It had to happen sooner or later, I suppose. I knew one day I would find a typo in the book, and that day turned out to be Thursday evening. After the Boston Public Library reading, a friend was kind enough to throw me a book party at her place, and I decided to read from the chapter “In Young Kim,” starting on page 89. And as I was reading it out loud, I saw it on the second paragraph:
“The best she could do was peejaa because there was no such sound as ts in Korean, but this was not important.”
I suppose it’s technically true — there is no such sound as “ts” in Korean. But it’s wrong! It should’ve been the letter “Z,” and I have proof. On the galleys (the advance readers copy), this was correctly laid out, as you can see from the graphic (click it to see the scanned page in full — I’ve underlined it).
So the letter Z somehow became a ts. And all I can say to that is…tsk tsk tsk. What can you do — the book is now in print, so the best I can hope is that the paperback edition will reflect the correction.
Dear readers, if you find more typos, please let me know. You’ll have my eternal gratitude.
I knew how to count from 1 to 10 in English. I could recite the alphabet. And that was about it.
The backstory essay I’d written for M.J. Rose’s blog has been reprinted in 
For my sloth-like slowdown, I’d like to 