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17685. Jenerator - 12/1/2005 8:13:26 PM Hi Mags! 17686. alistairconnor - 12/1/2005 8:15:36 PM Yes, magnificent caboose. Unfortunately, my proxy at work didn't block it, and I was glancing furtively over my shoulder for a while. 17687. jayackroyd - 12/4/2005 6:35:17 PM This isn't much of review, but I really like this book. there's an .
In the interest of full disclosure, my wife is the American editor, and would like to see it do well in the stores. But I think it's a great story, well told and thrilling, and hope some of you will take a look at it. 17688. thoughtful - 12/5/2005 5:09:39 PM I've been invited to a friend's house for a xmas party and included in the activities is to bring a gift for a yankee swap. Anyone ever hear of it? I had not. I looked it up on the net and decided that in gaming terms, the first person has it best, the #2 person is worst off.
The idea is sort of like a grab bag with a twist. Everyone who brings a gift also gets to pick a number and gifts are drawn in that number. The first person gets a gift. The second person gets a gift and can keep it or swap it for what the 1st person rec'd. The third person gets a gift and can keep it or swap for what either #1 or #2 have, and so on. After all gifts have been drawn, the first person gets the final choice to keep his/her gift or swap for any of the other gifts. 17689. Ms. No - 12/5/2005 6:13:26 PM My extended family is so large that we do this every year. Everyone who's able gathers at my Aunt's house on Christmas Eve and we do a potluck and then the gift exchange you described. A small gathering is 15 people, if everybody shows it's nearly 40, but haven't had everyone together for a number of years. Usually it's about 25 - 30. 17690. alistairconnor - 12/5/2005 6:17:36 PM potluck potlatch? 17691. Ms. No - 12/5/2005 6:20:54 PM Ha! Yes! 17692. Magoseph - 12/5/2005 10:08:48 PM 
The Water Mirror--Excerpt
17693. Magoseph - 12/5/2005 10:10:18 PM Hello, everyone--I'm in the middle of a huge mess here, so I'll check with you all when it's unraveled, fixed, I mean. 17694. Ms. No - 12/5/2005 10:28:45 PM Jay,
That sounds really neat. I'll have to look for it. I've got a friend who's a teacher in Germany, I'll have to ask her if her students have read it. 17695. Ms. No - 12/6/2005 12:50:44 AM Can I just say thank God for Babelfish?
I had to order a handheld devide from Dell to be delivered to one of our webmasters in Italy --- but you can't order from the US Dell site and ship internationally. You can't even call them on the phone and get them to do it. You have to place the order through the site located in whatever country it is that you're shipping to.
So I'm muddling through the Italian site and it's a fairly straightforward ordering process, but, still, I don't necessarily know which address is for billing and which is for shipping etc. and I couldn't have done it without being able to check the translation of certain things.
They were kind of funny though. I suppose Italian has different tenses for such things it was interesting. 17696. jayackroyd - 12/6/2005 4:37:59 AM thanks Mags. I love that cover. That lion on the bridge is a stone lion. They're changing it for the paperback edition; they're afraid it's not commercial enough for B&N.
MsNo--it was a bestseller in Germany. I do love the book. 17697. Macnas - 12/6/2005 10:47:13 AM Was it originally written in German? the few pages I read didn't flow well for me. 17698. alistairconnor - 12/6/2005 12:52:40 PM The first of the series (if I've got that right), The Flowing Queen, seems to be out of print in the US : Amazon only proposes it as used.
I'll buy both from the UK. I suppose I could look for a French translation... but since we won't be reading it in the original, I prefer to have it in English for the kids. Last year, I bought them The Thief Lord, by Cornelia Funke, without realising that it was translated from German... (also a Venice story) 17699. thoughtful - 12/6/2005 9:42:25 PM So much for the pot of gold theory!
 17700. jayackroyd - 12/6/2005 9:56:52 PM The Flowing Queen is the German title, that I think was also used in the UK. The US title is The Water Mirror. (Somebody in sales objected to juxtaposition of a female figure and "flow.") Ms. Funke was apparently irritated that Venice showed up in the story. She refused to provide a blurb.
Yes, macnas, it was written in German.
17701. Ms. No - 12/6/2005 10:04:27 PM I like that cover as well and can't imagine what they think would be more "commercial" without being inferior. It's somewhat reminicent of the art for the covers of the Lemony Snicket books and they seem to do just fine with their dark artwork. I do agree that The Water Mirror is a better title than The Flowing Queen, though.
What's Funke's problem? How terribly ungracious. If she read the book and didn't like it, that's one thing but to get her panties in a twist because another author is writing a children's fantasy book that has ties to Venice? Get real. 17702. jayackroyd - 12/6/2005 10:14:33 PM Some authors view the marketplace as a zero sum game. In fact, it's a positive sum game--Harry's sales sell Pullman's book, which in turn drives Funke's sales.
They're changing the cover because the book is not selling through in the chains as well as they had hoped. Bookselling, strangely enough, is a consignment business. Unlike other retail operations, you can return stock you don't sell. Books that come back from bookstores are said not to have "sold through." 17703. Ms. No - 12/6/2005 11:03:57 PM Yeah, that's the stock that fills the discount store shelves. You go in and they've got a zillion copies of a book you never wanted to read. They're good for cookbooks and stuff, though, and if you like an author that nobody else does then you're in luck. 17704. alistairConnor - 12/7/2005 12:36:08 AM Thanks for the tip-off Jay... nearly ended up with two copies of the book.
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