Copies of Perpetual Astonishment that don’t say “Full release edition” on the technical page (is that what it’s called? The bit with all the copyright notices on it) contain the mistakes listed below, which I corrected on 24 July. I hope they don’t spoil your enjoyment of the book. If they do, let me know and I’ll replace it. If you spot any other problems, or want to give me feedback, please contact me.
Throughout:
- Titles of publications aren’t italicised. I knew it was the convention, but thought it would be distracting. I changed my mind in the updated version.
- I’ve been inconsistent in capitalising “the Tube” – London’s underground railway.
- I was also inconsistent in my spelling and capitalisation of Manila
- I was inconsistent in my hyphenation of “no one”
There are 20 things that could definitely be called errors, which I’ve listed here by page:
P27 “wagon wheel” shouldn’t be hyphenated
P38 missing “s” at the end of “channel”
P91 the closing quotation mark in paragraph 3 faces the wrong way
P96 Jonathon picks at a thread of his jumper – but he’s actually wearing his work clothes, which don’t include a jumper
P102 “She thought that Kathy new what she was doing”
P103 I say the paper is yellowed by time, but when Lance saw it at Sarah’s I said it was white.
P104 Andre’s name should have an accent
P142 missing word: “I don’t quite KNOW what to believe”
P163 missing word: “with A shiny tinkle”
P169 been gone “ages”, not “hours”
P192 Typo: “Have’ve”
P194 missing word: “He had AN urgent appointment”
P198-9. “Letters” not “words”.
P201 These “threatenings”. Should be “scarings”.
P227 There’s an extra comma after “Geoffrey”
P233 They agree the password is “anchovies” but it should “glockenspiel”, which is used later (I changed this because a friend of mine has an odd attachment to the word glockenspiel)
P237 Not “usually” – he’s only met her four times.
P239 should be “into contact”, not “in contact”
P303 missing word: “I WAS sent here”
P307 “58” is both spelt out and given as number
I’ve made some other very minor changes to the text, largely a matter of preference.
