Photo Error in Food for Free?

[Robson Valley]

Suggesting that a publisher would add fresh, introduced errors into a printing
implies that they have more money than brains to squander profit just for fun.

Not likely to risk the liability, credit that they are not quite that stupid.
If the author is a sloth with the cash cow is altogether different.

 

[Janne]

Wonder if the latest edition has problems too?

 

[Broch]

Wonder if the latest edition has problems too?

The 2012 edition is the latest and it's still £20 on Amazon.

 

[Janne]

Aha. Send an email to the publisher.
Should be fixed before the next edition.

Could be the best thing you did for Humanity, discovering this fault!

 

[Wander]

This is worrying.

Like many on here I have the Gems editions and I wonder if the error is present there as well.
Unfortunately I wouldn't know.

I have the Food Free Free Gems edition printed with 'This Edition published 2004' and the Mushrooms edition with 'Reprinted with Amendments 2008'.

I now feel uncertain of both and inclined to bin them. Would anyone in the know be able to comment upon these?

Personally, I've always liked the River Cottage books. But I think the most important advice, regardless of what book you use, is to use a book as a guide only and only ever take the word of an expert. Diagnosing anything with a book/internet is never a good idea and not something I do.

 

[Broch]

Like many on here I have the Gems editions and I wonder if the error is present there as well.
Unfortunately I wouldn't know.

My version of the Gems edition is 2003 and, in my opinion, the drawings and photos are not good enough for identification anyway. The book is OK as a reminder when in the field but the subject is so huge that much better books are required for identification and, in many cases, the use of keys.

But I think the most important advice, regardless of what book you use, is to use a book as a guide only and only ever take the word of an expert. Diagnosing anything with a book/internet is never a good idea and not something I do.

I wish that was true but I was on a field trip recently when an expert identified a plant as Marsh Woundwort that I know was Purple Loosestrife - if it had been a poisonous species I would have said something.

As I said above, this is a huge subject (plants alone, let alone adding fungi) and it takes real effort to identify species with certainty. Concentrate on a few at a time and use lots of resources - some in the field but also take specimens back home where you need to be certain (I have dozens of plant and fungi books and regularly cross-reference). Having now attended a number of specialist courses the one thing I have learnt is that I know less than I thought

 

[Geoff Dann]

I've been looking at the 2012 edition of the book on Amazon, and the photos do not seem to be labelled... On page 362 I see a description of A. campestris and on page 363 an unlabelled photo of some kind of fungus growing near some trees (the index, however, gives page number 363 in italics under the entry for A. campestris.

The photo is unlabelled, but it is sandwiched between two pages of text about campestris. That is definately not campestris, which feeds on decaying grass roots. From that angle, it could easily be a yellow stainer though.

I can't find the sheathed woodtuft, neither as Kuehneromyces mutabilis nor as Pholiota mutabilis. There is, however, an entry in the book for Galerina mutabilis and an illustration on page 454; the Wikipedia page for G. mutabilis redirects to K. mutabilis...

It is on page 347, with the text for Velvet Shanks. Compare to the illustration of K. mutabilis (no longer in Galerina), and it is quite clear the photo is of mutabilis, not velvet shanks.

As for "feel[ing] uncomfortable criticising the author of a book that competes with my own", I don't think you're criticizing the author. If there are so many errors in the 2012 edition, I would suspect the publishers of introducing them, trying to make a field handbook into what you rightly describe as a coffee-table book.

Yes, you are probably correct, and that it is somebody else who has introduced these mistakes.

 

[Geoff Dann]

First editions tend to go like that. If it's not one editorial error, it's another. It happens.

In a thin book of collecting techniques, I wrote a key to the butterflies of the central interior of British Columbia.
Grouse hunting in the autumn less than a month after publication, I found two species that I'd missed. Migratory, no less.

If the book is to survive the criticism, send in every last fault that you can find.

The revised second printing will be a keeper.

I notified the author of these mistakes about four years ago. Never received a reply.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Has anybody been poisoned due to the errors?

That would be serious.

Hard to know. Such things aren't normally made public.

 

[Geoff Dann]

This is worrying.

Like many on here I have the Gems editions and I wonder if the error is present there as well.
Unfortunately I wouldn't know.

No, these are errors in large photos that aren't in the Gem edition

Diagnosing anything with a book/internet is never a good idea and not something I do.

It's OK if the book is accurate enough!

 

[Paul_B]

A book written in 1972? It's gone into a newer edition and possibly reprinted too. Errors corrected but new ones added no doubt.

I bought the gem and coffee table version after someone on here recommended the coffee table book as a must have book. I flicked through the pages of both and never used them. Personally I don't think they're that good. I am so far from an expert as you can get but some of the write ups of what you can do with some of the plants, fruits, etc missed some very obvious options. I can't remember which but it's like not suggesting rowan jelly for the fruits of the mountain ash they were that obvious recipes I thought.

So they're sat on the book shelves for a visitor to see and think "ooh that looks an interesting book"! Perhaps a guest might take a look or an interest be stimulated. They're not a well used set of books.

BTW might take a look at your plugged book Mr Dann. Do you have any for plants / trees?

 

[Paul_B]

BTW Richard Mabey seems to have had quite a career. Identification books are only a small part of his output. Earned himself a civil list pension or of his career plus many awards. It does seem to me that the guy wasn't at fault for the photographic errors although I have no evidence to b support that.

 

[Geoff Dann]

BTW might take a look at your plugged book Mr Dann. Do you have any for plants / trees?

Currently working on a book on edible plants and seaweeds, not sure when it is going to come out yet due to difficulties with publishers. Maybe not until 2020. When it does come out, it will be the most comprehensive colour-illustrated guide to plant/seaweed foraging in northern Europe (directly competing with Miles Irving's "The Forager Handbook", but with much better pictures).

 

[Paul_B]

In interested but as someone inexperienced in foraging I often wondered whether such a book would benefit from some list of what you'd expect to find in each type of terrain. A summary if you like. A shortcut to allow you to focus on what's going to be around where you go most. Instead you have to work your way through reading the write-up on every plant to compile your own lists.

Just an idea. It doesn't have to be full descriptions in reach clarification of terrain just a list to allow you to look up in the main section for the details.

 

[Geoff Dann]

That doesn't work as a structure - you can't lay the book out according to habitat, because too many species turn up in multiple habitats. You could have a couple of pages with "best species to look out for in X habitat", but even this falls foul of a "how long is a piece of string" problem when deciding what to include, and it is also vulnerable to geographical problems - what you might expect to find in a coastal location in northern Scotland is not the same as what you might expect in a coastal location in south-east England.

So it seems like a nice idea, but it doesn't work so well when you actually try to implement it.

 

[Paul_B]

Fair enough.