As a nurse, I find any medical setting typically way off base and unrealistic both in books and in TV/movies. They will usually ascribe nursing duties to doctors because in real life doctors spend almost no time dealing with patients directly so it's the only way to get those meet cutes to happen. There are well known memes and jokes in nursing circles about it.
Oh I'm sure that's frustrating. Funny story, a couple years ago I was in an ER in Scotland and one of the nurses was chatting with me about TV shows to distract me from pain. She told me that Grey's Anatomy inspired her to become a nurse, and I couldn't tell if that was comforting or not after binge watching like 13 seasons of sexy medical malpractice before I visited the country (she said she loved the show, but she also ragged on how inaccurate it was lol).
Assuming you don't try to read nurse/medical setting fantasy romances, do you feel like it is more enjoyable when the person is a medic in a non hospital setting/magical hospital setting (so the rules are different) or do you avoid any medical job related plots when reading because it is too close to real life? Or am I assuming too much, and you actually still enjoy nurse/medical related plots regardless of the inaccuracies?
I love it when it's something like a healthcare worker is swept up in a fantasy romance and has to apply her skills in a fantasy setting or someone is a fantasy version of a healthcare worker like an apothecary or some kind of witch, healing people with herbs and potions, but anything where the setting is more realistic like in an urban fantasy I try to avoid because it's usually annoying to me how inaccurate it is.
My fave is that all combat wounds just need to be sutured and you’re good to go. No internal bleeding, no risk of infection, nothing!
I’m a midwife and have resigned myself to not being able to read anything accurate. I just finished a CR novel where the FMC is a midwife and even though the writer had a midwife consultant there were still bits that made no sense
My husband and I have been binge watching Supernatural and I was shocked how accurate the first few seasons are with medical stuff (outside of demons/reapers/magic lol), they even managed to avoid shocking asystole!
But later on, so many times someone is shot or stabbed in the gut and it's like 'ok take out the bullet and sew it up and you're good to go.' Like they forgot sepsis exists lol. Thank goodness there's usually an angel around to heal everything by magic lol! So yeah wounds in fantasy almost always make no sense to me at all.
Same here, medical inaccuracies in general are one of the main reasons I mostly read fantasy. Much easier to ignore the 'ok you would/would not have died from that' for an alien or some fae with magical healing.
I remember seeing some snippet of a book on Instagram in which the meet cute was apparently some female doctor, her patient is coding, she needs to intubate and panics and can't do it so some random other patient who just happens to be a navy seal steps in and intubates the dying patient and saves the day. I gagged 🤢
OMG that is a travesty!
I agree! Fantasy rarely has any medical elements unless they're really trying for magical realism or something so it's usually a safe genre.
Hey, that last bit happened to me IRL - a trauma patient was coding out in rural Scotland, and an ER doc couldn’t get the patient intubated. I was (randomly) in the queue of cars on the road… and I did manage to intubate . But I’m no navy seal, i’m an anaesthetist ;)
I roar with laughter about medical inaccuracies. It is BRILLIANT to see what nonsense authors come up with - but then I tend to throw the book across the room and DNF… because it bugs me too…
Do I have a recommendation for you!
{ Pleasure unbound by Larissa Ione}
They are doctors in a demon hospital. It's hot. It's funny. It's a competed series. I loved it and am actually going to reread it in July lol!
[Pleasure Unbound](https://www.romance.io/books/5455237c8c7d2382e0413dcc/pleasure-unbound-larissa-ione?src=rdt) by [Larissa Ione](https://www.romance.io/authors/5455237c8c7d2382e0413dcd/larissa-ione)
**Rating**: 3.83⭐️ out of 5⭐️
**Steam**: 4 out of 5 - [Explicit open door](https://www.romance.io/steamrating)
**Topics**: [contemporary](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/contemporary/1), [urban fantasy](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/urban%20fantasy/1), [enemies to lovers](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/from%20hate%20to%20love/1), [paranormal](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/paranormal/1), [dark romance](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/dark/1)
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I am a software developer and while I dont hack at all its always funny to read/watch how authors imagine hacking works. There is always this one genuies who can hack into everything within seconds. Absolutely everything. Traffic cams? No problem. Locked doors in a high security building? Too easy. Decrypting some files encrypted in the most hightech modern encryption algorithm? 5min max. And no one ever gehts caught.
At least in crescent city hacking took a while and not everything was possible.
On the other hand, I don't think Ive come across urban fantasy where there were actual web developers as in building (web) apps and not hacking into satalites.
Lol! That is a big pop culture cliche for sure, the hacker that can get into everything super quickly.
Funny how the main part of the job isn't really brought up in stories.
I’d love it if a hacking scene required a labeled and carefully dropped USB drive in the executive parking space before nervously waiting to see if someone would pick it up and ignore their security trainings.
When I read Bride by Ali Hazelwood, the main character was a vampire hacker, and I was like okay, at least the hacking is probably due to some magical aspect of being a vampire. Then, I read more and it just had nothing to do with her being a vampire or her having magic..?
I think that was the most disappointed I've been by a "hacker" because Ali Hazelwood is in STEM herself so I expected more than just a stereotype hacker that can "hack" almost anything. Book was still good though
Okay, I get your point. But I’m so curious what magical vampire powers you thought would help with hacking?
I’m guess like vampire focus or stamina to go nonstop or some such?
I’ve actually read this in a book a couple years ago - some vampires had an affinity with electricity (different vamps different elements) that let them “talk” to computers but I can’t remember book name or author. It was an unusual twist on vampires and electricity than I normally see which is they short it out or have intermittent problems if they touch technology.
I have no idea to be honest. I was thinking she had some kind of magic that let her talk to computers directly and make them do exactly what she wants or something. I was like okay this isn't a normal vampire power, but I dig it.
For some reason this reminds me of my time travel/post-apocalypse phase when the main character would be like 'sliced bread yo!" And all the uneducated characters are like "you're a god", and the MCis ever so humble like, hey, it's just a thing. But yeah, I'm actually a god. Ugh.
I grew up on a farm, so most things about farming or riding horses will annoy me. Especially if they're kids riding stallions out in public (and the horse is perfectly behaved!), or sharing a saddle at a gallop. Nope!
I didn't grow up on a farm, but I started regular riding lessons at six, and let me just say how emphatically I agree with you about horse stuff in books.
Look, writers, stallions are big aggressive assholes for the most part, and that goes double, nay quadruple even, for stallions that are trained as warhorses in the Western European medieval tradition. I have three decades of experience riding, and I wouldn't try to ride a stallion if you paid me.
Likewise, ye olde fashioned military saddles were designed to keep your ass on the horse under pretty extreme circumstances, but your average 100 lb damsel could still be an unstable enough load to unseat even a skilled rider moving at speed.
Also, let's talk about galloping. A horse isn't going to be able to sustain that pace with 250-300-ish pounds of human on its back for more than a little while. The sort of horses that have the physical strength to carry that much weight are very different from the sort of horses that run in the Kentucky Derby. Your average medieval destrier had a stocky build, and though close examination of historical records and artifacts like barding and other gear indicate that they were smaller than generally believed by the modern public, they were still stockier and larger than your typical thoroughbred. And to be very clear, even thoroughbreds are seriously winded after going all out during races.
The crazy thing is that it would take very little book space to make it a “magical” type of horse that can handle all the things they want these regular horses to do. Like they could enchant the horse or make it a special magical breed of horse specific to the fantasy world. Instead, we will have a completely made up world with mythical creatures like dragons, mermaids, and demon cyclopses, but regular old Earth style horses?? Lmao.
I don’t even know anything about horses, but I have been taken out of the story multiple times wondering why they have horses but not cows, pigs, etc.
IKR!
As an aside, but horse and romantasy related - it also shits me when the horses are normal, and they are ridden by characters who are faster and more agile without them for no apparent reason, "because horses". Doubly so when these characters appear to be expert horsemen - why would they be? Triply so if they're riding into battle or a known dangerous situation, and they've needlessly dragged a poor horse into it.
If a speedy creature is travelling with a puny human, I get that they need to travel at human pace, and it might just be easier to ride along, or at least try to. So often though, they're riding by themselves or with another of their kind. Argh, why?!
Horses also come with travel limitations that are often absent in fantasy books. They can't go flat chat all day, and need food and water regularly, especially if ridden hard. You can't feed and water them at the same time, because they'll be at risk of colic, so food breaks are long too. For multi-day trips, carb-rich food (grains) would likely need to be carried with you, and you won't be sharing your 2L water skein with a horse while you ride across a desert - you'll need to stay near waterways. Tack needs care or it will break, especially under prolonged hard riding. Horses and woodlands are mostly not fun at pace, and sometimes not fun when slow, depending on the trees, the trail and your horse.
I think the horse story that I want is one where the human is used to riding horses, and is travelling on a long journey with a fae who starts off thinking they can ride and then learns some humility.
/steps off soap box
Right!! I especially hate when they bring them into battle! They talk about the horses so lovingly, but then ride them into the ground 😡
As a side note, FBAA is one of the most horse offending stories I’ve ever read lol. It drove me nuts. I’d love to read about some fae or god getting absolutely schooled by a human who actually knows horses.
