Faulty Hearn

I’ve taken back plenty of CDs or DVDs in my time due to production flaws, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to return a book because it is faulty. Sure I’ve had books with problems before, ones that have fallen apart while I’ve been reading them - it’s like trying to read personalised confetti (in other words, bloody messy!) but that’s usually down to neglect on my part rather than the fault of the publisher (and before you call the book-police, this only happens to paperbacks – you know the usual things, like dropping the book in the bath, leaving it out in the sun so the binding just melts…? I don’t commit the same kind of crimes with hardbacks though, I can assure you!).

No, I never returned a book because it was faulty.
Until now.

I’ve been reading Lian Hearn’s Grass for his Pillow (the first book, Across the Nightingale Floor was pretty damned good, if you haven’t read it already), and reached page 34 before I was suddenly hit with several paragraphs of praise for Lian Hearn’s “prose” and “gripping tale”. Strange, I thought, (I've never read a book before where the author is promoted in the middle of their novel as well the beginning) but stranger still was when up came the title of the book again, followed by the rights page again, then the map etc, and finally page 1 again.

What the hell? I thought.

So I flicked forward to the second page 34 to discover it ended again rather abruptly, and then the book continued from page 83. I’d lost 49 pages!

I was a little miffed to say the least, as I was on the number 51 bus in Sheffield, stuck in traffic in the baking heat with now nothing to read except the whole beginning of the book again. So have I been unlucky, or is this a common occurrence?

And has anyone else suffered from faulty books before or are the gods having a joke at my expense?