Book Errata

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Has anyone else run across a frustrating level of typos in currently-published books? I've been tallying them at http://www.bookerrata.com for a couple of weeks now. If you've got anything to add to what I've found, please do so at the message board either here or on that site.

Thanks a bunch,

Pat Sheehan

― Pat Sheehan, Friday, 13 February 2004 01:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Pat, you are my nu-god!!!!!!!

Wrong info (Like : "the Susan Sarandon movie Crystal Palace" uh NO!!!) annoys me much more than typos.

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Friday, 13 February 2004 02:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I've started a thread for those mistakes too tokyo rosemary. Check out the book Moonfall on the book errata site, there are a bunch of annoying ones in there.

― Pat Sheehan, Friday, 13 February 2004 03:33 (twenty-two years ago)

This bothers me quite a bit. I tend to find it more often in Norwegian translations of various books though. In fact, I recently read a Hesse book where the translator kept making this inexcusable grammatical mistake! Grrr!

And slightly off-topic; I recently saw a new Animal Farm movie in the video store. The Norwegian cover design proclaims that it's based on the book by "Georg Orwell", "author of 1984 and A Clockwork Orange."

― Øystein H-O (Øystein H-O), Friday, 13 February 2004 04:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Two Pynchonerrata that aren't mentioned on your site:

Lot 49 (Perennial), pg. 103, Oedipa's name is spelled "Odeipa," although there are theories that it's an intentional typo.

Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin), can't remember the exact page (in the mid-200s, 256 or 236 or somesuch) for a passage of 20-50 pages is alternately repeated, blank, or printed upside down. I don't know how many such books exist, but there are copies that do not have any of these errors. Now I realize I should've kept my copy that had this mistake = $$$.

― Leee Majors (Leee), Friday, 13 February 2004 07:19 (twenty-two years ago)

As someone who works in the spelling and punctuation industry, all I can say is, publishers don't give a fuck any more -- certianly not enough to pay out. For example a lot of copyediting of UK books is farmed out to Indian companies -- not necessarily a bad thing, but in practice, right now, usually bad, partly because authors and editors in the UK are used to writing in script that other native speakers understand.

"Georg Orwell", "author of 1984 and A Clockwork Orange."

And there was I thinking it was Eric Blair...

― ENRQ (Enrique), Friday, 13 February 2004 11:18 (twenty-two years ago)

No, it was Eri Blair

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 13 February 2004 11:23 (twenty-two years ago)

XPost: ie other native speakers, but not many others.

― ENRQ (Enrique), Friday, 13 February 2004 11:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the 200 copies of Anne Frank's Dairy that slipped through are worth something now.

― MikeyG (MikeyG), Friday, 13 February 2004 14:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Mark Kurlansky 1968
p 86. "At the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, he met Robert Kennedy, who at thirty-nine seemed to be very young for a politician."

p102 "Kennedy, born in 1917, was said to have understood television, but it was really his brother Robert, eight years younger, who was the architect of the Kennedy television presidency"

― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Friday, 13 February 2004 19:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Constantly!!

I will keep track and post!

― Robomonkey (patronus), Friday, 13 February 2004 20:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Thank you one and all. I'm new to the protocol: does anyone have an objection if I copy a post (with attribution of course) and put it on the bookerrata.com message board in the appropriate thread? If so, just let me know... I'll be away on vacation for a week, but you can email me directly at psheehan@webharmony.com while I'm away.

Stay well all.

Pat

― Pat Sheehan (Pat Sheehan), Friday, 13 February 2004 21:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Grammar/simple agreement, anyone? At the end of Haven Kimmel's otherwise wonderful (especially the second time) The Solace of Leaving Early we get "Let me just say now, in front of these witnesses, that there is nothing so perfect, and I'm talking about in all God's creation, than a fourth grade girl. You should be president. You should be Queen of the World."

Than?

― rams (rams), Saturday, 14 February 2004 18:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Seriously, you need to chill. Much *much* worse stuff gets through. OTOH -- check Henry Green for an author who positively ignores grammar but communicates nonetheless. Not in a wanky way either.

