Re: (review) The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold

On 5 Apr 2025 17:15:20 GMT, ted@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
wrote:

In article <ufj2vj1g08mnsdi5g10r6k72n6i4i83n2s@4ax.com>,
Paul S Person  <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

On Fri, 04 Apr 2025 16:15:12 -0400, WolfFan <akwolffan@zoho.com>
wrote:
>
<snippo hater-of-ebooks>
>

<snippo most of my Kindle stuff>

I haven't but nonfiction for a long time, although I am still working
through the ones I have. So I really can't comment on nonfiction
eBooks.

That should have been "bought".

This has been happening regularly lately. Looks like /I/ need to start
proofreading myself more consistently.

Older books are mostly scanned and not proofread. This is why they
don't cost a lot. I have seen books (possibly part of an omnibus, I
don't recall) where, at the bottom of a page, the Chapter Title was
badly butchered -- yet it was identical to the first line of the
chapter, which appeared immediately below the title, and that line
itself had no OCR problems. Some books are so regular in their OCR
errors that a diligent reader can eventually figure them out and just
read the book. Although I do sometimes wonder if, 3000 years from now,
faced with only the Kindle Dickens omnibus I bought, scholars will
debate endlessly if "k" was /really/ written "l:" in the age of
Dickens.
>

>
As I mentioned at one time or another I read a really bad scan of
Fredric Brown's _The Screaming Mimi_ wherein every reference to "gun"
(and it's a detective story...) was replaced with "bun".

That's one of the easier ones -- once you figure it out you just have
to read the correct word for the mis-OCR one. A similar one in a Dumas
novel was replacing "Rue" (as in a street name) with -- well, I don't
remember what, exactly, but it was pretty clear what was going on.

Some of the harder ones are unintelligible, because they are not
repeated and have minimal context to suggest possible meanings.

The folks at Project Gutenberg actually seem to do proof-reading and
peer review.  Their version of Charteris's _Meet The Tiger_ was pristine
while the Amazon one was a head-scratcher.

I am wondering whether, if it is still in copyright, buying the Amazon
would allow one to legally download the Project Gutenberg version.
After all, a license /was/ purchased ...
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"