While I was at the eye doctor's office this morning, I opened up this book and noticed that it started with page 13.

I'm not sure how familiar most people are with books, but they are not supposed to start on page 13. Usually, they start with page 1, and then 12 pages later you get to 13. Although, I am reading this book for my Magical Realism class and it did occur to me that it might just be some author's weird way of standing out from the crowd - starting the book on page 13, and then switching the page numbers around throughout the rest of the book. Or, just starting on page 13 as a way to challenge the conventions, or signify a departure from everyday reality. I checked on Amazon.com, and there should indeed be a page 1-12 included in my book. See what being an English major for so long has done to me? Now I have to see if the bookstore will let me exchange the book so that I can actually read the entire thing.

I did read a book last year (for my Victorian Lit. class) that was out of print, so I had to get a reprinted copy from some shady publisher. I finished reading the entire thing (it was very lengthy) and was ready to discuss it in class. Halfway through the class, I realized that the reason everyone kept talking about parts of the story that I didn't remember was because my copy didn't include the last third of the book. The aforementioned shady publisher didn't feel like including that last part, so my book just ended. This was in addition to the MANY typos and misspellings throughout the book. I imagine that some poor secretary was sitting in a dingy basement in front of a typewriter, and her boss ordered her to retype a huge old book. She probably figured that no one (especially her boss) would ever actually read what she was doing, so she just typed everything without going back to correct anything. Two-thirds of the way through she got sick with pneumonia (or influenza?) from sitting in the moldy wet basement and her boss decided to just publish what she had done without even bothering to look at it. I still haven't read the last part of that book, and I kind of wonder what happened to good old Robert Elsmere.


Edited to say: I think he died.