I absolutely despise dog-earing. My girlfriend dog-eared one of my books she was reading before and I had a minor meltdown D: I generally just read to a clean page number or chapter and leave it there. I don't really like bookmarks that much either, as I find they can bend the spines a bit. I also hate when you're reading a book for a while and set it down, and the front cover is bent over. Then you have to put a heavy object on top of it for a day or so to get it unbent and even again -sigh-. The spine becoming bent up and wrinkled from use is a nuisance too. This is exactly why I prefer hardcover to paperback...
You really can't expect an American audience to understand English slang. At least not as easily as they'd understand American slang. I'd rather frustrate a few people here and there with a dialect switch than confuse many millions with foreign phrases. Granted, I doubt anyone would be confused by a character saying "Mum" instead of "Mom," but I know I'm not only speaking for myself when I say I simply cannot stand the British spelling of that word. Makes my skin crawl every time. Actually, British spellings in general usually don't look right to me. On topic, the only thing that really gets on my nerves is when someone borrows one of my books and treats it like a dirt. More than once, a book was returned to me in absolutely horrifying condition. I don't tend to loan them out anymore...
agreed, actually. i was in japan during the later books so i got import versions, and i realized how much nicer the UK version looked as compared (just the cover). i also had no problem understanding to the point that i didn't even really notice much difference; there might have been a phrase or two we never use, but i like to see those kinds of differences furthermore, murakami books printed UK are prettier than the american versions too! they make much better sets than the US versions since the books are all uniform to a certain extent (just talking about covers here - there's no language difference since they were both translation anyway).
I agree. I love the covers for the UK versions! As for the you really can't expect someone in the US to understand slang from the UK, I disagree...but that's a discussion for another thread, I guess.
