Whenever I fly, I buy a book at the airport. I tend toward mysteries/thrillers/suspense novels. Something to keep me occupied at the gate, or when I have a bit of downtime during the trip. Generally these are books I wouldn’t otherwise read, so it’s sort of a guilty pleasure for me.

(I have to add here that The Book was in the best-seller racks in Austin, Houston, and DC. Cheap thrill moment for me!)

Anyway, I bought a novel published by Ballantine Books, which I believe is an imprint of Random House. One of the biggies. About ten pages in, I encountered the first lay/lie confusion. It surprised me, because that’s not the kind of mistake I associate with a publisher like Ballantine/Random House. However, as I continued to read, I realized that there was not one single instance of lie in its intransitive sense (“to assume a reclining position”). It would have been bad enough had the editor not even tried to make the distinction between lay (transitive: “to put in a horizontal position”) and lie, but this was far worse: the editor used the transitive lay in all instances, regardless of which verb was required.

I wonder who I should contact about offering my services?