History CowboyBeBopAtHisComputer / Literature

** The UK blurbs off the books make it very clear whoever wrote them didn't read or didn't understand the text. For the book of ''Literature/TheWayOfKings'' the blurb claims that the book is about a war over shard blades. Whilst there is a war happening throughout the book that war has nothing to do with trying to get shard blades at all.

* One review of the 2009 ''[[Literature/TheSagaOfDarrenShan Darren Shan]]'' movie said that it was a rip off of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}. Cirque Du Freak'' came out ''five years'' before ''Twilight''. Screw that, the ''last'' book was out before ''Twilight''! And anyway, the only thing they have in common is vampires.
** Speaking of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', ABC World News did a story about fans' excitement for the second movie ''New Moon''. In it, while talking about the books and their popularity and impact, they showed the book covers. Which is all well and good... except for the fact that the covers were for the ''"House of Night"'' series and ''not'' the highly recognizable ''Twilight'' covers.

* In ''A Landscape with Dragons'', Michael D. O'Brien critiques various works, including literature and movies, directed at children, evaluating their consistency with conservative Christian values. In his critique of the works of Creator/MadeleineLEngle, particularly the Time Quartet, he states that Beezie O'Keefe was ruined by the burdens of raising a large family, implying that L'Engle was against large families. Except she wasn't. Instead, what ruined Beezie was a series of DeusAngstMachina events. First, her father died, leaving the family in poverty. To escape their debt, her mother married someone who made sexual advances on thirteen-year-old Beezie, abused her little brother to the extent that he suffered brain damage before having him committed to an institution and causing his untimely death. All of this forced Beezie to marry a {{Jerkass}} of a guy (who came from a long line of shiftless drunks whose hobbies included flinging homeless puppies to death against barns) in order to escape her home life. In fact, in her Austin and O'Keefe novels, L'Engle celebrated large families; and people who looked down on large families and stay-at-home motherhood were accused of inverse sexism.

* One short story was about a rich man who bought the world's best television, a wall-sized screen that you could actually walk into and enter the movie/show. [[AssholeVictim He uses this to rape various movie stars.]] But he gets his comeuppance when in the middle of trying to rape Creator/IngridBergman in ''Film/{{Casablanca}}'', his son wanders in, starts flipping through the channels, and lands on a ''Film/FridayThe13th1980'' movie, where his father is killed by...Freddy Krueger.

* In January 2017, The Guardian was found to have included [[https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/824388930975916032 a blatantly fake quote]] "from Literature/NineteenEightyFour" (actually taken from a [[https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/823724412729839617 joke tweet]]) in an article, despite the ''many'' signs something was amiss

** The follow-up tweet to the quoted statement includes even goofier writing and mentions [[WesternAnimation/TheJetsons Mr. Spacely and sprockets]].

* Angus Fletcher's ''[[https://slate.com/culture/2021/03/wonderworks-angus-fletcher-review.html Wonderworks]]'' does this to the extreme of ComicallyMissingThePoint. He claims that authors down through history have invented various literary devices that change readers' psychoneurology to help cope with things like grief, loss and loneliness. His examples border on the absurd, and occasionally cross that line. Did you know that Creator/WilliamShakespeare 's ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' was really written to help you process your own personal losses?

* This happened a lot in the blurbs of the House of Stratus reprints of Creator/RafaelSabatini 's novels. E.g.:
** Literature/TheGatesOfDoom: The blurb makes Pauncefort sound like an antiheroic protagonist, with Captain Gaynor as a mysterious friend he might not be able to trust. In fact, Gaynor is the hero, they haven't met before the story begins, and Pauncefort quickly turns out a villain.
** Literature/TheSwordOfIslam: The blurb makes Andrea Doria sound like the hero. He's a fairly minor character.
** Literature/TheTavernKnight: After quoting an opening line which makes the hero sound pretty villainous, the blurb writer remarkably avoids this trap by basically saying nothing at all... but still manages to call him "the Tavern ''King''", despite "Knight" being right there in both the title ''and the quote used at the beginning of the blurb''. (They do also say that "remarkably for Sabatini" the book is based on English history. Although he did set a lot of novels in France and Italy, Sabatini wrote plenty about England as well, including some of his most famous works.)

Koontz had published his first novel, ''Literature/StarQuest,'' in 1968, and started hitting the bestseller lists in paperback in 1977, when his novel ''Literature/DemonSeed'' was rereleased simultaneously with the film version. His 1979 novel Literature/TheKeyToMidnight was his first best-seller without a movie tie-in, and ''Midnight'' was at least his fifty-seventh (57th) published novel, released twenty one years after his first (as Koontz also wrote under pen names in the 1970s, his pre-''Midnight'' total may have been more than fifty-six).\\

** Speaking of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', ABC World News did a story about fans' excitement for the second movie ''New Moon''. In it, while talking about the books and their popularity and impact, they showed the book covers. Which is all well and good... except for the fact that the covers were for the ''"House of Night" series'' and ''not'' the highly recognizable ''Twilight'' covers.

