The Aaron Goldfarb Blog

“How to Fail” Errors and Corrections

It seems remarkable if not virtually impossible that typos and flat-out errors can make it into a widely published book.  By my own estimation, I've read "How to Fail" over one hundred times.  My manager, readers, publishers, and editor have probably read it a combined two-hundred times more.  Yet we all missed stuff.

I greatly admired what Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy, did with his recent release "The Book of Basketball" in listing all the errors fans found.  I mean, he's a celebrity author with a much larger publisher and a much larger team of readers and editors than me.  And if he still had errors slip through the cracks, what chance did I have?

An a-hole friend of mine said he bought my book simply to find as many typos as possible in order to goof on me.  I told him, "You won't find any and if you do, I'll buy you a beer for every single one."  FUCK.

(May contain spoilers I suppose)

[UPDATED:  12/02/2010]

Page / Error / Correction

2  MISSED PERIOD ....and have no idea where to buy a hangman's rope (Bed, Bath, and Beyond?).
4  MISSED QUESTION MARK.....instead of going to Bed, Bath, & Beyond with your fiancee ("You can speak at the wedding, Stu, so long as you promise to not drink beforehand, and absolutely swear you'll not say anything offensive.  My eighty-nine-year-old grandma's gonna be there, dude.")?
7  TYPO What time it is?
12  UNNECESSARY APOSTROPHES "Show's what I know!" Jack chortled.  "Show's what he knows!" Kirsten guffawed.
26  TYPO To my left, a women in a power suit...
38  TYPO...though without Robin William's sappy...
43  TYPO (unless you're a pirate)...but they provided me sister and I with an...
45  MISSING COMMA A public school math teacher, she always wore sweatshirts that alerted everyone in the room she was a public school math teacher.
48  MISSING COMMA He lipped, "Drink up, ASAP" and I did as told...
51  TYPO "Cats have this amazing way of..."
53  MISSED WORD ....had to have a Hollywood dreamer of a son as their son, they'd wish for it to be Wesley.
56  GRAMMAR ...had quit her promising career as a CPA to raise my sister and I.
56  GRAMMAR ...was happy to be the bus driver to my sister and I.
57  GRAMMAR If you or I was forced
59  MISSING COMMA ...before their kids could say, "Mama, pwease don't..."
68  MISSED PERIOD ...to pretend these animated pictures are truly deep ("The humor was going right over little Anna's head!").
69  CONSISTENCY Unlikeable characters - In commercial movies, even the bad guys are likable in that...    they're both correct, but you should probably either use the e in both or in neither
81  TYPO ...don't hear much for him after that...
88  GRAMMAR all of a sudden
99  TYPO...shape the conversation to you own perverse needs
100  MISSED PERIOD enjoying the day's newest Blondie (you enjoy that sandwich, Dagwood!).
117  GRAMMAR Randy, the landlord of Christian and I
140  TYPO I couldn't imagine a worst fate    I couldn't imagine a worse fate
140  GRAMMAR There was so many arguments
144  TYPO Country's have necks
158  GRAMMAR she was annoying me as her and her coterie
158  TYPO calender
158  TYPO What's your number
167  TYPO this women was crazy.
168  TYPO These modern insights into sex hadn't help us
168  MISSED PERIOD whether Adam felt inadequate ("He who worries about how well her last boyfriend fucked her will be smote by his own screwy emotions." -- Ecclesiastes 25:82).
174  TYPO any more (anymore)
183  TYPO you just come here ever day
186  SPELLING sleaves
186  SPELLING croque monsiers
198  INCORRECT REFERENCE (please see Footchapter 8-B...)
211  SPELLING dungenous
221  GRAMMAR cares about the women's pleasure
221  DESIGN ERROR "Calculus is Sexy"
222  TYPO A women with an SUV
240  INCORRECT REFERENCE (please see Footchapter 10-C...)
263  TYPO you're a renaissance women
268  GRAMMAR a decade-old picture of Wesley and I.
287  GRAMMAR Her and Brandi had gotten engaged
305  CONSISTENCY (please see: Footchapter...)
311  TYPO not worn since they day
313  TYPO did remind me off his bed
314  TYPO I'd surely begun life
323  GRAMMAR a stranger's call
348  GRAMMAR a 85" screen
350  TYPO call me cruel, call my rude
352  TYPO suberb-model    superb-model?
354  TYPO Whole Food's produce section
359  MISSED COMMA Fitzgerald said, "There are no second acts in American lives," but he was wrong.

POSSIBLE ERRORS TO CONSIDER/INTENTIONAL ERRORS

11  La Enfants Magnifique    Correct versions would be either L'Enfant Magnifique or Les Enfants Magnifiques. (AG note:  the malaprop naming was intentional)
18  Whoppers Junior  (AG note:  intentional, inside joke, please see this)
26  one week previous (prior?)
28  left-skewed median of 723    wouldn't that be right skewed? (AG note:  nope)
60  GRAMMAR "...Instead of your mother and I loving you..."    (AG note: debatable since it's a character speaking)
67  I don't give a motherfuck"?    I don't give a motherfuck?"
79  He has a perpetual look of pedophiliac (AG note:  play on words)
89  previous to happy hour (prior?)
91  I'd never awoken in a Murphy bed    I'd never awoken in a Murphy bed
158  who was my girlfriend a few hours previous (prior?)
163  been born a decade point five previous (previously?  prior?)
241  there doesn't seem to be any good songs    (there don't seem to be any good song or there doesn't seem to be any good song)
255  all the more creepier (all the creepier/all the more creepy)

Please add your own to the comments below and, if I agree, I'll add them to the master list and each new addition edition (ha! a typo in a post about typos!) of the book.