Inspiration From The Distant Past

Inspiration From The Distant Past
Found note in an old book... warms the cockles of my bookish heart...

Friday, June 18, 2010

biblio-blooper: The Sea of Monsters

News and movie bloopers are a hoot and print bloopers can be hysterical... especially the ones in Headlines on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.


But what about typos, punctuation mistakes and all around bad editing in the text of the book you are immersed in reading?

Hmm, not as amusing, is it. In fact, biblio-bloopers can be quite jarring... ripping the reader out of the story at the speed of light. Such an unpleasant jolt. At least for me... what about you?

A bit irritating since I have to read the sentence over and over-- sometimes flipping back to the page just to read it again. And I am not OCD, really! Biblio-bloopers just prey on my mind. Even a chapter away, I know it is there... lurking.

Seriously though, how some biblio-bloopers make it past the copy editors boggles the mind. And whenever I spot one I always wonder two things: Have other readers noticed it? Does it appear in other editions?

To banish these bogeys from my mind, I've decided to start a recurring very randomly scheduled feature titled Biblio-blooper. I'll post the biblio-blooper with page and edition number. Hopefully, a bloggy friend or two will check their copies.

Today's biblio-blooper is brought to you by Rick Riordan's The Sea of Monsters, first edition, page 270, third paragraph:



Grover told me he could dissolve the empathy link between us, now that we were face to face, but I told him I'd just assume keep it if that was okay with him.

Hey, that was quite cathartic! If you discover a biblio-blooper and need to banish it from your mind, feel free to post them with the biblio-blooper title and credit back to Mrs. BG. :o)

Edit: Carin from Caroline Bookbinder suggested I remind participants that it is not kosher to post biblio-bloopers from an ARC since that is not the final copy of the book. I don't read ARCs so that never occurred to me. By the way, Carin has an amazing series called Careers in Publishing that you should check out if you haven't already.

7 comments:

  1. Ah, so many typos, so few copyeditors! The one you found here is pretty funny - it's nearly a homophone. I'd remind other people who want to participate, not to use typos from ARCs unless they've checked them against the final book. ARCs are made from first or second pass pages, and are still waiting for 1-2 more proofreads. Have fun!

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  2. Oh , that's a particularly bad one, too! Not just an innocent misspelling or forgotten punctuation mark.

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  3. What Kathy said. Really, that's exactly what I was going to type.

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  4. Carin-- Thank you so much for the information! Copy editor is the word I was fumbling for-- I will edit so as to appear to know what I am talking about. ;o)

    I never even considered ARCs since they aren't in my sphere of reading. This will probably be an infrequent feature since I don't run across too many bloopers but I will mention it in any future posts. Shame though-- I bet ARCs have some truly funny bloopers!

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  5. Oh yes, ARCs can be challenging. I have read some great bloopers in ARCS.
    I just read a bad scene set up in a first edition book. When I pointed it out to the author he admitted the mistake and would do anything to take it back. I can only hope future editions will be corrected.

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  6. Am I a nerd because I get excited when I find a biblio-blooper. (I used to call them typos, but I like your name better.)

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  7. I discovered this blog post out of the same curiosity: do other people notice? I found the same error a minute ago while reading, and it was incredibly jarring. I'm glad I'm not the only person disturbed by its presence.

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