adelagia: (community | empowerage)
[personal profile] adelagia
Was recently just telling someone that I can't bring myself to overlook incorrect dialogue punctuation or blatant misspellings, no matter how popular or well-recced a fic is, though I vaguely recall a time when stuff like that didn't bother me as much (misuse of your/you're, however, has always, always felt like a sucker-punch to the soul); I think this may be due to doing the submission queue at FIA for a few years now, and now that I'm a lot more finely attuned to catching SpaG mistakes I see them everywhere. Which is much worse when it's an actual, published book rather than a fic.

Which brings me to:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

I was already predisposed to enjoy this book because a) Pride and Prejudice, classic, and b) who doesn't like a little zombie action every now and then?

It was a fairly entertaining book, though I don't think I'd read it again in a hurry. The zombie-related bits are actually inserted into the original text pretty seamlessly, and some parts are laugh-out-loud funny and others totally gross (which seems on par with what you'd expect of zombies in general), but nothing actually happens with them for the most part; they feature in the background, mostly, and have no real story arc of their own, which gives rise to a lot of questions as to why they're there and how they should be dealt with. Also, most of the fun stuff happens in the first half of the book, leaving the zombies as dead weight for the rest of it, especially after the novelty factor wears thin after a while.

My biggest problem with the book, though, was the shoddy proofreading work done with the new scenes (which was probably apparent, given the way I started this post). There is a constant mix of American and British spelling, confusion with place names and egregious spelling errors, like bails of hay and a coy pond. A COY POND. COME ON! [/Gob Bluth]

To sum up: Borrow it from the library and read it for a few laughs, though you might be left wanting to read the original instead. (Or, if you're me, wondering where to send a letter of complaint about the coy pond.)



on 2010-03-26 02:10 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] ems.livejournal.com
I rarely get a beta because a) I never imagine anyone could be bothered to do it and b) my fanfiction really doesn't seem important enough for a beta. I probably would for a long piece, though.

Mind you, I am a trained proof-reader so I would hope to spot most errors myself...!

on 2010-03-26 06:16 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] adelagia.livejournal.com
Tbh, for drabbles and little things I tend not to bother with betas either, but for me it's an absolute must when it comes to long, srs bsns fic. I think in general I'm pretty good with SpaG, but there's always the chance that I wouldn't catch my own mistakes simply b/c I'm too familiar with my own work.

Also, I'd be happy to beta for you if you ever need it :)

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