(no subject)

From Oct. 18:

You may or may not have seen my post at Punctuality Rules Tuesday, about a book I recently bought that had the actual TITLE misspelled on the spine of the book. A glaring typographical error that really (really!) should have been caught. So, using that as a springboard, today’s question: What’s the worst typographical error you’ve ever found in (or on) a book?

1. The worst is from Karin Lowachee's excellent novel, Cagebird, on page 302. A line got mangled - the wrong word was put in the wrong place, presumably. It isn't very difficult to figure out what happened from the context, but the sentence as it stands makes no sense.
   
   The sad thing is, that sentence is a pivotal turning point in the novel.
   
   I don't know anyone for whom this mistake has ruined the book, but it's a shame it should have happened just then.



2. The second worst case is the first paperback edition of Dorothy Dunnett's novel Checkmate, the last of the Lymond series. This was the Popular Library edition from 1976, the one with an awful cover of a red-haired woman kissing an older man, with a herd of deer (deer?) and a castle behind them. For a book with a history of bad covers, this is one of the silliest.
   
   It is riddled with typos. The book had already been published in hardcover, so we all knew what the words should have been. I can't help thinking that everyone in the printing room was on drugs.
   
   The worst bit is in a rather complicated converation between Philippa Somerville and the astrologer Nostradamus, who are using a pendulum to spell out messages as with a ouija board. There's a running gag about the letter 'L' (a carry-over from The Ringed Castle), and Philippa makes a joke about Plurgatory.
   
   You can probably guess what's coming. In a book chock full of typos, that particular oddity was corrected. Philippa's word was changed to Purgatory, and her joke was lost.