I enjoyed this business-educational bedtime story even without the aspect of needing inspiration in how to run a company. The idea of rival companies that sell punctuation marks is a clever one, and the language is filled with humour ascending from that theme.

Picked this book from the pigbag. Seems quite interesting.

Reserved to savotar, who won my Eurovision challenge!

I didn't know what to expect when I started the book but I were just positively surprised by the book. It was quick to read (took me about one hour) and I really liked it. It was fun that the story didn't quite happen in this world (due the puctuation business) but still that much for me to see the similarity. And I loved the illustrations!

Thank you, Rakuna!

A fun quick read. I did some gardening today and then went to lie on the sofa, exhausted, reading this book.

Perhaps this wasn't exactly my type of book but it was mildly entertaining anyway.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I'm taking this to the Finnish summer convention 2009.

Picked this up at the book buffet today. I had thought I might skim a little during our free time to be sure I wanted it before taking it away - but I got totally sucked into the other book that I'd picked up to browse ("Ghost Girl" by Torey L. Hayden), and so never cracked the spine of this one. I brought it home anyway, and will see what I think.

Thanks, Perdue, for registering this, and for chatting in English today!

Meh.

I like what Rakuna said about this not being set in "our" world. I should probably have read that before I started. Instead, I got really irritated with the auther as soon as I started reading, because I know something about the origins of punctuation, and about linguistics.

Once upon a time the English lan guage was very dull Flat Lifeless The same was true for both written and spoken English There was no poetry No songs Hello!? Beowulf??!!?

So I got off on the wrong foot with the book. But I think I would have found this book depressing either way. It has three main points: (1) You cannot improve performance just by telling your workers to work harder. That's DEmotivating, because it makes them feel criticized. (2) Hiring inspectors won't necessarily improve quality, because if the workers know that someone else is responsible for catching mistakes they might themselves stop being so careful. (3) Even if customers aren't articulate about what they want, you should trust their judgement more than you trust your own specifications.

I think point 2 is an interesting one, and a little counter-intuitive. But it depresses me to think that there are many bosses and companies out there who need to be told 1 and 3. It especially depresses me to think that here in Finland they are about to completely remodel the universities to be on a business model. If this is the level of business knowledge and training, G-d help us.

Sorry to be so negative, folks. Thanks anyway for sharing the book.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Azuki picked this out of the VBB (virtual book box), and I've packaged it up to mail this morning. I'll take it to the PO in about an hour.

Seems like this little book had a good time in Finland, even going to a BC con! Now it is in Florida to enjoy some warmer weather. I've taken a sneak preview and it seems like a delightful book. What an interesting idea of selling punctuations!!

Read this a couple of days ago as I am a few books short of my 2012 reading goal and need some quick reads.

I find the idea of selling punctuation quite fun, as long as I don't delve too hard into the real possibility of it. As a business book it's okay, presented some good points that are worth reminding once in a while.

Put into book basket by side door.

Hi! How wonderful you've found one of my books! Thank you so much for checking out the journal. I would really appreciate if you can take a moment to let me know you have it now. Trust me, it'll totally make my day to hear from one of my "wild" books.

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The number of books I have read in their entirety in the past ten years has now increased by 50% -- from two to three. It joins THE CLIENT and THE DAY THE WORLD CAME TO TOWN! To say I am not an avid reader is a great understatement but I found this book to be entertaining, educational and difficult to put down. It should be required reading for everyone in or aspiring to management positions.