* ''The Stumbling Colossus'' by David Glantz starts with him criticizing the highly controversial Viktor Suvorov. First, Glantz gets his real name wrong. Then, he claims that Suvorov writes about the second Soviet echelon being composed of "black shirted NKVD formations" - a mix up of two different ideas about half a book apart ([[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and the black referred to coats, not shirts]]). Then he states that despite Suvorov's claims, the tank units in this echelon were not combat ready ([[TheWarOnStraw Suvorov makes no such claims]], only stating it is highly unusual for certain armies there to have tanks ''at all''). He also somehow manages to state that "it can be questioned how a man of Suvorov's [[CriticalResearchFailure low]] '''[[CriticalResearchFailure rank]]''' [[CriticalResearchFailure could have access to archive documents]]".[[note]]In the Soviet army, a person was promoted in positions regardless of rank, which could easily lag a few stars behind. Suvorov had a colonel's position, with his '''rank''' being completely irrelevant as anyone with even basic knowledge of the Soviet Army knows. Plus, he prefers using open sources instead of archives.[[/note]] Not surprisingly, the Russian footnotes give quite a few examples of him using badly outdated sources.

** A deliberately misleadlingly written fake synopsis from [[http://www.flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/homework.htm the Tolkien Sarcasm Page]] was used as a source by the London ''Times''. For anyone familiar with Tolkien's work beyond ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'', it's obvious that the author of said synopsis knows the source material, he just randomly mixed and matched various parts of the Legendarium; enough to be convincing for readers who have some vague knowledge of the content of the book, but a blatantly obvious fake for those who actually ''read'' it.

* Creator/DeanKoontz wrote about a review of his novel ''Literature/{{Midnight}}'' thusly:\\

** Marvel at the Worcestershire Library Service's [[http://capitadiscovery.co.uk/worcs/items/629079 summary]] of ''Literature/{{Hogfather}}'': "The Hogswatchnight yuletide season is disrupted by the evil deeds of the Auditors, who replace the red-suited Hogfather with a scythe-bearing demon, prompting the Unseen University wizards and their monster-bashing nanny to launch a rescue plan." Parts of it are partly correct; the most notable error is that the sycthe-bearing replacement is not a demon and is ''also'' trying to [[SavingChristmas save Hogswatch]] from the Auditors. Also, while Susan is a nanny (well, technically a governess) and working with the wizards, she's not "their" nanny, although she'd probably be the first to say they need one. What's baffling about this is that the mistakes look like ones made by someone who only read the cover blurb - but they get things ''right'' that aren't in the blurb (it doesn't mention the Auditors, for example).

** The same thing happened in the slipcover for the hardback edition of ''Literature/ToSailBeyondTheSunset'', followed by the statement that [[spoiler:Maureen was not only Lazarus's [[ParentalIncest mother and wife]], but his daughter.]]]]

** The same thing happened in the slipcover for the hardback edition of ''Literature/ToSailBeyondTheSunset'', followed by the statement that [[spoiler:Maureen was not only Lazarus's [[IncestIsRelative mother and wife, but his daughter.]]]]

* A lit crit book analysing Creator/IsaacAsimov got very bogged down by the author's inability to even consider robots as sentient beings, despite that clearly being how Asimov wrote them. Among other things, he claimed "Little Lost Robot" was symptomatic of Asimov's own {{Literal Minded}}ness, since otherwise he would have realised that a voice-command robot would need to understand the colloquial meaning of an order to "get lost". But the story is very clear that Nestor took the order completely literally — and with utmost priority based on the urgency with which Gerald Black gave it.

** The guys over at [[http://www.exposingsatanism.org/harrypotter2.htm Exposing Satanism]]. According to them, Voldemort is God (wait, they claim to be Christians, yet they seriously think GodIsEvil?), Harry is the Antichrist, Voldemort raped Ginny...

* The people profiled in Time Magazine's "Man/Woman/Person of the Year" issues have always been picked by their relevancy during a given year, not to promote the best leaders. This have been often lost on people who have criticized the magazine for "endorsing" such figures as Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeini without bothering to read what the magazine had to say about them (in particular, they called out Hitler for being the sick bastard that he was). This eventually led Time to stick with less controversial figures for the title, reinforcing the misconception of it being an honor.

* Contrary to the claims of Publishers Weekly, there are no [[FaunsAndSatyrs satyrs]] in Nancy Springer's ''Apocalypse''[[spoiler:, although Eros could be considered a sort of gender-flipped nymph if you squint. And while Shirley Danyo, in [[HorsemenOfTheApocalypse in her role as Pestilence]], develops skin lesions reminiscent of Kaposi's sarcoma, she's ''not'' actually HIV-positive]].

* Daniel Handler's ''Literature/ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents'': A website identified goth-girl fashion icons Emily the Strange and Ruby Gloom as characters; and numerous pages — including at least one on this very wiki — call ''Literature/LemonySnicketTheUnauthorizedAutobiography'' something like "The Unofficial Biography". A preview of ''The Beatrice Letters'' claimed that the punch-out letters in the book spelled out the "real" title of the thirteenth book ... Nope. Similarly, every preview of ''The Beatrice Letters'' claimed that the punch-out letters would spell out two different secret messages, but if there is a second one, it's nothing more than a RedHerring.

