Defects you've found in books you've read

[Parson]

Oh sure, I've had a similar problem. I had a book "Candles Behind the Wall" a story of the church at work in the Soviet Union where a third of the book had been inserted upside down!

 

[Artoriarius]

I once scored a free copy of The Witches of Karres from a local book store which had a large chunk of the book missing - without actually picking up said book to check, I believe it's everything before page 38. I wasn't getting scammed though; I grabbed it because I already owned a copy of The Golden Age of Science Fiction which features the missing portion. Well, except for the title page, copyright information, endpage, and table of contents, and anything else before the story started, but who needs those?

 

[Ray Pullar]

An early nineteen eighties Panther paperback of The Dispossessed by le Guin had several missing pages. Since it was likely more new left didacticism it was not a loss.

 

[Danny McG]

Adam Hall (Elleston Trevor) one of the 'Quiller' books Northlight - I got this as the first borrower from a local library in the late eighties.

The next to last chapter was repeated and no last chapter.

I had to buy the paperback to find out what happened (after carefully checking the same error wasn't repeated)

I knew the librarian and explained and showed her the problem with the book I returned.
On my next visit I saw the defective tome on the shelf of "Books withdrawn and available for purchase"

I was left wondering which poor reader ended up with it!

 

[Cathbad]

In the 80s, it seemed common (for me, anyway) to buy a book that had many pages improperly glued. Sections would fall out as I turned the pages. It was difficult keeping books together!

 

[thaddeus6th]

Had a grammar book, like all the cool kids, but mine just didn't have the last 40 odd pages (particularly unhelpful as the answers to earlier tests were included in those final pages). It appeared fully intact and nothing was repeated, making the omission particularly odd. Got a replacement hassle-free, though.

 

[Danny McG]

Had a grammar book, like all the cool kids

In what weird parallel universe is a kid having a grammar book seen as cool?

(Maybe you meant to type nerd and it autotexted to cool)

 

[chlorine]

I bought the ebook of The Painted Man by Peter V Brett - and towards the end, I'm sure I found the same section of text repeated over a couple of chapters. Not just a few lines, but a good-sized paragraph. It's definitely not the sort of thing I would have expected to normally get past the editors!

The exact same thing happened to me with the ebook of The Haunting of Hill House. A previous paragraph appeared instead of the current paragraph. I send it for investigation to a friend whose job is manufacturing ebooks, and the problem was that the ebook was crappily made, using non standard code so that the ebook would seem all right on some ebook readers/software, and messed up on others.

 

[Perpetual Man]

There were about 30-40 pages missing from the copy of Tad Williams' The Stone of Farewell I was reading. I seemed to remember it skipped between paragraphs in a way that didn't make it immediately obvious that something was missing, but before long I noticed that the characters had managed to discover a hidden city without me noticing.

The second copy I tried to read of it had exactly the same problem, fortunately I was able to borrow a complete copy from a friend.

I had this as well, but mine came with an insert with all the missing bits on!

Although not an error in the same manner, and I was there to see it happen, I have a signed copy of A Terry Pratchett book which reads:

To Paul...

Paul?

I meant to write Tim.

Silly Terry.

 

[AlexH]

Has anyone bought a book to find the wrong story inside it?

I bought Dance Party in the Balkans, a CD album by Alaska in Winter. Everything, including the print on the CD was correct. When I played the album, it was Echoes by Foo Fighters. They're completely different genres so it was quite a shock. If you thought Apple force-downloading a U2 album to your computer was bad...

 

[BigBadBob141]

I've got a book on the history of computers some where, the book is all there, but one section of pages has been bound in upside down.

 

[Fazhoul]

Back in 1991 or so I found a 15 volume set of The Books of A Thousand Nights and One Night ( aka 1001 Arabian Nights) for $100 at a used book store. The books were printed in 1901 and are #14 out of a limited edition of 500. Later on I found out that not all of the pages had been cut. There wasn't anything missing, some of the pages just hadn't been cut. I've thought about cutting the pages but I'm afraid that I'll damage them. On some of the volumes you can tell where a previous owner had cut the pages.

 

[logan_run]

I have bought books with tears on the cover. I don't mind using tape and glue if need to repair books am not selling them back..

 

[Unfit Magazine]

KDP, KDP...and, um, KDP.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I picked up a copy of Kothar - Barbarian Swordsman by Gardner F. Fox
I still don't know how it ends. The last words, on p148, are

He carried the casket out of the castle into the early

There might be one page missing or several, I have no idea.

Mind you, much to my amusement, I lent the book to a friend without telling him about the missing ending

 

[Danny McG]

The great big hardback 2004 first print of Pandora's Star (Macmillan publishers) by Peter F Hamilton.

All ok until page 90, then it starts again at page 61 and carries on again until page 90.
The story is then ongoing from page 121 and you're left to guess what happened in the missing section