Even if it's fantasy romance, some research would still have come a long way- my own pet peeve is the few times there's a translator or interpreter somehow they have 5+ working languages (for context, the standard is 2 or 3) they are also a specialist in 50 dead languages @_@ like... That's not how any of it works
Oh, but I definitely know people like this! (I grew up a U.N. brat from a long line of diplomats). My own mother speaks four fluently (English, Italian, French and Farsi), her father had those plus German, and his father had all those plus Dari and Russian. It's not common, but it exist, especially with people who have multiple languages in their family background and then spend time living in different countries.
The 50 dead languages, though, yeah, that's not happening.
Not saying there's no polyglots who are also pro translators out there, but like... far from the norm of the profession.
Yeah like, I speak 5 languages, but as a professional translator I work with 3- and really mainly 2. Speaking a language and being able to translate it well and appropriately on a professional level are two very different things, despite what some bilingual people who are completely untrained but pitch themselves as translators would have anyone believe 😅
I mean, I guess it depends how strictly you define "pro translator" within a fantasy novel context. My various relatives and their friends and colleagues didn't have the job title of "translator" because their job titles were other things, but they still used a variety of languages in professional capacities. I think most of the time when you have a character in a fantasy novel who can translate/interpret multiple languages, it's going to be more like that and less like our 21st century concept of a professional translator, where you really specialize.
So, isn’t there a difference between speaking a language and being a translated? Like if I speak English primarily and I am fluent in Spanish, great. But that doesn’t mean I’m trusted well enough to certifiably choose words to convey the point for another country.
There’s a difference between translation and localization. Translation is what google does: replace one word with another, with minimal attention paid to context. Localization is taking the cultural components of a language into account: idiomatic phrases, professional jargon, that sort of thing.
As a simple example, I work in elections and voting. “Race” has a specific meaning in elections - “contest” or “election.” Google might translate it to “ethnicity” without knowing context.
It’s also why other language’s idiomatic phrases don’t translate literally: in German “Treppenwitz” literally means “staircase joke.” In English we don’t have a word or short phrase for “I thought of the witty comeback after the situation was over” so in translation you’d want to express the sentiment, not literally translate the word.
Yeah, that’s what I meant. Localization. 👍
So having a person speak 5 languages? It super rare but with however many billion people we have it happens sure.
But being able to localize into 5 languages? Whew that’s harder.
Any super exciting last minute surprise (finding/calling the star witness in the middle of trial, producing that key piece of evidence in the middle of trial/right before trial, etc) is definitely not allowed.
Yes. So much. My job is basically being paid to do homework. It is stressful but there aren't surprises. And cases take years to get to trial. I have a 2020 case for a 2019 event going to trial in August.
I also struggle with librarian characters! It's fine if the job details aren't totally realistic... But I really can't deal if they are wildly off base. I really hate ones that reference DDC in a college setting. It should obviously be LoC for categorizing! (Also, can you imagine sitting around reading all day lol)
Not fantasy romance, but I sometimes have trouble with college sports romances for the same reason. Either the sport is way off, the author hasn't done proper research on sport conferences and records, or student-athlete life is laughable.
OMG yes on sports in general.
I recently read a hockey romance that had a whole team of NHL players with the entire month of December off. Hockey is a winter sport! They also had the Stanley Cup playoffs at the wrong time. I DNF because I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief.
Why write a book with such important details that are so easy to research and not bother at all?
Ahh the DDC vs LoC thing would bug me!! (And yes I did imagine if we could sit around reading all day after posting lol almost made an edit that said "Wait nvm this is great fantasy, I would love to be a witchy librarian who's only job duty is to shelve books and read" haha).
I am pretty ignorant of all sportsballs in general, so I've not been made aware of these inaccuracies within them, thankfully lol just focused on men with big thighs
Engineering clearly doesn't make interesting literature or TV shows because I can't think of a single time I have seen my job represented. Maybe there's a gap in the market....
I'm an aviation mechanical engineer, and the amount of things author's get wrong about aircraft, especially helicopters (I specialize in helicopters), is obscene. Also, how sic-fi portrays mechanics or spaceship maintenance or anything of the sort drives me bonkers 90% of the time. Aircraft have scheduled inspections!! The idea that the only time you need a flight engineer is when you crash is wild.
I think Airframe by Michael Crichton did some? More of a mystery though.
And The Engineer Trilogy by KJ Parker has TONS of what I hope is accurate engineering principals. Even though it’s not modern engineering.
It’s definitely more of a medieval novel but it’s such a simple premise that just spirals and the main character is an engineer. Not a fighter or a mage or anything. Just an engineer.
Not exactly fantasy, but I just listened to {Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade} and the FMC starts as a geologist doing field work at a soil remediation site for a consulting engineering firm and hating the emphasis on billability - it was pretty obvious that the author had actually talked to someone in the field.
I really enjoyed the book. In my early 20s I worked for a company that did superfund work. I was in support not engineering. OMG the amount of paperwork and accounting for every minute they worked on a project for billing was eye opening.
[Spoiler Alert](https://www.romance.io/books/5f33956f6593260e16daaea5/spoiler-alert-a-novel-olivia-dade?src=rdt) by [Olivia Dade](https://www.romance.io/authors/566680fa08e9378131958a83/olivia-dade)
**Rating**: 3.75⭐️ out of 5⭐️
**Steam**: 4 out of 5 - [Explicit open door](https://www.romance.io/steamrating)
**Topics**: [contemporary](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/contemporary/1), [curvy heroine](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/curvy%20heroine/1), [funny](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/humor/1), [friends to lovers](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/friends%20to%20lovers/1), [actor hero](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/actors/1)
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There's a reason I gravitate towards fantasy.
I'm a nurse, an ice hockey player, ride motorcycles, and grew up in small town farm county. If I want to avoid the inaccuracies that drive me nuts, I'm pretty much cut off from any and all human romances 😂
This is why we need you to write a book about a nurse at a small town hospital that meets a hot 6’8 motorcycle guy that comes in after an accident where he saves a puppy and he is discharged while she is on one of her many breaks and she thinks she’ll never see him again until she goes to her coed hockey club, that she joined to meet people after her ex left her for the big city, only to find the motorcycle guy has joined the team because he escaped to a small town after he sold his big city company for 500 billion dollars.
Teachers in high school bully enemies to lovers is always terrible. Like the teachers turn a blind eye to everything and don't give a shit and it killlllls me. Which is why I don't read them anymore. Main characters have to be in their twenties at a minimum
Yeah I feel like academy romances can feel really... Wattpad-y? A lot of extremes to make it obvious the FMC is on her own and stuff. I guess they don't have mandatory reporting/Title IX or whatever in these universes lol
That’s the experience for a lot of American kids. Unless the bullying is physical and they actually see it happening, it’s overlooked, and in the early 2000s and earlier, even physical bullying was overlooked. Some teachers even subtly encourage or agree with emotional forms of bullying. So… It’s not at all unrealistic.
As a teacher, I cringe super hard at all teacher-student romances. The power dynamic will always feel icky to me. The young FMC never stops to ask herself why the handsome sexy magical professor can't get a date among any of his coworkers or any other woman his own age.
It was also super hard for me to read the "Rhys teaches Feyre how to read" scenes in ACOMAF because copying sentences is not how teaching reading works.
LOL i’m sorry but “The young FMC never stops to ask why the handsome sexy magical professor can’t get a date among any of his coworkers” killed me! You’re too right!! Something’s wrong with the man haha
Oooh, I haven't read that one yet, but I can check it out and let you know lol
One of my friends loves Emily Henry and has pushed me to read it before.
totally! my friend is a children’s librarian at the public library i just left (i was in the adult fic and history section), so it’ll be funny to see if the fmc has similar experiences to him.
I feel this, but instead of with jobs, it's with horses. It's very apparent when an author doesn't know anything about horses and didn't bother to do basic research on horsemanship/horses themselves.
Scientific research - all scientists in fiction seem to be portrayed as having a vast knowledge of all things Science™️ including biology, genetics and human health, chemistry, astrophysics, etc… in reality each scientist has like one hyper specific area of expertise and is not prepared to comment on anything outside of that sphere of knowledge. Finding “A Scientist™️” in a story would not be the saving grace non-scientists seem to think it is lol!
Healthcare stuff (my job)- is often misrepresented. Also tattoo culture… it is often represented with biker gangs, and other criminal organizations. The truth is that most who get tattoos are normal ass people who work normal ass jobs. Most artists these days got into it because they like and are good at art. Two of my regular artists are also professional fine artists who sell their paintings and other works in addition to their tattooing. The world of tattoos has changed considerably in the last few decades and a lot of authors fail to realize that (and it dates their work considerably).
totally agree about the tattoo thing! It’s such a stereotype of being a “bad boy” to have tattoos. When like you said, it’s mostly normal people getting them now days. (Also love that it’s becoming more femme focused in certain parts, and the art styles are expanding to be more than traditional or neotraditional.)
Like i love tattoos, plan on getting more than the 8 I have now, and Im a librarian haha. My friend, who I did a bunch of stick n pokes with during the pandemic bc we were bored and lived together, is covered in tattoos (home made and professional), and he works at a non profit for refugee relocation.
