Philip at Ocracoke Island Journal was reading War and Peace on an e-reader and marveling at how lightweight it made the heavy tome, when he found something peculiar.
Was is a nefarious effort in branding a certain e-reader at the expense of the other? Does it remind you of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which history was regularly re-edited? Is this the future of publishing? Probably not, as an anonymous commenter pointed out:
Of course, the same mistake could go the other way, as "nook" is also a word used in literature now and again. Link -via Metafilter
As I was reading, I came across this sentence: "It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern...." Thinking this was simply a glitch in the software, I ignored the intrusive word and continued reading. Some pages later I encountered the rogue word again. With my third encounter I decided to retrieve my hard cover book and find the original (well, the translated) text.
For the sentence above I discovered this genuine translation: "It was as if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern...."
Someone at Barnes and Noble (a twenty year old employee? or maybe the CEO?) had substituted every incidence of "kindled" with "Nookd!"
Was is a nefarious effort in branding a certain e-reader at the expense of the other? Does it remind you of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which history was regularly re-edited? Is this the future of publishing? Probably not, as an anonymous commenter pointed out:
This obviously wasn't done by Barnes & Noble, but by the publisher who submitted the book to Barnes & Noble.
They created a Kindle version of this public domain book first, realized they used 'Kindle' somewhere in their submission, and did a quick find-and-replace to change 'Kindle' to 'Nook' - never once thinking it would affect the book's text rather than just whatever they put in the title page.
Of course, the same mistake could go the other way, as "nook" is also a word used in literature now and again. Link -via Metafilter
...she sat in the eating kindle, as...
There was a little kindle, just behind...
...were having a bit of kindley...
Perhaps this one would be pretty funny:
...with a lit match above a great pile of nook: ready to light the...
TIP 2: Step through the Find/Replace one at a time. This takes the place of fully proofreading.
And of course, there's the whole idea of taking a particular offensive word out of Huck Finn.