Writing and Reading

My, my, my how rejuvenating and liberating it is to start off on the racetrack here and feel the legs pumpin’ and the adrenaline rushin’ through my veins, hacking away at the computer on my first blog entry. I have to admit, it is exciting. I’m a little intimidated, too; but that shall pass.

My name is Pierre Dominique Roustan. And this is a blog about reading and writing. I myself love to read books, and I also write novels and poetry. Currently, I have a manuscript being considered by two agents in the U.S., and I hope to land one of them soon, effectively starting the even greater journey of reeling in a publisher and that wonderful American dream: the sacred, legendary 3-book deal! We can all dream, can’t we?

 Now that we’ve got the introductions out of the way, as the title does say, the “First Topic Is”…something that’s been on my mind for awhile these past few days, actually. It’s a disturbing thought, too. But I wanted to hear everyone’s take on it.

Recently, I purchased a reprint of one of my favorite books from one of my favorite authors: WIZARD’S FIRST RULE by Terry Goodkind. Let me back up here: yes, I’m a lover of fantasy. I also like science fiction. I’m always intrigued by horror (Stephen King is quite the god, in my opinion). I even occasionally love the mainstream, commercial fiction book or literary novel that may pique my interest. And for the purposes of this first entry, yes, it just so happens that I’m writing here about a particular novel that just happens to be of the fantasy genre.

But genre or fantasy is not going to be the issue here.

Here’s the deal: I originally read WIZARD’S FIRST RULE back when I was a wee little lad in high school. Let’s see, that was back in the year of ‘94 or ‘95, somewhere around there. I was immediately hooked. Since then I lost track of many of my books, and I had somehow misplaced my original paperback.

Only a few weeks ago, I purchased a reprint. It was wonderful to have it back, and let me just say how much of a joy it was to reread it! It was as if I never read it before (literally a decade and a half ago since the last time I opened up the book).

I noticed something strange, though: typos, grammatical errors. Dozens of them. I was pretty certain that they didn’t exist before when I first read it back in high school. But it was phenomenally, outrageously, unacceptably erroneous. Coming from Tor Books, Terry Goodkind, and there I see a misplaced word. Misplaced commas. Misplaced everything. It was ridiculous. I surmised that it had to be due to the reprint. Agent Nathan Bransford wrote a splendid blog (as he always does) about editing and proofreading, and it got me wondering if it was possible that reprints end up with unforeseeable and/or unintentional errors.

I would like to know if anyone else in the literary world of readers and writers has experienced that. Have any of you bought a reprint that eons ago you had read before and noticed the oddest amount of errors ever seen on a well-done manuscript? If so, did it change your attitude toward the book and/or the author? Or were you still just glad to have a new copy of one of your favorite books anyway? Open to discussion. Fire away!