My wife, the retired computer programmer, has a ball with Excel. Her only gripe (which carries over to Word), is that every time a new version comes out, the menus change so she has to re-learn everything.
I recently saw a book on Amazon, being marketed as "serious historical fiction" (with emphasis on serious), set in the days of the Roman Empire ... where a Roman consul is having spaghetti with tomato sauce.Because what would Italian cuisine be without tomatoes, amirite?
Speaking of research (or the lack of it), there's a good book called Ten tomatoes that changed the world: a history by William Alexander. When he researched that famous story about some bloke proving that tomatoes weren't poisonous by eating a basket of them on the front steps of the local courthouse, he tracked down the courthouse in question and found that it had no front steps. It's a very good book.
Mine, too. I get the New Yorker every week, and can never get around to reading more than two or three of the articles or fiction in it.
Like "untold stories." If they're in your book, they've been told, innit?
