Research Carefully

... because you never know when a fourteen year old girl is going to catch you on your mistakes.

I picked up a book for my daughter yesterday that she's been dying to read. This morning, she walked downstairs and informed me she was finished with it. She said it was pretty good, but one thing irritated her throughout the book. It seems there are Norse gods in the book, and the author got the names of one of them wrong. My daughter is a huge fan of Norse mythology, so it was glaringly obvious to her. However, when she told me the name given instead of the right name, even I knew it was wrong. The author used a Norse mythology place name as a god name. Ooops. I know the correct name was a mouthful, and the readers would've been confused by it, but come on.

So, in the interest of keeping even the nerdiest of us happy, please do your research a little more carefully. If you're going to delve into the lesser-known mythologies, at least don't go naming people higgledy-piggledy.

(Both author and title are redacted. I'm not out to embarrass anyone. I'm just making a point about taking care with research. And if you know the book I'm talking about, please don't give the title in your comments. I won't publish it if you do. Feel free to write me privately if you want to talk about it, though.)