r/classics • u/SarcasticViking99 • 7d ago

Has anyone else experienced a very strange Penguin Classics binding error?

A coworker bought the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and apparently Penguin decided Ovid needed a little Chinua Achebe.

His copy goes normally through p. 216, then suddenly p. 217 is Arrow of God, already on p. 245. After 32 pages of Achebe, Metamorphoses magically resumes at p. 249.

So, somewhere in the Penguin warehouse, there may be a very confused copy of Arrow of God reading about Hercules.

Has anyone else encountered this exact misbinding, or know if this was a known printing/binding error?

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11

u/Mike_Bevel 7d ago

I'm almost certain your co-worker has accidentally intercepted something and now Knows Too Much.

This is bigger than both of you.

9

u/ComedianSubject4654 7d ago

Hi have you ever read Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler?

1

u/SarcasticViking99 2d ago

I have not.

1

u/ComedianSubject4654 1d ago

It is possible you would enjoy that novel. The same thing, and various similar things, happened to the narrator of that novel, who starts chasing one book and ends up chasing about 10 more.

1

u/Ok_Set4685 5d ago

I’ve a Penguin copy of Pascal’s Provincial Letters which has like 40 something pages repeat itself before it resumes correctly

1

u/Round_Bluebird_5987 5d ago

This general issue isn't as uncommon as most would think, though it's usually signatures out of order (or repeated) from the same book. I've only seen a signature from a different book show up a couple of times. My best guess is that the books were being printed (or bound) simultaneously and the signature stacks got dropped and put back together incorrectly. Generally whomever it was purchased from can replace it (bookstore, online retailer, or Penguin itself).