Adventures in Proofreading

I'm constantly amazed at how many proofreading errors I encounter  in the books I read. I've written at least a half-dozen emails to publishers either pointing out errors or offering to do so, but only got a response from one...who asked for a list of the errors, then didn't respond after I'd sent it to them. So I guess they don't care. But I do, so I'm going to continue to keep track. And since I'm no doubt the only person who cares about such tedious details, I'm just going to make it one long, on-going blog entry. (In the past I've done it as separate entries or as part of my on-going reading diaries.) 

And I'm going to start with the book I just finished (re-) reading: Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger, Signet, Sixth Printing, June 1960. 

I found three proofreading errors in this book:

On page 86, which was the second page of "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes," we have 

instead of "for the occasion."


On page 118, which was the twenty-third page of "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period," there's 

instead of "because he thought."

And on page 123, which is the second page of "Teddy," there's

instead of "One of these days--".

Next time I'm in a bookstore I'm going to have a look at a more recent edition of the book to check on the state of these errors. If I were a betting man, I'd put money on them still being extant.

And...

Guess what?

So...(1) you can see why I'm not a betting man, (2) my faith in the proofreading profession and in Little & Brown has been restored, and (3) I had to go to two libraries and two bookstores before I could find a copy of Nine Stories. How fucking sad is that?

Well. You can't have everything, right?