Looks like somebody really “Nookd” this one up. A recent Nook version of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel War and Peace replaces the word “kindled” with the word “Nookd,” an apparent attempt to get rid of references to e-book’s competitor Kindle.
The bizarre mistake was first noticed on the Ocracoke Island Journal blog. Blogger Philip Howard writes:
I had read about half of the novel when I was given the gift of a Nook, the e-reader from Barnes and Noble. Although I am committed to supporting my neighborhood independent book store (Books to be Red), and enjoying honest-to-goodness books, the .99 Nook edition was so lightweight that it has made reading War and Peace a genuine pleasure. For those of you who have not tackled this tome as yet, it is a page-turner.
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….”
A commenter on Howard’s post explains that it was probably an error by publisher Superior Formatting Publishing rather than Barnes & Noble. Most likely, the publisher created a Kindle version of the book first. Once it decided to move the 1,100+ page book over to the Nook platform, it lazily copied and pasted “Nook” for “Kindle” without realizing the word “kindle” was used eight times in the translated text.
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We’re sure there are worse mistakes to be found in e-books, but this is certainly one of the more outlandish ones. I’m sure Mr. Tolstoy (pictured) would not be impressed.
Leo Tolstoy painting: Ilya Efimovich Repin
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