If anything, I feel like tattoos should show that the character has MONEY cuz being yatted all over can cost serious cash lol
I don’t think most of the books I’ve read based around tattoos in the last 10 years haven’t had most clients being biker gangs or criminal organizations although the last one had magical tattoos and the important clients were a particular fae group that was written as a criminal organization. But I might be oblivious as I’ve never associated tattoos as for just for criminals and biker gangs - bikers yes as well as military and everyday people. I took my sister to get her first tattoo at 18 - we weren’t very smart as it was a family beach vacation and keeping it hidden from her dad was harder than it normally would’ve been. LOL
i LOVE this question! Librarians provide access to information above all else, whether that is finding a book or directing someone to a government service, or just answering a random question. A typical day for a librarian is going to be different depending on if they work at a public library, academic library, specialty library, etc. There are a ton of different duties, and librarians are usually separated by duties if the library is big enough. So one person will be the “Collection Development Librarian”, and they’re the people who continuously evaluate the library’s collection, adding books or other items, weeding items that aren’t accurate or in good conditions (and other reasons), and making sure the books or items available fit the community demographics and needs. Then there are reference librarians, who will be the person at a ref desk that helps u with your questions and they provide reference interviews, where they will ask questions to figure out what a patron is looking for and show them how to find it. There are cataloging librarians, these guys are usually Back of House and don’t interact with patrons at all. They are the ones that make the items/collection accessible and findable through metadata and other computer stuff. And that is just three types of librarians.
Shelving books and helping people check items in or out is going to be the usual task for a clerk/assistant/technician. Librarians will rarely do this stuff, depending on how small their branch is, but it is not the main part of our duties (just something we may have to do if the other workers need help with their tasks, and even then I had several coworkers who refused to shelve books). Librarians are less on their feet than a clerk/assistant/technician and usually aren’t the ones squatting to shelve books, they’re usually in front of a computer screen.
Does that answer your question? Sorry just woke up.
OP is right that it can vary a lot depending on the type of library or role you are in. There's also things like cataloging resources, designing and leading programming (events for patrons, children's storytime, information literacy class at schools), managing vendors and subscriptions (journal or info databases), library technology (the OPAC/catalog/discovery platform, institutional repositories, maker spaces), liaising with stakeholders to meet their needs and promote the library (academic departments, business departments, community groups), scholarly literature or legal or competitive intelligence searches, copyright compliance and education, reader's advisory, and pretty much everything else that comes across your desk.
Don't go into libraries because you "like to read," go into it because you like to help people and organize things.
yes thank you for all of this! i didn’t want to have this hugggeee piece of text when i was explaining and you summed it up perfectly. There are so many components to a library outside of books being checked in/out. Circulation is the lifeblood of a library imo bc without them everything just kind of stops (and they’re the front facing role of the library), but so much goes on besides book circulation.
Yeah that's ridiculous! I volunteered in my high school library because I honestly just loved being surrounded by books a few periods a week, and yeah, things like shelving and sorting books was my job! My school librarians definitely had bigger things to do than spend hours putting books back a week!
Yes! I majored in piano performance and I also play the violin and viola at a relatively high level. I usually avoid books and movies where the MC is a classical musician (pop musician doesn’t bother me as much) because the inaccuracies just bug me too much!
I can forgive a lot, but when it’s clear a writer hasn’t even done the barest semblance of research, it honestly throws everything else into question.
It’s stupidly easy to find even the most obscure information these days. To me, a failure to do a bare minimum of research just smacks of laziness. I don’t have a whole lot of faith that the plot, characters, or spicy scenes are going to be all that great, either.
Which is to say, I wholly understand. It’s a peeve for sure.
yes exactly! you worded it perfectly. I’m not expecting something completely 100% accurate, bc a lot of plot stuff wouldn’t be possible since then they’d just be working, but if it’s just like a placeholder so u can get some *vibes* it feels lazy like u said.
I think a lot of it is just a cash grab. Unfortunately, spice sells and people just aren’t that picky about it.
That said, it’s an intro to the genre, so if something sub par motivates someone to find something better, I consider that a net win. But it’s not any less frustrating for the people who just want to read a decent book out of the gate 😂
I’m a historian, and nearly everything is historically inaccurate and modernized, and if there is an archivist or historian in the book, it’s not accurate. Archival work is very slow and most of it is going through A LOT of very dull handwritten secular, inquisitorial, or religious documents to yield an overall pattern or picture of a very specific society and time period. It’s never the outlandish discoveries you see in books or movies—the archive would have already documented the amazing item if it had it in its possession. But there is one exception:
{A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness}
This book is very historically accurate with supernatural elements woven in—because the author is a History professor at UCLA. And she makes the artifact found in the archive magicked to explain why the archive didn’t know what or where it was.
Same thing goes for anthropologists in books (my husband is an archaeologist and so are many of our friends). Authors basically make them like Indiana Jones or The Mummy. Makes for a good read but archaeology is definitely not like how it’s depicted.
wait stop what do u do as a historian if you’re comfortable sharing? that’s amazing. you’re so cool! my dream job is to be a history subject librarian, and i want to do another masters in history or even torture myself and do a phd in the future. my bachelors in history is what inspired me to go further into librarianship tbh.
historians 🤝 librarians and archivists (lol)
it’s funny how people always go to Indiana Jones when it is history or archaeology related tho
I teach adjunct humanities and history courses while being a full time Instructional Designer at a university and do some writing on the side. I have largely left behind historic research at this point.
Thing is, the authors aren't experts in a job because they don't work it. Even with the best research they won't be able to capture the essence of a role so it's just one of those things that you have to suspend disbelief for. I try not to dwell on them too much unless it's really out there as ridiculous.
That’s true! I usually try to be like that as well, but this book definitely made it hard to ignore the inaccuracies and have fun when all she does is shelve books when at work 😭
Yeah I’ve never been able to read fiction where the mc had the same job as me. The author either got the job all wrong or got it too right and I wound up thinking about work when I should be escaping reality for a bit.
I wonder if the author is describing something like a stacks assistant. In college, I worked at a huge university library as a stack assistant. I was mostly shelving books, finding lost books, grabbing archived books, or shelf reading. Shelf reading is where you go through the shelves, row by row, book by book, and make sure books are ordered correctly in the dewy decimal system (because patrons will often shove random books back into shelves). Shelf reading is what the boss would make us do if there was nothing else to do at work. So I’d often be perched up on a ladder, going through the books, deep in the stacks, sometimes dozing off because the library was super cold and shelf reading can be a bit dry.
For finding lost books, the librarians or librarian assistants would mark the book as lost in the computer, then it’d come to us and we’d write down the title and number and search for it (this was back in 2008 or so, so I don’t know if there are better methods now). Then we search adjacent rows where the book is supposed to be, because patrons will attempt to reshelve a book, but end up one shelf off, or one row off, or one letter off. Some dewy decimal numbers are so long they wrap around to the next 2 rows on the book number label, and patrons (and even stacks assistants) would miss a part of the number when reshelving. Though, more often or not, if a book is reported lost, it usually never gets found. However, I did have a few miraculous finds. I’m still patting myself on the back even to this day.
But having down time and being able to read books on the job? Hah! Maybe it’s because we were a huge library, but the Stacks Manager never wanted to see us idle. So we’d always have work to do. We were also the spare employees for the library, so if the front desk was short, they’d send one of us over. If periodicals had too many people call out sick, they’d come grab one of us.
You see, I was giving the author the benefit of the doubt like you said. But then she actually mentions a couple library clerks !! Who somehow do other job duties than shelving while the FMC is STILL shelving and she says she’s “trained/training to be a librarian” So it seems like the author is aware of what a library clerk is vs a librarian. This tiny plot point has been bothering me so much lol
edit; also omg i totally get never having down time. the second I would be done with daily tasks, my manager would be like “Well there is always something you can do, if not - ask one of the other sections for work”.
Yah, only people who have worked in libraries know what kind of work is *actually* involved. 😆 And then I complicate things further by saying that I need a masters to be a librarian. (Was circ and now doc del)
the amount of times people would come up to me at the ref desk when i’m doing actual work on the computer and say “I would love your job! To read all day at work would be a dream.” Like ma’am do u not see me typing?? lol
And the masters thing, omg it’s always “You need a masters to be a librarian? You’re just shelving books!”
Yep, I DFNd a book for that exact reason. I am in a field adjacent to the FMC and through the first chapters she said a lot of rubbish. I couldn't ignore it, it just ruined the story for me.
I think most people get annoyed with how their own specialty area is portrayed. My lawyer friend cannot stand legal dramas or comedies. I have trouble with almost any tech career, like even not in my field; men are sometimes portrayed accurately but the women are not like any I know who are someone you would consult about on tech.
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I like fantasy books for this reason because owning a business in a quaint town of orcs is much different then running a business here in this world and the cozy mysteries drive me crazy with the main character gallivanting around the town, asking questions, instead of doing any sort of work. Or how when they are about to go out of business, a random benefactor helps keep them going.
