A couple of weeks ago on this blog, I lamented the demise of my library's old due-date slips with the stamps as my connection to the readers who borrowed the book before me. As I mentioned, I liked to imagine who the book's previous readers were. Well, as it turns out, one reader left me a few clues.

One of the books I recently checked out was published with several typos and other errors that somehow got past the publisher's copy editors, and a previous reader of my library book, let's call her "Lady With Pencil," circled misspelled words and made other notations regarding about a third of these slip-ups. Who was this woman? I wondered. (I realize that the person wielding the pencil may not have not have been a woman, but I suspect so! It's kind of like how we call the person who has anonymously sent in corrections to our published articles the "Tsk, Tsk Lady." You may recall that Ron referred to her in his June 10 post.) I picture Lady With Pencil as a schoolteacher, who trades in her pencil for a red pen to circle misspelled words in her students' papers.

I confess that although the published errors and penciled notes stopped me, I was absorbed with the story and dismissed them quickly. Do published errors make your blood boil? What about mixed metaphors? I'm not going to jump on the Dan-Brown-bashing bandwagon, but Janice Harayda's post on the 5 worst lines from The Lost Symbol made me chuckle.

--Sarah C. Lange, associate editor

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