What are you reading? 2019

All books are down to personal choice, Sheal. But could you be afraid that what Bilbo said.......

“You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”

might be true??

It's actually 3 books in one, Sheal, which divides the story into separate readable, but long, parts.
There's humour, magic, evil, heroics, villains and worse, honour, and a lot of truth in the book. It, unfortunately, started off a trend in more books about Wizards, Magic, Dragons, etc, of greatly lesser quality and readability, by less Authors.
But for me Lord of the Rings stands apart in it's writing quality, and the things it stands for. There's other books that J R R Tolkien wrote that tie into the whole story, some depicting the times before the tale of the Lord of the Rings, Bilbo's adventures with the Dwarves, the "road" just goes on and on, Sheal

 

So, a case of............

“Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not Today. Good morning! But please come to tea – any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Good bye!"

 

That's something that annoys me with some books. I find more references are out of context than bad spellings nowadays. Although the book I read the other week that was quite interesting had a few glaring errors.

It's a crime novel called The Yard and is about murders in London and the start of what is now known as the Murder Squad. It has a lot of detail about London in the 1880s and most of the language and slang is good.

The first repetitive annoyance is the spelling of words ending in 'ise' where they always use 'ize'. This got me to the stage where I looked up the nationality of the author and, of course, he's American. So, obviously, the book was published in America but that doesn't provide an acceptable excuse for using American spellings for a book set in Victorian England.

Then there's the use of words that were not used in England in those days. There were quite a few of them and a couple that I remember are 'morgue' (an American word of French origin whereas the English word was/is 'mortuary' - which started being used in the mid 19th Century as a replacement term for 'the dead house') and the word 'patsy' which only came into use in this country in the 20th Century. They should have used a British proof reader to help make it more authentic.

A friend of mine, when he retired many years ago, found it difficult living on a state pension and looked around for some part time work. He wasn't up to much physical work and was definitely not a sociable person (suffered personality change after a brain injury when he was knocked down by a car) and becoming a proof reader was ideal for him. He got to read books (which he loved) and didn't have to meet people but still got paid. He used to tell me about some of the horrendous mistakes that were made although the text had first been put through spelling and grammar software.

 

I've remembered another couple of Americanisms in the book The Yard set in Victorian London.

It mentioned a few times about people being on the 'first floor' when it was the ground floor and a few of the heroes were carrying Colt pistols when the police force in London was issued with Webley pistols. Minor points but lazy editing.