littlemissattitude
Super Moderator
I've got a question for you all. What makes you want to throw a book across a room? Or, more gently, what makes you put a book down partway through and not pick it back up?
I'll tell you what brings this question up. I was in the library the other day, and had picked up a book that looked good. I sat down in one of the comfortable chairs (love those comfy chairs in the library ) and started to read. It looked to be a good popcorn book, and I was in the mood for that. There was Egyptology and terrorists and looked like maybe ancient curses and all that good stuff. And then, a few pages in, one of the characters tells another character that he would not run a carbon dating test on an artifact for some lame reason that can't even remember now. But the implication was that in other circumstances he would run that test on that artifact. Except that it was a stone object and carbon dating is only used on organic samples. I threw the book down on the table and said, "I can't read this." I startled my mother, who was sitting there reading something else.
My mom asked me what was wrong. "Well," I said, "This author is an idiot and didn't even take the time to do his research." And that, more than anything, is what will make me put a book down faster than anything and not be able to pick it back up again. It was a simple thing, not highly technical. If he had bothered to read anything at all about carbon dating, that would have probably been about the first thing he would have read.
So, what makes you throw a book down in frustration?
I'll tell you what brings this question up. I was in the library the other day, and had picked up a book that looked good. I sat down in one of the comfortable chairs (love those comfy chairs in the library ) and started to read. It looked to be a good popcorn book, and I was in the mood for that. There was Egyptology and terrorists and looked like maybe ancient curses and all that good stuff. And then, a few pages in, one of the characters tells another character that he would not run a carbon dating test on an artifact for some lame reason that can't even remember now. But the implication was that in other circumstances he would run that test on that artifact. Except that it was a stone object and carbon dating is only used on organic samples. I threw the book down on the table and said, "I can't read this." I startled my mother, who was sitting there reading something else.
My mom asked me what was wrong. "Well," I said, "This author is an idiot and didn't even take the time to do his research." And that, more than anything, is what will make me put a book down faster than anything and not be able to pick it back up again. It was a simple thing, not highly technical. If he had bothered to read anything at all about carbon dating, that would have probably been about the first thing he would have read.
So, what makes you throw a book down in frustration?