A reader’s pet peeve

As a reader, do you have pet peeves? What are they? A bit of semi humour to lighten up this Saturday. Because yes, it’s partly humour, despite it being partly serious.

Here is one of my pet peeves: readers butchering the names of the characters, especially when they are fans of the author or the book(s). I’m always coming upon those and it annoys me to no end. For me, they show disrespect to the author, but also… to the character(s).

For instance, as a big Jude Deveraux fan, something that ticks me off is a reader, especially one who says she’s been a huge fan and reader for years, constantly writing Taggart when the name of the family is Taggert. I mean, Jude has written many a book about this family, either as main protagonists or as important secondary characters. So how can someone who has read her books for years still manage to misspell the name?

Another example: Charley Davidson. Yes, Charley. Not Charlie, as I’m seeing so often. Again, there are 13 books about her. So the misspell shouldn’t happen.

One I’ve seen this week when I fell upon a review from one of the books I was rereading (The Last Kiss Goodbye, by Karen Robards), was this reviewer calling the main hero Mike Gardner. Ehhhh… No. It’s Michael Garland and we see his name so much in that book, and in the first, that you could at least write it correctly, even if you gave only a one-star review to the book.

And how often have I seen Jamie Fraser’s name written as “Jaime”? Or his wife as “Clare” rather than Claire? Like nails on a blackboard for me.

It’s as if someone wrote my name “Paquet” (and it did happen). Nope. It’s “Paquin”. It annoys me to no end when it happens.

So that is one of my reader’s pet peeves. Do I have others? Of course. But this one is the biggest of them.