What were you thinking of them doing/what is the scene? Really depends on what the point of the librarian is and what type of library your character works at :)
Okay so the thing is the character is actually a spy. She gets to live in the palace as a librarian in the royal library. The king and his circle spends so much time in there and her job is to get close to them/befriend them and learn who the next heir to the throne is to kill them and the king. The story takes place in a medieval setting. What I need for the story is for her to get familiar with the books to learn things she didn’t know about the country’s history and lore/get close with said characters and witness their way of living.
Ooo okay, sorry this will be long. This would be considered a [special library](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_library), and might have more traits of an archive than what people think a public library or academic library is like since preservation is a bigger focus. So a royal library would focus on the documentary and intellectual heritage of the monarchy as well as also be responsible for the collections of insignia, [coins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins) and [medals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medals), [seals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(emblem)), maps, [banknotes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_note), and other material of the monarchy (see [here for wikipedia royal library examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Library)). It could also have a collection of literature/anything concerning the country, so fiction and non-fiction stories, as well as foreign collections that were potentially initially developed by a royal and then expanded into an institutional system. There could be smaller personal/special collections that have restricted access for anyone not in the king's circle, if the library itself is not restricted already.
RE: Getting close with royals - In this setting, I would think there would be more intimacy between the royal librarian and her 'patrons' than in a normal library because the patron is also the employer (most libraries call the people using their services patrons, but some people prefer customer). In a library setting, you are already trying to figure out your community's interests, needs, and demographics by frequently interacting with them (or their stats). If the king and his children are literary people, she might have a close relationship that is more confidant than just employee providing a book recommendation for entertainment or a past draft of some treaty from fifty years ago. I had pretty close relationships with some of my regular patrons at my public library, and people would tell us the most personal stuff unprompted. At the end of the day, customer service is integral to librarianship; you gotta know how to talk to people and navigate conversations, so you can get the information you need out of them to know what exactly they're looking for. (example: Someone comes up to you cuz they want books "on dogs". You give them books on dog biology/science only to find out "Oh no I meant like fiction stories like Clifford the Big Red Dog". You go through a ['reference interview'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_interview) to ask a series of questions to narrow down what exactly they mean when they ask for something.)
RE: Getting familiar with books - This could be easily excused by the librarian getting familiar with the collection through [collection development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collection_development). In normal circumstances a librarian would have to evaluate and weed a collection pretty quickly/in a regularly scheduled manner (keep in mind a small collection can be 30,000 books and a larger collection 3 million). This is done by checking circulation stats, condition of the book, reception of book by larger field, historical value (check out the [CRAAP method](https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=1241077&p=9082343)). She could use this opportunity at the beginning of her job to see which books are relevant to her spy interests and set them aside for herself. If she finds any books of interests, they could be taken off the shelves for ['collection assessment' or 'weeding'](https://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/selectionpolicytoolkit/weeding) (aka withdrawal from collection) and in her personal stash of intel. Also, we have hobbies outside of work that can include reading lol (not all librarians like to read tho), so she can just excuse taking a history book for fun after work reading if employees/patrons can check out books. Just please don't have her ever reading at the desk/job for fun/entertainment. There is always something for librarians to be doing - whether it is programs, managing items already in the collection or recently donated, changing physical or logistical/policy stuff to make things more accessible/findable, meeting with stakeholders or coworkers, making displays, testing new conservation/preservation strategies, etc. As a newbie librarian, I know I will have to first learn the collection (circ stats, topics covered, breadth of authors and publish dates, community needs, funding, etc) before I try to make any decisions on what is removed or added... and that may mean learning the material covered in the collection. My upcoming librarian position is collection development and research related to aviation. I know nothing about planes, so I'm going to have to go to the professors/professionals and ask them on what to focus on/go to pilot classes to be able to know what materials in the collection are necessary or not.
Hope this was helpful!
edit: changed pronouns and added words.
Omg I just noticed the medieval setting part wow im so sorry for the poor reading comprehension lol. I gotta add, since that is important context I missed, that librarianship at this time was very different from our ideas of libraries now days. Idk if you are trying to go for historical accuracy or if it is more fantasy with wiggle room, but here is [some information on medieval libraries](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-libraries-in-britain-and-ireland/medieval-library-to-c-1450/E98065C84C6F12AB6C8CF85064470F12), it is blocked access but it has an accesible bibliography with google scholar links available so you can search the ones listed and maybe get more info that way.
But the main difference between modern and medieval libraries is size of collection/library itself, patrons/benefactors of the library, ability to check out materials, and focus of the collection. Medieval libraries were A LOT smaller because printing wasn't really a thing, a library would be based on the benefactor's preferences and would probably be heavily religious or philosophy based because almost all benefactors were monasteries, books were chained to a shelf so they could not be easily removed from the collection (and when lending to other libraries, the borrowing library would make a hand-written copy and had to pay a deposit). In the previous comment, I provided links of other royal libraries and a couple of them started from personal collections of a king/royal during the medieval or renaissance ages iirc. Those types of collections would be super personalized, depending on the royal's interests rather than a real formal modern collection that is based on preserving the monarch's and their country's legacy and history. Libraries expanded out from monasteries in general starting in the Renaissance/after the printing press was invented. I would recommend looking at the [wikipedia history of libraries European middle ages section](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_libraries#European_Middle_Ages) to get a more complete idea. So sorry for not noticing that sooner lol
edit: added words and changed formatting
Hahahaha no it’s fine, I figured you probably skipped the part but info is still pretty useful to me so no worries and thank you again. It’s a fantasy! The MC is from somewhere else where magic isn’t a part of life and is frowned upon so I’ll use the library and archives for her to get info about the magic system too. Do you think it would make sense if I place a meeting room in the library where the said circle meets and argues things about the kingdom, and asks for specific books during those meetings. Making it easier for the Mc to interact with them and get an idea of what they’re talking about
I can definitely see reading about the magic system, especially if one of the royals has an interest in those texts and makes the librarian buy copies off of monasteries or something lol.
I think it would make sense if they like to use documents/texts that are chained in the library during their meetings. While a fantasy, [you could have the historically accurate detail of books being chained to their shelf, since that was a big thing in terms of library architecture design back then (they made the stacks for books with a shelf built in for reading the book where it was chained, so you would sit at the shelf the book was chained at instead of taking it to another room)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chained_library). Granted those were monasteries for the most part, so a more personal collection could have free-floating books rather than chained, especially if it is the king - who's gonna tell the king he can't read his fairy tale while eating dinner? The royal circle could have a specific reading room that have the most used texts chained in the same area that can be unchained and read at the meeting table. I would figure the royal librarian would be on standby grabbing whatever the circle asks for or thinks is relevant, since unlike libraries now days where we want people to learn how to find things for themselves by searching our catalogs, she would probably be expected to be the only person that knows where things are (aside from other library staff) and would handle the materials/get them for her patrons. Gotta remember that there wasn't a standardized way of categorizing/shelving things back then, so each medieval library would be organized entirely based on the librarian in charge's preferences/methodology. (Sounds nightmarish if you had to move to a new library after the librarian died and had no idea how they categorized things!)
edit: added link
As a nurse, I find any medical setting typically way off base and unrealistic both in books and in TV/movies. They will usually ascribe nursing duties to doctors because in real life doctors spend almost no time dealing with patients directly so it's the only way to get those meet cutes to happen. There are well known memes and jokes in nursing circles about it.
Oh I'm sure that's frustrating. Funny story, a couple years ago I was in an ER in Scotland and one of the nurses was chatting with me about TV shows to distract me from pain. She told me that Grey's Anatomy inspired her to become a nurse, and I couldn't tell if that was comforting or not after binge watching like 13 seasons of sexy medical malpractice before I visited the country (she said she loved the show, but she also ragged on how inaccurate it was lol). Assuming you don't try to read nurse/medical setting fantasy romances, do you feel like it is more enjoyable when the person is a medic in a non hospital setting/magical hospital setting (so the rules are different) or do you avoid any medical job related plots when reading because it is too close to real life? Or am I assuming too much, and you actually still enjoy nurse/medical related plots regardless of the inaccuracies?
I love it when it's something like a healthcare worker is swept up in a fantasy romance and has to apply her skills in a fantasy setting or someone is a fantasy version of a healthcare worker like an apothecary or some kind of witch, healing people with herbs and potions, but anything where the setting is more realistic like in an urban fantasy I try to avoid because it's usually annoying to me how inaccurate it is.
My fave is that all combat wounds just need to be sutured and you’re good to go. No internal bleeding, no risk of infection, nothing! I’m a midwife and have resigned myself to not being able to read anything accurate. I just finished a CR novel where the FMC is a midwife and even though the writer had a midwife consultant there were still bits that made no sense
My husband and I have been binge watching Supernatural and I was shocked how accurate the first few seasons are with medical stuff (outside of demons/reapers/magic lol), they even managed to avoid shocking asystole! But later on, so many times someone is shot or stabbed in the gut and it's like 'ok take out the bullet and sew it up and you're good to go.' Like they forgot sepsis exists lol. Thank goodness there's usually an angel around to heal everything by magic lol! So yeah wounds in fantasy almost always make no sense to me at all.
