My inability to ignore factual errors

Hello all

As many of you know, I am quite particular when it comes to things being correct. I ran a website for about 9 years based on Lincoln City and although I got the occasional thing wrong, such as once saying a player had had a very quiet game even though he hadn't actually played (whoopsie), I generally checked information that I was talking about.

Then on Saturday I went and bought a book, the biography of Lincoln's ex-manager Keith Alexander. I don't buy many books, and even rarer reading any book I do buy. In recent times I have bought a few books which haven't been touched to this day, I just rarely have the time to be honest, or quickly lose interest. The last novel I read fully was "Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk, the book that the film is based on, and that was in 2005 whilst working in a call centre and waiting for calls, the only book I've read since is the autobiography of Chris Moyles.

Anyway, I read through the book within 48 hours of buying it, including a massive session whilst waiting for a train on Monday for three hours and whilst I loved the book, the fact that there are numerous errors gets to me.

There's small ones such as saying Mark Bailey scored from 60 yards against Carlisle in a 4-1 victory, even though the goal came in a 2-0 win the season after the game that was being talked about, and then there's big ones.

On the right is a picture of Keith Alexander (right), Gary Simpson (middle) and Keith Oakes (left) and yet the caption is "Keith and the two Garys take in the Millennium Stadium." It's stuff like this that does get to me because it shows that someone hasn't gone through and checked for mistakes like this.

There are other mistakes as well, such as Gareth McAuley's name being mentioned twice in a very short space of time (in about one or two lines) but not being spelt the same (one is the correct McAuley and the other is McCauley), refering to Bournemouth as the "Poppies" (Poppies is the nickname of Kettering Town, Bournemouth's nickname is the Cherries) and not to forget saying that a friendly against Manchester City took place in November when it actually happened in July.

It's such a shame in that what is otherwise an excellent book, the lack of checking basic stuff such as this distracted me. But it's not all bad and other than the lack of checking the basic stuff, there was nothing I disliked about the book. There were many bits during the book where I laughed as it is quite a well told story, and brings back many of my own personal memories of meeting Keith Alexander. Keith was one of the nicest blokes I have ever met and that is reflected in the book numerous times and I would recommend the book to anyone.

Anyway, until next time.