On my wish list to my family for Christmas, I listed “The DaVinci Code,” and I received it as a gift. I’m almost to the end (and I’m finding it fascinating), and on page 423, an excerpt from an entirely different book on investing begins! There is no more of “The DaVinci Code.” I’m furious! I’ve been staying up late to 2 or 3 in the moring entralled with this book, and now I’m stuck without knowing how it ends! I went to the publisher’s web site (Doubleday) in hopes I’d find something about it (I can’t be the only person who has a messed up copy, can I?) No luck. Now what? Call Doubleday, I would guess. If they want me to send them the book, should I?
Sorry - I’m so mad, I’m making typos.
Find out what retailer it was purchased from, then take it to an outlet of that retailer. They should give you a new one (the bookstore will send the book back and get their refund from the publisher).
A friend of mine picked up a copy as a gift that, as I paged through it, I realized had a printing error (one page wasn’t bound properly and a couple subsequent pages were missing). We swapped it at a different branch of the same store.
Doubleday, by the way, is an division of Random House…
See, who said the DaVinco Code was predictable?
When you take it back to the bookstore, see if you can get them to throw in a copy of If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino for your trouble.
I’ll admit that the plot twist was a little jarring, but damn if I didn’t double my savings in less than a year.
But look out that they don’t give you Outside the town of Malbork by Tazio Bazakbal instead, since that one sucks. 
That sort of thing happens from time to time. The bookstore will replace it with a minimum of hassle, especially since they get full credit for the return.
I had that happen to me as a child. I bought a brand new Hardy Boys mystery to read on the way down the Alcan Highway. The first chapter was Hardy Boys, then it changed into a Tom Swift novel, which turned out to be fine, as it hooked me on science fiction. It wasn’t until years later that I found out the authors were pen names for the same guy.