They were!! Luckily my very kind friend who I was visiting in Korea got it at the PX after I'd been there a few days, and let me read it before her.
I don't remember why I didn't pre-order #6, after the debacle with #5, but I got so darn impatient to read it that I ended up buying it in the airport! This time, I swear, I will not pay full price...
I don't remember which volume it was, but Hubby was reading a borrowed copy in a doctor's waiting room and fell asleep with the book in his lap. When he woke up the book was missing, and it was found in the possession of a kid hiding in a corner and reading and hoping he'd get away with grand theft literary.
That's great. Darn those books, inciting children to crime!
SF/Fantasy geeks are such book-buying fools.
Ha! This is hi-larious: [link]
You know, now that I know that the regular edition does include a Tolkien map (like the one in the Silmarillion) I think I can be happy with the regular edition.
"The centrepiece is a boat ride which, loosely speaking, is Great Expectations presented as a log flume."
There's an article about that in today's Boston Globe: [link]
I immediately thought of JZ.