* Similarly, Creator/DianeDuane's ''Literature/YoungWizards'' series has been accused of ripping off ''Literature/HarryPotter'' by people who don't realize that Diane was writing them ''twenty years'' before JK Rowling first put pen to paper. [[WizardingSchool Wizarding Schools]] have been around ''in literature'' since the 1ate 1800s, and in folklore probably from at least TheMiddleAges.

** A deliberately poorly-written synopsis from [[http://www.flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/homework.htm the Tolkien Sarcasm Page]] was used as a source by the London ''Times''.

** TheGatesOfDoom: The blurb makes Pauncefort sound like an antiheroic protagonist, with Captain Gaynor as a mysterious friend he might not be able to trust. In fact, Gaynor is the hero, they haven't met before the story begins, and Pauncefort quickly turns out a villain.
** TheSwordOfIslam: The blurb makes Andrea Doria sound like the hero. He's a fairly minor character.
** TheTavernKnight: After quoting an opening line which makes the hero sound pretty villainous, the blurb writer remarkably avoids this trap by basically saying nothing at all... but still manages to call him "the Tavern ''King''", despite "Knight" being right there in both the title ''and the quote used at the beginning of the blurb''. (They do also say that "remarkably for Sabatini" the book is based on English history. Although he did set a lot of novels in France and Italy, Sabatini wrote plenty about England as well, including some of his most famous works.)

** In general, a RunningGag among the casual fans and press is to point out that Harry has "saved the school X times" every time someone doubts or mistrusts Harry, X being the number of previous books. To say that Harry makes a habit of "saving the school" is extremely inaccurate; while he certifiably did so in the second book, none of the other books feature him doing any such thing. Plus, all of his heroics involve excessive rule-breaking and have few witnesses; acting as if Harry should be treated like a hero who saves the school and that mistrust of him is dictated by RuleOfDrama is a solid example of this trope.
** In a similar vein to the above, the running joke that "the new teacher is always evil". While this is ''mostly'' accurate, to the point that the sixth such teacher, Horace Slughorn, was a refreshing subversion, it unfairly leaves out the ''third'' "new teacher", Remus Lupin, one of the series' most prominent heroic characters. For another, Lockhart was a coward, egomaniac, fraud, and idiot but ''not'' a villain.

* A lit crit book analysing Creator/IsaacAsimov got very bogged down by the author's inability to even consider robots as sentient beings, despite that clearly being how Asimov wrote them. Among other things, he claimed "Little Lost Robot" was symptomatic of Asimov's own {{Literal Minded}}ness, since otherwise he would have realised that a voice-command robot would need to understand the colloquial meaning of an order to "get lost". But the story is very clear that Nestor has ''chosen'' to interpret the order literally in pique at the way Gerald Black spoke to it.

* The Amazon blurb for the 2020-21 edition of the ''Nationwide Football Yearbook'' states that it includes the "results and [a] review from the 2020 European Championships in which England play all their games at Wembley". This blurb was clearly written before 17 March 2020, when UEFA (the tournament’s organisers) postponed it to 2021 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
* One short story was about a rich man who bought the world's best television, a wall-sized screen that you could actually walk into and enter the movie/show. [[AssholeVictim He uses this to rape various movie stars.]] But he gets his comeuppance when in the middle of trying to rape Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, his son wanders in, starts flipping through the channels, and lands on a Friday the Thirteenth movie, where his father is killed by...Freddy Krueger.

* Angus Fletcher's ''[[https://slate.com/culture/2021/03/wonderworks-angus-fletcher-review.htmlWonderworks]]'' does this to the extreme of ComicallyMissingThePoint. He claims that authors down through history have invented various literary devices that change readers' psychoneurology to help cope with things like grief, loss and loneliness. His examples border on the absurd, and occasionally cross that line. Did you know that Creator/WilliamShakespeare 's ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' was really written to help you process your own personal losses?

* Angus Fletcher's ''Wonderworks'' [[https://slate.com/culture/2021/03/wonderworks-angus-fletcher-review.html]] does this to the extreme of ComicallyMissingThePoint. He claims that authors down through history have invented various literary devices that change readers' psychoneurology to help cope with things like grief, loss and loneliness. His examples border on the absurd, and occasionally cross that line. Did you know that Creator/WilliamShakespeare 's ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' was really written to help you process your own personal losses?

* Similarly, Creator/DianeDuane's ''Literature/YoungWizards'' series has been accused of ripping off ''Literature/HarryPotter'' by people who don't realize that Diane was writing them ''twenty years'' before JK Rowling first put pen to paper. [[WizardingSchool Wizarding Schools]] have been around ''in literature'' since the 1ate 1800s, and in folklore probably from at least UsefulNotes/TheMiddleAges.