Onyx_TKD]

People doing waltz in regency romance always bothers me. The waltz,method something a father does with his daughter at her wedding, was seen as making out standing up until the late 19th century.

I've been to historical dance events specifically focused on Regency-era dances, taught by people who have studied the dances of that time period, and there were waltzes involved. They weren't the same as modern waltz, and it was mentioned that they were new and just becoming accepted in that era. In the waltzes taught at these events, only brief portions involved a ballroom dance hold and even that was different than the modern hold, e.g., a different hand position so that the dancers weren't holding hands palm to palm. I can't speak for the accuracy of these myself, but the group seemed quite well reputed and the instructor seemed to have put in a good deal of research on the topic.

[Lynn2000]

I forgot to mention that the hero got his clavacle and the knob of the upper arm broken, so his arm was bound to his body. He escaped through the small bathroom window and did some other climbing with no mention of the pain and difficulty of such moves with only one arm - I think I would say impossibility. He also broke through a door by ramming his body into it, and no there was nothing said about the jolt. Like a small guy like that could break a door down when I am pretty sure a huge fellow couldn't actually do it. The author hadn't forgotten the broken arm because the pain pills issued but not taken were important to another escape.

Oh, I've completely given up wondering if any action movie-type stuff is accurate/realistic. I'm pretty much willing to suspend that disbelief if it's a good story and they keep it from just being lazy plotting, like... holding one's breath underwater for an hour or something. Kind of like how whenever the phone rings, it's something related to the plot; or characters who live in different places just walk into each other's houses without the need for anyone to unlock a door or even knock and wait for the occupant to answer.

My mom won't give in, though. Every action movie we watch she's going, "I don't think he could do that. I don't think he could walk/run/fight/drive after that."

[AnnaJ]

People doing waltz in regency romance always bothers me. The waltz,method something a father does with his daughter at her wedding, was seen as making out standing up until the late 19th century.

Waltzing was new but not limited to father/daughter dances.  If I remember my Georgette Heyer, the patronesses at Almacks - assembly rooms in London where proper young women and men mingled - had to give their approval before a young woman was allowed to dance there, but waltzing was permitted at the hall.  Since Almacks was an extremely conservative (socially) place, if it happened at Almacks it was certainly happening at private balls.

Another weather glitch...a few years ago I was reading a mystery set in Las Vegas; it's May and the heroine is wearing a jacket because it's so cool  .  I've lived here for almost 20 years and if it's cool enough for a jacket in May I promise you it would be a big deal and the heroine would be talking about it.  And let's not even talk about the fact that CSI has it raining almost every week...in the desert...where we get fewer than 10 inches of rain a year.