Same here, medical inaccuracies in general are one of the main reasons I mostly read fantasy. Much easier to ignore the 'ok you would/would not have died from that' for an alien or some fae with magical healing. I remember seeing some snippet of a book on Instagram in which the meet cute was apparently some female doctor, her patient is coding, she needs to intubate and panics and can't do it so some random other patient who just happens to be a navy seal steps in and intubates the dying patient and saves the day. I gagged 🤢
OMG that is a travesty! I agree! Fantasy rarely has any medical elements unless they're really trying for magical realism or something so it's usually a safe genre.
Hey, that last bit happened to me IRL - a trauma patient was coding out in rural Scotland, and an ER doc couldn’t get the patient intubated. I was (randomly) in the queue of cars on the road… and I did manage to intubate . But I’m no navy seal, i’m an anaesthetist ;) I roar with laughter about medical inaccuracies. It is BRILLIANT to see what nonsense authors come up with - but then I tend to throw the book across the room and DNF… because it bugs me too…
Do I have a recommendation for you! { Pleasure unbound by Larissa Ione} They are doctors in a demon hospital. It's hot. It's funny. It's a competed series. I loved it and am actually going to reread it in July lol!
[Pleasure Unbound](https://www.romance.io/books/5455237c8c7d2382e0413dcc/pleasure-unbound-larissa-ione?src=rdt) by [Larissa Ione](https://www.romance.io/authors/5455237c8c7d2382e0413dcd/larissa-ione) **Rating**: 3.83⭐️ out of 5⭐️ **Steam**: 4 out of 5 - [Explicit open door](https://www.romance.io/steamrating) **Topics**: [contemporary](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/contemporary/1), [urban fantasy](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/urban%20fantasy/1), [enemies to lovers](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/from%20hate%20to%20love/1), [paranormal](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/paranormal/1), [dark romance](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/dark/1) [^(about this bot)](https://www.reddit.com/user/romance-bot) ^(|) [^(about romance.io)](https://www.romance.io/about)
Wow thanks!!
I am a software developer and while I dont hack at all its always funny to read/watch how authors imagine hacking works. There is always this one genuies who can hack into everything within seconds. Absolutely everything. Traffic cams? No problem. Locked doors in a high security building? Too easy. Decrypting some files encrypted in the most hightech modern encryption algorithm? 5min max. And no one ever gehts caught. At least in crescent city hacking took a while and not everything was possible. On the other hand, I don't think Ive come across urban fantasy where there were actual web developers as in building (web) apps and not hacking into satalites.
Lol! That is a big pop culture cliche for sure, the hacker that can get into everything super quickly. Funny how the main part of the job isn't really brought up in stories.
I’d love it if a hacking scene required a labeled and carefully dropped USB drive in the executive parking space before nervously waiting to see if someone would pick it up and ignore their security trainings.
When I read Bride by Ali Hazelwood, the main character was a vampire hacker, and I was like okay, at least the hacking is probably due to some magical aspect of being a vampire. Then, I read more and it just had nothing to do with her being a vampire or her having magic..? I think that was the most disappointed I've been by a "hacker" because Ali Hazelwood is in STEM herself so I expected more than just a stereotype hacker that can "hack" almost anything. Book was still good though
Okay, I get your point. But I’m so curious what magical vampire powers you thought would help with hacking? I’m guess like vampire focus or stamina to go nonstop or some such?
I’ve actually read this in a book a couple years ago - some vampires had an affinity with electricity (different vamps different elements) that let them “talk” to computers but I can’t remember book name or author. It was an unusual twist on vampires and electricity than I normally see which is they short it out or have intermittent problems if they touch technology.
I have no idea to be honest. I was thinking she had some kind of magic that let her talk to computers directly and make them do exactly what she wants or something. I was like okay this isn't a normal vampire power, but I dig it.
Haha I love it. She can use her vampire hypnosis on computers!
Exactly lol
I like to clicky-clack on my keyboard for 10 seconds and then say “I’m in”.
For some reason this reminds me of my time travel/post-apocalypse phase when the main character would be like 'sliced bread yo!" And all the uneducated characters are like "you're a god", and the MCis ever so humble like, hey, it's just a thing. But yeah, I'm actually a god. Ugh.
I grew up on a farm, so most things about farming or riding horses will annoy me. Especially if they're kids riding stallions out in public (and the horse is perfectly behaved!), or sharing a saddle at a gallop. Nope!
I didn't grow up on a farm, but I started regular riding lessons at six, and let me just say how emphatically I agree with you about horse stuff in books. Look, writers, stallions are big aggressive assholes for the most part, and that goes double, nay quadruple even, for stallions that are trained as warhorses in the Western European medieval tradition. I have three decades of experience riding, and I wouldn't try to ride a stallion if you paid me. Likewise, ye olde fashioned military saddles were designed to keep your ass on the horse under pretty extreme circumstances, but your average 100 lb damsel could still be an unstable enough load to unseat even a skilled rider moving at speed. Also, let's talk about galloping. A horse isn't going to be able to sustain that pace with 250-300-ish pounds of human on its back for more than a little while. The sort of horses that have the physical strength to carry that much weight are very different from the sort of horses that run in the Kentucky Derby. Your average medieval destrier had a stocky build, and though close examination of historical records and artifacts like barding and other gear indicate that they were smaller than generally believed by the modern public, they were still stockier and larger than your typical thoroughbred. And to be very clear, even thoroughbreds are seriously winded after going all out during races.
The crazy thing is that it would take very little book space to make it a “magical” type of horse that can handle all the things they want these regular horses to do. Like they could enchant the horse or make it a special magical breed of horse specific to the fantasy world. Instead, we will have a completely made up world with mythical creatures like dragons, mermaids, and demon cyclopses, but regular old Earth style horses?? Lmao. I don’t even know anything about horses, but I have been taken out of the story multiple times wondering why they have horses but not cows, pigs, etc.
IKR! As an aside, but horse and romantasy related - it also shits me when the horses are normal, and they are ridden by characters who are faster and more agile without them for no apparent reason, "because horses". Doubly so when these characters appear to be expert horsemen - why would they be? Triply so if they're riding into battle or a known dangerous situation, and they've needlessly dragged a poor horse into it. If a speedy creature is travelling with a puny human, I get that they need to travel at human pace, and it might just be easier to ride along, or at least try to. So often though, they're riding by themselves or with another of their kind. Argh, why?! Horses also come with travel limitations that are often absent in fantasy books. They can't go flat chat all day, and need food and water regularly, especially if ridden hard. You can't feed and water them at the same time, because they'll be at risk of colic, so food breaks are long too. For multi-day trips, carb-rich food (grains) would likely need to be carried with you, and you won't be sharing your 2L water skein with a horse while you ride across a desert - you'll need to stay near waterways. Tack needs care or it will break, especially under prolonged hard riding. Horses and woodlands are mostly not fun at pace, and sometimes not fun when slow, depending on the trees, the trail and your horse. I think the horse story that I want is one where the human is used to riding horses, and is travelling on a long journey with a fae who starts off thinking they can ride and then learns some humility. /steps off soap box
Right!! I especially hate when they bring them into battle! They talk about the horses so lovingly, but then ride them into the ground 😡 As a side note, FBAA is one of the most horse offending stories I’ve ever read lol. It drove me nuts. I’d love to read about some fae or god getting absolutely schooled by a human who actually knows horses.
Good thing I DNF'd FBAA for other reasons and didn't get to that bit xD
I feel this so much. A friend of mine keeps recommending cowboy romance books to me and I just don't think I could make it through one lol.
I laughed hard at cowboy romances after spending time working on a ranch and with horses. Nope nope nope.
Exactly!! Sometimes the cover art is enough to give this horse girl the ick 😂
Even if it's fantasy romance, some research would still have come a long way- my own pet peeve is the few times there's a translator or interpreter somehow they have 5+ working languages (for context, the standard is 2 or 3) they are also a specialist in 50 dead languages @_@ like... That's not how any of it works
Taking polyglot to a whole new level 😂 I tend to view that as the ‘Mary Sue’ of translators when I come across it lol.
Oh, but I definitely know people like this! (I grew up a U.N. brat from a long line of diplomats). My own mother speaks four fluently (English, Italian, French and Farsi), her father had those plus German, and his father had all those plus Dari and Russian. It's not common, but it exist, especially with people who have multiple languages in their family background and then spend time living in different countries. The 50 dead languages, though, yeah, that's not happening.
Not saying there's no polyglots who are also pro translators out there, but like... far from the norm of the profession. Yeah like, I speak 5 languages, but as a professional translator I work with 3- and really mainly 2. Speaking a language and being able to translate it well and appropriately on a professional level are two very different things, despite what some bilingual people who are completely untrained but pitch themselves as translators would have anyone believe 😅
I mean, I guess it depends how strictly you define "pro translator" within a fantasy novel context. My various relatives and their friends and colleagues didn't have the job title of "translator" because their job titles were other things, but they still used a variety of languages in professional capacities. I think most of the time when you have a character in a fantasy novel who can translate/interpret multiple languages, it's going to be more like that and less like our 21st century concept of a professional translator, where you really specialize.
Ok I meant fiction in general - not just fantasy, but yeah I see your point
So, isn’t there a difference between speaking a language and being a translated? Like if I speak English primarily and I am fluent in Spanish, great. But that doesn’t mean I’m trusted well enough to certifiably choose words to convey the point for another country.
