How do you spell - cosy or cozy?

Depends on which side of the Atlantic Ocean you live on, really.

Cosy if you spell it the British way or cozy if you are American. Or Americanized.

My personal preference is the British way of spelling although I've been told by some "experts" that the American way is the modern way to go. Anyhow, I was glad to have spent some years working on a plastics magazine that was owned by a British company so I could go on 

spelling 'licence', 'authorise', 'armour', 'lorry' and so on.

Early December, I wanted to order some books from amazon.com. Prices of English-language books in Finland are generally expensive, it's almost like the same price here and on amazon except you change the euro sign to a dollar sign. 

The orders didn't go through even though I had finalised the book list because shipping came up to almost 40% of the cost of the books. It wasn't so economical afterall and I'd thought we could wait until we visit Borders or Kinokuniya in Singapore.

Last week, I visited amazon.co.uk to check out the prices since the pound has lost almost 50% of its value against the euro. The two currencies are now almost 1:1!

The point of this blog entry is not merely to announce that I spent almost €80 on 10 books (for the kids and myself), including postage and UK VAT.

Do you know that the books recommended by both websites are markedly different. Has anyone read "Harold and the Purple Crayon"? It's apparently a popular children's book in the US written by Crockett Johnson and celebrates its 50th anniversary.

I've never heard about this book. 

At the UK site, I was happy to find Enid Blyton, having ordered two books from the Faraway Tree series for Estelle. She's too young to read them now but I hope she will enjoy them as much as I did. At Amazon.com, one can hardly find Enid Blyton unless you do an author search.

When I'm shopping for books, I don't make choices based on whether it is written in the US or in the UK. Living in Singapore, most of us are comfortable and versatile to switch between variety in spellings or style. While the British may have a strong literary history (Shakespeare, Dickens), the Americans literary scene dominate in later times (like the NY Times bestsellers list). 

Have you read Frank McCourt's Angela Ashes? McCourt now lives in New York while the book is based on his childhood in Ireland. I had to stop many times to laugh at the funny and quirky things that happened in his hard and tough life. 

I don't recall if he wrote British or American English - most likely American since that was where the book published. But it doesn't matter. It was an excellent book and I enjoyed it.