Nook edition of Tolstoy’s War and Peace changes ‘kindled’ to ‘Nookd’

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.

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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.

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