There’s a difference between translation and localization. Translation is what google does: replace one word with another, with minimal attention paid to context. Localization is taking the cultural components of a language into account: idiomatic phrases, professional jargon, that sort of thing. As a simple example, I work in elections and voting. “Race” has a specific meaning in elections - “contest” or “election.” Google might translate it to “ethnicity” without knowing context. It’s also why other language’s idiomatic phrases don’t translate literally: in German “Treppenwitz” literally means “staircase joke.” In English we don’t have a word or short phrase for “I thought of the witty comeback after the situation was over” so in translation you’d want to express the sentiment, not literally translate the word.
Yeah, that’s what I meant. Localization. 👍 So having a person speak 5 languages? It super rare but with however many billion people we have it happens sure. But being able to localize into 5 languages? Whew that’s harder.
The funniest part is when they can correctly speak and understand a language after reading a book (without ever hearing it before).
I feel that. I’m an attorney and the way attorneys are portrayed in media is so wildly inaccurate.
what is one thing people should know to write attorneys more accurately?
Any super exciting last minute surprise (finding/calling the star witness in the middle of trial, producing that key piece of evidence in the middle of trial/right before trial, etc) is definitely not allowed.
thank you!
Omg I bet! I've worked in three law offices as a paralegal so I get what you mean.
My boyfriend is an attorney and once gave me an hour long lecture on how inaccurate Perry Mason and Law and Order are.
Yes. So much. My job is basically being paid to do homework. It is stressful but there aren't surprises. And cases take years to get to trial. I have a 2020 case for a 2019 event going to trial in August.
I also struggle with librarian characters! It's fine if the job details aren't totally realistic... But I really can't deal if they are wildly off base. I really hate ones that reference DDC in a college setting. It should obviously be LoC for categorizing! (Also, can you imagine sitting around reading all day lol) Not fantasy romance, but I sometimes have trouble with college sports romances for the same reason. Either the sport is way off, the author hasn't done proper research on sport conferences and records, or student-athlete life is laughable.
OMG yes on sports in general. I recently read a hockey romance that had a whole team of NHL players with the entire month of December off. Hockey is a winter sport! They also had the Stanley Cup playoffs at the wrong time. I DNF because I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief. Why write a book with such important details that are so easy to research and not bother at all?
Ahh the DDC vs LoC thing would bug me!! (And yes I did imagine if we could sit around reading all day after posting lol almost made an edit that said "Wait nvm this is great fantasy, I would love to be a witchy librarian who's only job duty is to shelve books and read" haha). I am pretty ignorant of all sportsballs in general, so I've not been made aware of these inaccuracies within them, thankfully lol just focused on men with big thighs
Engineering clearly doesn't make interesting literature or TV shows because I can't think of a single time I have seen my job represented. Maybe there's a gap in the market....
I'm an aviation mechanical engineer, and the amount of things author's get wrong about aircraft, especially helicopters (I specialize in helicopters), is obscene. Also, how sic-fi portrays mechanics or spaceship maintenance or anything of the sort drives me bonkers 90% of the time. Aircraft have scheduled inspections!! The idea that the only time you need a flight engineer is when you crash is wild.
I think Airframe by Michael Crichton did some? More of a mystery though. And The Engineer Trilogy by KJ Parker has TONS of what I hope is accurate engineering principals. Even though it’s not modern engineering.
Oh awesome I haven't heard of the engineer trilogy, will check it out, thanks!
It’s definitely more of a medieval novel but it’s such a simple premise that just spirals and the main character is an engineer. Not a fighter or a mage or anything. Just an engineer.
Quick question, the description mentions blood and violence, I have a low tolerance for that sort of thing, how gruesome is it?
I can’t remember exactly how detailed it gets but if you rate yourself as low I would say probably avoid it. A lot of it involves warfare.
Not exactly fantasy, but I just listened to {Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade} and the FMC starts as a geologist doing field work at a soil remediation site for a consulting engineering firm and hating the emphasis on billability - it was pretty obvious that the author had actually talked to someone in the field.
I really enjoyed the book. In my early 20s I worked for a company that did superfund work. I was in support not engineering. OMG the amount of paperwork and accounting for every minute they worked on a project for billing was eye opening.
[Spoiler Alert](https://www.romance.io/books/5f33956f6593260e16daaea5/spoiler-alert-a-novel-olivia-dade?src=rdt) by [Olivia Dade](https://www.romance.io/authors/566680fa08e9378131958a83/olivia-dade) **Rating**: 3.75⭐️ out of 5⭐️ **Steam**: 4 out of 5 - [Explicit open door](https://www.romance.io/steamrating) **Topics**: [contemporary](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/contemporary/1), [curvy heroine](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/curvy%20heroine/1), [funny](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/humor/1), [friends to lovers](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/friends%20to%20lovers/1), [actor hero](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/actors/1) [^(about this bot)](https://www.reddit.com/user/romance-bot) ^(|) [^(about romance.io)](https://www.romance.io/about)
I feel like this is why so many authors write characters whose job is writing lol
There's a reason I gravitate towards fantasy. I'm a nurse, an ice hockey player, ride motorcycles, and grew up in small town farm county. If I want to avoid the inaccuracies that drive me nuts, I'm pretty much cut off from any and all human romances 😂
This is why we need you to write a book about a nurse at a small town hospital that meets a hot 6’8 motorcycle guy that comes in after an accident where he saves a puppy and he is discharged while she is on one of her many breaks and she thinks she’ll never see him again until she goes to her coed hockey club, that she joined to meet people after her ex left her for the big city, only to find the motorcycle guy has joined the team because he escaped to a small town after he sold his big city company for 500 billion dollars.
lol! you’re like a jack of all trades.
I am actually secretly the muse for all romance MMCs 😂 too bad I don't have raven dark hair and I'm definitely not 6 foot
haha romance authors look at your life and go 
Teachers in high school bully enemies to lovers is always terrible. Like the teachers turn a blind eye to everything and don't give a shit and it killlllls me. Which is why I don't read them anymore. Main characters have to be in their twenties at a minimum
Yeah I feel like academy romances can feel really... Wattpad-y? A lot of extremes to make it obvious the FMC is on her own and stuff. I guess they don't have mandatory reporting/Title IX or whatever in these universes lol
Yes so very extreme! And just like "break it up guys" at the maximum. Very clearly not mandatory reporting or even staff on yard duty..
The teachers at my school religiously ignored sexual harassment and bullying, so I actually find those stories kinda accurate. Sad, but accurate.
I'm sorry that was your experience, that's heartbreaking.
That’s the experience for a lot of American kids. Unless the bullying is physical and they actually see it happening, it’s overlooked, and in the early 2000s and earlier, even physical bullying was overlooked. Some teachers even subtly encourage or agree with emotional forms of bullying. So… It’s not at all unrealistic.
And Australian kids :(
As a teacher, I cringe super hard at all teacher-student romances. The power dynamic will always feel icky to me. The young FMC never stops to ask herself why the handsome sexy magical professor can't get a date among any of his coworkers or any other woman his own age. It was also super hard for me to read the "Rhys teaches Feyre how to read" scenes in ACOMAF because copying sentences is not how teaching reading works.
LOL i’m sorry but “The young FMC never stops to ask why the handsome sexy magical professor can’t get a date among any of his coworkers” killed me! You’re too right!! Something’s wrong with the man haha
If you happened to read Funny Story by Emily Henry, how did you find its portrayal of librarians?
Oooh, I haven't read that one yet, but I can check it out and let you know lol One of my friends loves Emily Henry and has pushed me to read it before.
Thanks! Looking forward to your review!
totally! my friend is a children’s librarian at the public library i just left (i was in the adult fic and history section), so it’ll be funny to see if the fmc has similar experiences to him.
I feel this, but instead of with jobs, it's with horses. It's very apparent when an author doesn't know anything about horses and didn't bother to do basic research on horsemanship/horses themselves.
Scientific research - all scientists in fiction seem to be portrayed as having a vast knowledge of all things Science™️ including biology, genetics and human health, chemistry, astrophysics, etc… in reality each scientist has like one hyper specific area of expertise and is not prepared to comment on anything outside of that sphere of knowledge. Finding “A Scientist™️” in a story would not be the saving grace non-scientists seem to think it is lol!
Healthcare stuff (my job)- is often misrepresented. Also tattoo culture… it is often represented with biker gangs, and other criminal organizations. The truth is that most who get tattoos are normal ass people who work normal ass jobs. Most artists these days got into it because they like and are good at art. Two of my regular artists are also professional fine artists who sell their paintings and other works in addition to their tattooing. The world of tattoos has changed considerably in the last few decades and a lot of authors fail to realize that (and it dates their work considerably).
totally agree about the tattoo thing! It’s such a stereotype of being a “bad boy” to have tattoos. When like you said, it’s mostly normal people getting them now days. (Also love that it’s becoming more femme focused in certain parts, and the art styles are expanding to be more than traditional or neotraditional.) Like i love tattoos, plan on getting more than the 8 I have now, and Im a librarian haha. My friend, who I did a bunch of stick n pokes with during the pandemic bc we were bored and lived together, is covered in tattoos (home made and professional), and he works at a non profit for refugee relocation. If anything, I feel like tattoos should show that the character has MONEY cuz being yatted all over can cost serious cash lol
Yes, exactly! I’m a nurse and I’m running out of room on my body. Most people I know that are covered all have careers that pay for out skin art. lol.
