I chat with a friend of mine who lives in Tennessee at least once a week. Occasionally the conversation turns to Harry Potter. She wants to read the books, but her nephew won’t let them out of his sight. She says she wants to get a nice hardcover set that she can read and then give to her nephew so that he’ll have a nice set to pass on to his kids when he grows up.
Well, I didn’t buy her a hardcover set; but I did go to Amazon.UK and I ordered the four-volume box set for her. (I believe that books should be read as written, and not edited for other countries whose people speak the same language as the author.) So At least she can read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and the rest without having to pry them from the hands of her kin.
Won’t she be surprised when a Royal Mail package arrives on her doorstep? 
Well that was a sweet thing for you to do! I have a copy of the Philosopher’s Stone that I bought when I was in England but I haven’t gotten around to reading that version. I read so many British novels that I’m not sure I’d even pick up on the difference since I’m so used to the slang. Amazon.UK is great–she’ll have them in no time.
I have the box set myself. It bugged the heck out of me that they made any changes to them at all, though the changes were small. And in the latest one there were fewer, too.
I’d be thrilled!
:eek: “Sweet”? If a woman calls a guy “sweet”, it’s the Kiss of Death! 
She’s an anglophile and used to work for an English doctor, but she had never heard of “keeping one’s pecker up” until I mentioned it.
I bought The Philosopher’s Stone after I read the American version and decided I liked it. Then I bought the English hardcover editions from Amazon.UK so I’d have the set. I guess I’m just a kid at heart. 
Sorry about that “sweet” comment. I guess I should have said that it was a very manly thing for you to do? Help me out here, I always thought sweet was good
If a woman tells a guy he’s “sweet”, what she’s really saying is this: “You’re a nice guy. You’re very thoughtful. Any woman would be lucky to be with you. You’d make a wonderful husband and father. I’m sure someone will be interested in you. Just not me.”
In any case, I like surprising people. I hope I didn’t muff it when I LVM asking her if I had her address right. (I told her that I was just going through my phone book and wanted to be sure I had the right one.) She hasn’t called me back, but I’m pretty sure I got the right one.
When I read the first sentence, I was trying to figure out where she lived the other part of the week.
By the way, as long as your sending gifts to people in Tennessee, wanna buy me all the works of Douglas Adams?
what the hell do you stateside peeps have instead of the philosopher’s stone then??
I still think it’s sweet–and not in that “big brother, I like you as a friend” kind of way. But maybe that’s just me
She got the books yesterday. It was a nice surprise for her.
(She thought it was “sweet”. )
You called it, Mr. Kiss of Death[sup]TM[/sup]! 
But it was still sweet.
I did talk to her a couple of days after I LVM. When I talked to her last night she said, “Is that why you were asking about my address?”
(I have four addresses written down in my address book, two in Washington and two in Tennessee; so my “confusion” over her address seemed genuine.)