― ENRQ (Enrique), Monday, 16 February 2004 15:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I could not believe the number of typos in Houellebecq's Platform. The energy involved in recognising one, adding it mentally to the chain of other errors, trying to re-read the sentence with the guessed at intended word, added to the effort of trying to ignore the disruption that this kind of thing causes did threaten to reduce my enjoyment/appreciation of the book. But I took some comfort in imagining the kind of response that good ol' Michel H would have given if someone had brought his attention to it.

― David Joyner (David Joyner), Tuesday, 17 February 2004 03:16 (twenty-two years ago)

He's such a drunkawrd that I doubt he would notice. But that sounds to me like a rushed translation job, rather than typos exactly.

― ENRQ (Enrique), Tuesday, 17 February 2004 10:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Guessing typos from translation errors is tough... I'm working through Pinsky's newish translation of The Iliad now and should have results on the book errata site soon... the other translated work currently undergoing review is _Love in the Time of Cholera_ so far no errors up to around page 150.

― Pat Sheehan (Pat Sheehan), Thursday, 19 February 2004 04:04 (twenty-two years ago)

For those interested... a new crop of books have been added to the book errata site: two by Ron Hansen (Hitler's Niece and Nebraska), Joel Achenbach's rye look at "close encounters" Captured By Aliens, Koestler's Darkness at Noon from the "classics" side along with some Joyce Carol Oates and sci. fi.

Stay well all.

Pat

― Pat Sheehan (Pat Sheehan), Wednesday, 25 February 2004 19:37 (twenty-two years ago)

in this horrible book called "Faults" by Terri De la Pena, it is repeatedly mentioned that characters buy their clothing from Pier One. Additionally, she gets the geography of LA totally wrong.

― eleni (eleni), Wednesday, 3 March 2004 18:02 (twenty-two years ago)

two months pass...

HELP! It may sound crazy, but I'm trying to get the latest, and perhaps greatest, translation of the Iliad re-copy-edited prior to the opening of the Brad Pitt movie on May 12. Has anyone out there found errors in the last 7 books of the Robert Fagles translation of The Iliad?

Also, just put Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize winning masterwork "Angles of Repose" on the site... what a mess.

http://www.bookerrata.com

― Pat Sheehan (Pat Sheehan), Thursday, 6 May 2004 17:30 (twenty-one years ago)

This is really obvious, but James Joyce, Ulysses. There's no freaking punctuation at the end! If you've read Jasper Fforde's 'The Well of Lost Plots', you will discover why these "mistakes" get made!

― Rowie, Tuesday, 11 May 2004 08:29 (twenty-one years ago)

That's it, I need to switch proofreading careers... I spend my time making sure an ephemeral weekly newspaper is relatively free of goofs while all these books, which are supposed to be our record for the ages, are covered in monkey scrawl! Books need me!

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 11 May 2004 18:56 (twenty-one years ago)

If my dreams as a librarian don't come through, hopefully copy editing will be a fallback.

― Ian Johnson (orion), Tuesday, 11 May 2004 19:02 (twenty-one years ago)

There are worse things than getting paid to read all day... then again, there are better things by far to read than most of what I have to read all day, which can make it pretty frustrating -- especially when my eyes are too tired to do my own reading at the end of the day! Maybe all these typos are due to overworked galley slaves suffering eye strain...

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Tuesday, 11 May 2004 19:05 (twenty-one years ago)

one year passes...

[spam]

― sp@m, Thursday, 20 April 2006 17:03 (nineteen years ago)

three weeks pass...

[spam errata]

― crediSPAt Mcards, Tuesday, 16 May 2006 05:35 (nineteen years ago)

the phiadon 55 book on lewis baltz, talking about utah, got the wrong date and the wrong prophet

― anthony easton (anthony), Tuesday, 16 May 2006 23:06 (nineteen years ago)

My copy of Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems claims that she is the winner of the "Pulitizer Prize."

― wmlynch (wlynch), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 04:17 (nineteen years ago)

Ah, that should read "The cover of my copy..."

― wmlynch (wlynch), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 04:17 (nineteen years ago)

was she

― anthony easton (anthony), Wednesday, 17 May 2006 05:32 (nineteen years ago)

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