Printing error

The six of us - seven including Mr. Nash - sat around the table in the SJ&C conference room discussing the new book we'd just begun, "The Right Stuff" by Tom Wolfe. Rainey went first. I agreed with many of her points about Wolfe's style. Then Chris gave his opinion. Aimee was next. She had her notebook open in front of her. Instead of the required three quarters of a page of reactions to the reading, she had about three lines. "Mr. Nash," she started, "you can deduct points from me if you want, but let my explain myself first." She went on to tell the class that she's taking a really intense upper division three credit history course and then, when she started reading the book, she couldn't get into it because of all the "history-type" words that she kept running into. She said she'd stopped reading on page 4. "I guess I'm just history-ed out," she concluded. "Like, OK, here are some words I kept focusing on on page 1." She read war, revolution, patriots. A brief thought of Where is she getting those words from? They didn't stand out to me. crossed my mind, but the book did start out with stories of military fighter jet pilots and so I realized those words probably had been in the book. I just must not have done as thorough a job of reading as I'd thought. Mr. Nash, who had been doling out praise of Wolfe's book only last class period, suggested Aimee to take some time when she wasn't thinking about history, kick back with "The Right Stuff," and just do some relaxing reading. "Once you get a few pages into it, hopefully you'll start feeling better about it, like the rest of us," he encouraged.

We moved on to Angela, then me. Emily went last. She turned to page 17 to read a section that she particularly enjoyed. We all flipped to the page to follow along with her. Aimee murmured something to Chris. He responded. Then they started a hissed conversation while Emily continued reading and then explained why she appreciated that passage. As soon as Emily stopped talking Aimee broke in. "Mr. Nash, I think you should give me my points for today. Let me explain by showing you something." She held up her book, which was an identical copy to the one the rest of us had (except for Chris who has an older edition). I focused on the front cover, noting the rocket taking off in front of billowing clouds of gaseous smoke and the large TOM WOLFE above the rocket in silver lettering. It looked just like my book, just like most of the books sitting on the table. Aimee opened the book to the first page and we sat blinking for a second, staring at a title page that looked nothing like the ones sitting just inside our own front covers. "Oh my WORD!" Emily exclaimed. Then laughter erupted around the table, most likely rippling under the door into the SJ&C office and probably all the way back to Mrs. Herod's secretary desk in the far corner. Apparently everything from the title page until page 10 of the book were from some random (and, by Aimee's description, terribly boring and horribly written) book about Queen Elizabeth and the Puritans, or something like that. None of us took too close of a look at the actual copy as we passed the defective book around, each examining the accidental pages and comparing them to rest of the book.

The actual content of "The Right Stuff" started at page 19, which was opposite the history-book page 10. The fonts, leading, tracking, general page format, even the size of the pages, differed from page 10 to page 19. When the book was passed to me I glanced back and forth between the two pages, spotting the differences like kids do on those How Many Differences Can You Find? games. "You know, Aimee," Mr. Nash started, "when you said you just didn't like the book and couldn't get into it at all, I have to admit I was pretty disappointed because I really hoped everyone would enjoy it. Now I'm surprised you actually made it to page 4!" He flipped through the first 10 pages, reading phrases so hysterically awful that new waves of laughter exploded from our mouths. "I am so, so sorry you went through that," he concluded as he shoved the book across the table back at Aimee. "You should definitely take it back to the Campus Shop and make sure you get another copy with ALL the right pages in it." It was a good thing we had all given our reactions to the book and class was nearly over by the time Aimee realized the mistake in her book. We didn't really get too much accomplished after the book-within-a-book was revealed.