I swear, I haven't given up on reading

It's just that I'm part-way through a whole bunch of books, so actually finishing one isn't happening very quickly.

I did finally finish one last night, though - Mary Malloy's Devil on the Deep Blue Sea: the Notorious Career of Captain Samuel Hill of Boston (2006). I read this one because a while ago I read and enjoyed a semi-historical mystery novel that she had written. And this one, a non-fiction book about a ship captain whose career spanned the first quarter of the nineteenth century, was really good. At least, it was interesting, and written in an extremely accessible and readable way. But, my GOD, Malloy was poorly served by her publishers. Or maybe it was her fault, but the book was terribly edited. One of the msot egregious problems was that clearly her original manuscript was written in an old version of Word or something, and lots of words at the end of lines were broken off. Then when the text was typeset, you had lines like "and then someone did a lazy job of ed-iting and didn't catch huge, glar-ing mistakes." Okay, in fairness, I think there was ever only one word break in a line, but still. How did nobody catch that and fix it? It happened all throughout the book. There were a lot of random grammar and spelling mistakes that just frustrated me so much, because the book deserved better.

And since I'm mostly writing this because I'm procrastinating working on the big homework assignment I have do, I am just going to copy the book description:

"Had he not been a madman, Captain Samuel Hill would likely be remembered as one of the great maritime adventurers of the early nineteenth century. He was the first American to live in Japan, and was in the Columbia River basin at the same time as Lewis & Clark. He rescued men held captive by Indians and pirates, met King Kamehameha of Hawaii and the missionaries who arrived soon after the King's death, was captured as a privateer during the War of 1812, witnessed firsthand the events of the Chilean Revolution, and wrote about all this persuasively. He was also a rapist and murderer. In all his contradictions and complexities, Samuel Hill represented the fledgling United States during its first wave of expansion. At home he appeared civilized and sensible, but as he sailed into the Pacific Ocean the mask slipped away to reveal the recklessness, ambition, and violence that propelled the United States from coast to coast and around the world."

I mean, SOUNDS interesting, right? It was good. I just think it could have been better.