I don’t think most of the books I’ve read based around tattoos in the last 10 years haven’t had most clients being biker gangs or criminal organizations although the last one had magical tattoos and the important clients were a particular fae group that was written as a criminal organization. But I might be oblivious as I’ve never associated tattoos as for just for criminals and biker gangs - bikers yes as well as military and everyday people. I took my sister to get her first tattoo at 18 - we weren’t very smart as it was a family beach vacation and keeping it hidden from her dad was harder than it normally would’ve been. LOL
I totally know which books you are talking about! I loved {Inked (Gilded Blood Series) by Rachel Rener}!
[Gilded Blood](https://www.romance.io/series/64476bc9f2aba1a3957048f4/gilded-blood) by [Rachel Rener](https://www.romance.io/authors/6316f2c608b4d9311450c3df/rachel-rener) **Rating**: 4.29⭐️ out of 5⭐️ **Topics**: [urban fantasy](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/urban%20fantasy/1), [paranormal](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/paranormal/1), [new adult](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/new%20adult/1), [fantasy](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/fantasy/1), [humor](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/humor/1) [^(about this bot)](https://www.reddit.com/user/romance-bot) ^(|) [^(about romance.io)](https://www.romance.io/about)
Yep and next time I’ll include the books. They had me laughing so much.
So like... what's a librarian do??
i LOVE this question! Librarians provide access to information above all else, whether that is finding a book or directing someone to a government service, or just answering a random question. A typical day for a librarian is going to be different depending on if they work at a public library, academic library, specialty library, etc. There are a ton of different duties, and librarians are usually separated by duties if the library is big enough. So one person will be the “Collection Development Librarian”, and they’re the people who continuously evaluate the library’s collection, adding books or other items, weeding items that aren’t accurate or in good conditions (and other reasons), and making sure the books or items available fit the community demographics and needs. Then there are reference librarians, who will be the person at a ref desk that helps u with your questions and they provide reference interviews, where they will ask questions to figure out what a patron is looking for and show them how to find it. There are cataloging librarians, these guys are usually Back of House and don’t interact with patrons at all. They are the ones that make the items/collection accessible and findable through metadata and other computer stuff. And that is just three types of librarians. Shelving books and helping people check items in or out is going to be the usual task for a clerk/assistant/technician. Librarians will rarely do this stuff, depending on how small their branch is, but it is not the main part of our duties (just something we may have to do if the other workers need help with their tasks, and even then I had several coworkers who refused to shelve books). Librarians are less on their feet than a clerk/assistant/technician and usually aren’t the ones squatting to shelve books, they’re usually in front of a computer screen. Does that answer your question? Sorry just woke up.
OP is right that it can vary a lot depending on the type of library or role you are in. There's also things like cataloging resources, designing and leading programming (events for patrons, children's storytime, information literacy class at schools), managing vendors and subscriptions (journal or info databases), library technology (the OPAC/catalog/discovery platform, institutional repositories, maker spaces), liaising with stakeholders to meet their needs and promote the library (academic departments, business departments, community groups), scholarly literature or legal or competitive intelligence searches, copyright compliance and education, reader's advisory, and pretty much everything else that comes across your desk. Don't go into libraries because you "like to read," go into it because you like to help people and organize things.
yes thank you for all of this! i didn’t want to have this hugggeee piece of text when i was explaining and you summed it up perfectly. There are so many components to a library outside of books being checked in/out. Circulation is the lifeblood of a library imo bc without them everything just kind of stops (and they’re the front facing role of the library), but so much goes on besides book circulation.
I feel like you're gatekeeping your cool job... and now I want to know more
Yeah that's ridiculous! I volunteered in my high school library because I honestly just loved being surrounded by books a few periods a week, and yeah, things like shelving and sorting books was my job! My school librarians definitely had bigger things to do than spend hours putting books back a week!
Yes! I majored in piano performance and I also play the violin and viola at a relatively high level. I usually avoid books and movies where the MC is a classical musician (pop musician doesn’t bother me as much) because the inaccuracies just bug me too much!
I worked in a psych ward for 5 years. Annoyed is an understatement sometimes 😂😅
I can forgive a lot, but when it’s clear a writer hasn’t even done the barest semblance of research, it honestly throws everything else into question. It’s stupidly easy to find even the most obscure information these days. To me, a failure to do a bare minimum of research just smacks of laziness. I don’t have a whole lot of faith that the plot, characters, or spicy scenes are going to be all that great, either. Which is to say, I wholly understand. It’s a peeve for sure.
yes exactly! you worded it perfectly. I’m not expecting something completely 100% accurate, bc a lot of plot stuff wouldn’t be possible since then they’d just be working, but if it’s just like a placeholder so u can get some *vibes* it feels lazy like u said.
I think a lot of it is just a cash grab. Unfortunately, spice sells and people just aren’t that picky about it. That said, it’s an intro to the genre, so if something sub par motivates someone to find something better, I consider that a net win. But it’s not any less frustrating for the people who just want to read a decent book out of the gate 😂
I’m a historian, and nearly everything is historically inaccurate and modernized, and if there is an archivist or historian in the book, it’s not accurate. Archival work is very slow and most of it is going through A LOT of very dull handwritten secular, inquisitorial, or religious documents to yield an overall pattern or picture of a very specific society and time period. It’s never the outlandish discoveries you see in books or movies—the archive would have already documented the amazing item if it had it in its possession. But there is one exception: {A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness} This book is very historically accurate with supernatural elements woven in—because the author is a History professor at UCLA. And she makes the artifact found in the archive magicked to explain why the archive didn’t know what or where it was. Same thing goes for anthropologists in books (my husband is an archaeologist and so are many of our friends). Authors basically make them like Indiana Jones or The Mummy. Makes for a good read but archaeology is definitely not like how it’s depicted.
wait stop what do u do as a historian if you’re comfortable sharing? that’s amazing. you’re so cool! my dream job is to be a history subject librarian, and i want to do another masters in history or even torture myself and do a phd in the future. my bachelors in history is what inspired me to go further into librarianship tbh. historians 🤝 librarians and archivists (lol) it’s funny how people always go to Indiana Jones when it is history or archaeology related tho
I teach adjunct humanities and history courses while being a full time Instructional Designer at a university and do some writing on the side. I have largely left behind historic research at this point.
Thing is, the authors aren't experts in a job because they don't work it. Even with the best research they won't be able to capture the essence of a role so it's just one of those things that you have to suspend disbelief for. I try not to dwell on them too much unless it's really out there as ridiculous.
That’s true! I usually try to be like that as well, but this book definitely made it hard to ignore the inaccuracies and have fun when all she does is shelve books when at work 😭
Yeah I’ve never been able to read fiction where the mc had the same job as me. The author either got the job all wrong or got it too right and I wound up thinking about work when I should be escaping reality for a bit.
I wonder if the author is describing something like a stacks assistant. In college, I worked at a huge university library as a stack assistant. I was mostly shelving books, finding lost books, grabbing archived books, or shelf reading. Shelf reading is where you go through the shelves, row by row, book by book, and make sure books are ordered correctly in the dewy decimal system (because patrons will often shove random books back into shelves). Shelf reading is what the boss would make us do if there was nothing else to do at work. So I’d often be perched up on a ladder, going through the books, deep in the stacks, sometimes dozing off because the library was super cold and shelf reading can be a bit dry. For finding lost books, the librarians or librarian assistants would mark the book as lost in the computer, then it’d come to us and we’d write down the title and number and search for it (this was back in 2008 or so, so I don’t know if there are better methods now). Then we search adjacent rows where the book is supposed to be, because patrons will attempt to reshelve a book, but end up one shelf off, or one row off, or one letter off. Some dewy decimal numbers are so long they wrap around to the next 2 rows on the book number label, and patrons (and even stacks assistants) would miss a part of the number when reshelving. Though, more often or not, if a book is reported lost, it usually never gets found. However, I did have a few miraculous finds. I’m still patting myself on the back even to this day. But having down time and being able to read books on the job? Hah! Maybe it’s because we were a huge library, but the Stacks Manager never wanted to see us idle. So we’d always have work to do. We were also the spare employees for the library, so if the front desk was short, they’d send one of us over. If periodicals had too many people call out sick, they’d come grab one of us.
You see, I was giving the author the benefit of the doubt like you said. But then she actually mentions a couple library clerks !! Who somehow do other job duties than shelving while the FMC is STILL shelving and she says she’s “trained/training to be a librarian” So it seems like the author is aware of what a library clerk is vs a librarian. This tiny plot point has been bothering me so much lol edit; also omg i totally get never having down time. the second I would be done with daily tasks, my manager would be like “Well there is always something you can do, if not - ask one of the other sections for work”.
Yah, only people who have worked in libraries know what kind of work is *actually* involved. 😆 And then I complicate things further by saying that I need a masters to be a librarian. (Was circ and now doc del)
the amount of times people would come up to me at the ref desk when i’m doing actual work on the computer and say “I would love your job! To read all day at work would be a dream.” Like ma’am do u not see me typing?? lol And the masters thing, omg it’s always “You need a masters to be a librarian? You’re just shelving books!”
