You ever let the little things in a book bother you?

I'm curious if its just me, but if I find a detail in a book that doesn't make sense, it irks me to no end. Even when it's one seemingly innocuous sentence. For instance:

1. In Hunger Games, she says there are no satellites anymore for communication, makes it seem like they lost the ability after the war. But really? You have nuclear weapons and ridiculous healing capabilites and genetic mutations, and no satellites???? All the inventive technologies they created in the Capitol, and no satellites? That bothered me. Did I miss something?

2. The Host. Wanderer has a dream about Mel's brother month's after insertion and tells the seeker. Uh, she's been in Mel's body for months and they live in the modern world...nobody looked Mel up in a database and knew she had a brother before that???? That boggled me too.

3. 11-22-63. The whole thing with the It kids and talking about a clown killer. Before I knew it was the It kids, this drove me crazy (cause I never read the book and vaguely remembered the movie) later on. I was like clown killer, clown killer, clown killer....how the hell does this fit in....

I guess I let these things get to me cause they poke holes in the world the author has created for me...

Message edited 2/8/2012 12:06:14 PM.

Re: You ever let the little things in a book bother you?

Message edited 2/8/2012 12:21:44 PM.

Re: You ever let the little things in a book bother you?

I can only respond to the question about IT.

In it, there is a pervasive evil in the town of Derry that manifests itself physically as the killer clown. Even though the kids in the book sent the physical manifestation of the evil away for the time being, the evil itself still exists, and manifests itself in a general crankiness, strange crimes, higher rates of domestic violence, etc.

Stephen King likes to link his books together in little ways, so the town of Derry appears in a few of his books, and it is referred to in others. Characters will say things like, "There was another murder over in Derry."

I think it's cool that he does that (reminds me of HP Lovecraft) but I can see how it might be annoying to others.

Re: You ever let the little things in a book bother you?

And to answer your question, sometimes I let those things bother me, but usually only when a character acts completely OUT of character. I can forgive almost anything but that.

I love the Outlander series, all of which are HUGE books with over a thousand pages, hundreds of characters, etc. One of the forums I belong to, people were writing things like, "In 'The Fiery Cross,' Diana (the author) has Jamie's study in the front of the house, but in 'A Breath of Snow and Ashes' the study is in the back of the house!!"

Dude, the author wrote thousands of pages. It's a minor detail, relax. I noticed people do the same thing with the Harry Potter books, as well as Game of Thrones. While I understand some criticism, I think some people love to nitpick.

Re: You ever let the little things in a book bother you?

Re: You ever let the little things in a book bother you?

Re: You ever let the little things in a book bother you?

I get really irked when I find errors in books. Wrong dates, things like that.

I remember reading a true crime book once and they mentioned a specific date - mentioned the day of the week too. The day of the week was wrong for that date in that year. I only knew that because the date was the day after my Bat Mitzvah It really annoyed me though. Check your facts before you go to publication!

Re: You ever let the little things in a book bother you?

Yes! The anachronisms in The Help drove me crazy!

Re: You ever let the little things in a book bother you?