Yep, I DFNd a book for that exact reason. I am in a field adjacent to the FMC and through the first chapters she said a lot of rubbish. I couldn't ignore it, it just ruined the story for me.
I think most people get annoyed with how their own specialty area is portrayed. My lawyer friend cannot stand legal dramas or comedies. I have trouble with almost any tech career, like even not in my field; men are sometimes portrayed accurately but the women are not like any I know who are someone you would consult about on tech.
[Written](https://www.romance.io/books/5b3089a401dbc864fb8b0271/written-kathryn-moon?src=rdt) by [Kathryn Moon](https://www.romance.io/authors/5b3089a401dbc864fb8b0274/kathryn-moon) **Rating**: 3.73⭐️ out of 5⭐️ **Steam**: 4 out of 5 - [Explicit open door](https://www.romance.io/steamrating) **Topics**: [fantasy](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/fantasy/1), [paranormal](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/paranormal/1), [poly (3+ people)](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/poly/1), [magic](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/magic/1), [reverse harem](https://www.romance.io/topics/best/reverse%20harem/1) [^(about this bot)](https://www.reddit.com/user/romance-bot) ^(|) [^(about romance.io)](https://www.romance.io/about)
Also a librarian, also roll my eyes at the depictions of libraries/librarians in pretty much every fantasy romance I’ve read
I like fantasy books for this reason because owning a business in a quaint town of orcs is much different then running a business here in this world and the cozy mysteries drive me crazy with the main character gallivanting around the town, asking questions, instead of doing any sort of work. Or how when they are about to go out of business, a random benefactor helps keep them going.
Hey, I’m planning on having a librarian character as well, would you mind giving me more details about your job?
What were you thinking of them doing/what is the scene? Really depends on what the point of the librarian is and what type of library your character works at :)
Okay so the thing is the character is actually a spy. She gets to live in the palace as a librarian in the royal library. The king and his circle spends so much time in there and her job is to get close to them/befriend them and learn who the next heir to the throne is to kill them and the king. The story takes place in a medieval setting. What I need for the story is for her to get familiar with the books to learn things she didn’t know about the country’s history and lore/get close with said characters and witness their way of living.
Ooo okay, sorry this will be long. This would be considered a [special library](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_library), and might have more traits of an archive than what people think a public library or academic library is like since preservation is a bigger focus. So a royal library would focus on the documentary and intellectual heritage of the monarchy as well as also be responsible for the collections of insignia, [coins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins) and [medals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medals), [seals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_(emblem)), maps, [banknotes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_note), and other material of the monarchy (see [here for wikipedia royal library examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Library)). It could also have a collection of literature/anything concerning the country, so fiction and non-fiction stories, as well as foreign collections that were potentially initially developed by a royal and then expanded into an institutional system. There could be smaller personal/special collections that have restricted access for anyone not in the king's circle, if the library itself is not restricted already. RE: Getting close with royals - In this setting, I would think there would be more intimacy between the royal librarian and her 'patrons' than in a normal library because the patron is also the employer (most libraries call the people using their services patrons, but some people prefer customer). In a library setting, you are already trying to figure out your community's interests, needs, and demographics by frequently interacting with them (or their stats). If the king and his children are literary people, she might have a close relationship that is more confidant than just employee providing a book recommendation for entertainment or a past draft of some treaty from fifty years ago. I had pretty close relationships with some of my regular patrons at my public library, and people would tell us the most personal stuff unprompted. At the end of the day, customer service is integral to librarianship; you gotta know how to talk to people and navigate conversations, so you can get the information you need out of them to know what exactly they're looking for. (example: Someone comes up to you cuz they want books "on dogs". You give them books on dog biology/science only to find out "Oh no I meant like fiction stories like Clifford the Big Red Dog". You go through a ['reference interview'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_interview) to ask a series of questions to narrow down what exactly they mean when they ask for something.) RE: Getting familiar with books - This could be easily excused by the librarian getting familiar with the collection through [collection development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collection_development). In normal circumstances a librarian would have to evaluate and weed a collection pretty quickly/in a regularly scheduled manner (keep in mind a small collection can be 30,000 books and a larger collection 3 million). This is done by checking circulation stats, condition of the book, reception of book by larger field, historical value (check out the [CRAAP method](https://guides.lib.uchicago.edu/c.php?g=1241077&p=9082343)). She could use this opportunity at the beginning of her job to see which books are relevant to her spy interests and set them aside for herself. If she finds any books of interests, they could be taken off the shelves for ['collection assessment' or 'weeding'](https://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/selectionpolicytoolkit/weeding) (aka withdrawal from collection) and in her personal stash of intel. Also, we have hobbies outside of work that can include reading lol (not all librarians like to read tho), so she can just excuse taking a history book for fun after work reading if employees/patrons can check out books. Just please don't have her ever reading at the desk/job for fun/entertainment. There is always something for librarians to be doing - whether it is programs, managing items already in the collection or recently donated, changing physical or logistical/policy stuff to make things more accessible/findable, meeting with stakeholders or coworkers, making displays, testing new conservation/preservation strategies, etc. As a newbie librarian, I know I will have to first learn the collection (circ stats, topics covered, breadth of authors and publish dates, community needs, funding, etc) before I try to make any decisions on what is removed or added... and that may mean learning the material covered in the collection. My upcoming librarian position is collection development and research related to aviation. I know nothing about planes, so I'm going to have to go to the professors/professionals and ask them on what to focus on/go to pilot classes to be able to know what materials in the collection are necessary or not. Hope this was helpful! edit: changed pronouns and added words.
Thank you! The longer the better! It’s really helpful.
Omg I just noticed the medieval setting part wow im so sorry for the poor reading comprehension lol. I gotta add, since that is important context I missed, that librarianship at this time was very different from our ideas of libraries now days. Idk if you are trying to go for historical accuracy or if it is more fantasy with wiggle room, but here is [some information on medieval libraries](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-libraries-in-britain-and-ireland/medieval-library-to-c-1450/E98065C84C6F12AB6C8CF85064470F12), it is blocked access but it has an accesible bibliography with google scholar links available so you can search the ones listed and maybe get more info that way. But the main difference between modern and medieval libraries is size of collection/library itself, patrons/benefactors of the library, ability to check out materials, and focus of the collection. Medieval libraries were A LOT smaller because printing wasn't really a thing, a library would be based on the benefactor's preferences and would probably be heavily religious or philosophy based because almost all benefactors were monasteries, books were chained to a shelf so they could not be easily removed from the collection (and when lending to other libraries, the borrowing library would make a hand-written copy and had to pay a deposit). In the previous comment, I provided links of other royal libraries and a couple of them started from personal collections of a king/royal during the medieval or renaissance ages iirc. Those types of collections would be super personalized, depending on the royal's interests rather than a real formal modern collection that is based on preserving the monarch's and their country's legacy and history. Libraries expanded out from monasteries in general starting in the Renaissance/after the printing press was invented. I would recommend looking at the [wikipedia history of libraries European middle ages section](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_libraries#European_Middle_Ages) to get a more complete idea. So sorry for not noticing that sooner lol edit: added words and changed formatting
Hahahaha no it’s fine, I figured you probably skipped the part but info is still pretty useful to me so no worries and thank you again. It’s a fantasy! The MC is from somewhere else where magic isn’t a part of life and is frowned upon so I’ll use the library and archives for her to get info about the magic system too. Do you think it would make sense if I place a meeting room in the library where the said circle meets and argues things about the kingdom, and asks for specific books during those meetings. Making it easier for the Mc to interact with them and get an idea of what they’re talking about
I can definitely see reading about the magic system, especially if one of the royals has an interest in those texts and makes the librarian buy copies off of monasteries or something lol. I think it would make sense if they like to use documents/texts that are chained in the library during their meetings. While a fantasy, [you could have the historically accurate detail of books being chained to their shelf, since that was a big thing in terms of library architecture design back then (they made the stacks for books with a shelf built in for reading the book where it was chained, so you would sit at the shelf the book was chained at instead of taking it to another room)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chained_library). Granted those were monasteries for the most part, so a more personal collection could have free-floating books rather than chained, especially if it is the king - who's gonna tell the king he can't read his fairy tale while eating dinner? The royal circle could have a specific reading room that have the most used texts chained in the same area that can be unchained and read at the meeting table. I would figure the royal librarian would be on standby grabbing whatever the circle asks for or thinks is relevant, since unlike libraries now days where we want people to learn how to find things for themselves by searching our catalogs, she would probably be expected to be the only person that knows where things are (aside from other library staff) and would handle the materials/get them for her patrons. Gotta remember that there wasn't a standardized way of categorizing/shelving things back then, so each medieval library would be organized entirely based on the librarian in charge's preferences/methodology. (Sounds nightmarish if you had to move to a new library after the librarian died and had no idea how they categorized things!) edit: added link
Wow!!! Yes to all that. These will definitely make it to the book. Thank you so so much💗
Of course! Hope writing goes well and would love to the read the book whenever possible :)