From The Back Cover:
In Neil Gaiman's richly imagined fiction, anything is possible. And the proof is in the telling in this extraordinary collection of short stories. Discover within these pages miraculous inventions and curious characters: an elderly widow who finds the Holy Grail tucked beneath an old fur coat in a thrift store, a terrified boy who barters for his life with a mean-spirited troll living beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks, a young couple who receives a wedding gift that gradually reveals a chilling alternative history of their marriage. "Smoke and mIrrors will dazzle your senses , touch your heart and haunt yor dreams.
Pre-numbered label used for registration.


Book Ray People(Mailing Order)
Indicates BCer With Book
1. Cyber-pixie-ontario, Canada
2. Rampallion-Illinois, USA
3. Daidy-Michigan, USA
4. Zmrzlina-Massachusetts, USA
5. Kalipriestess-Florida, USA
6. WickedWordz-Florida, USA
7. Ragdyann422-Minnesota, USA
8. Ladyofunicorns-New Mexico, USA
9. 16stepper-Arizona, USA
10. busybusybee-California, USA
11. Spark-California, USA
12.Kiptos-Singapore
13.FutureCat-Christchurch, New Zealand
14.luckaye-Logan city, Australia
15. Too-Ticki-Denmark
16.Gyd-Barcelon, Spain
17.ffyrestarr-UK
18.Semioticghost-UK
19.Talkland-UK
20.nrrdgrrl-Hilversum, Netherlands
21.Tamster33-California, US
22.Herrundmeyer-Germany
23.phantomreader42-Alabama, US
24.selanna-blue-Ottawa, Canada
25.fio-dagua-Portugal
26.tangledthreads-UK
27.Maurean-Florida,US
28.Tuz-Brazil

it has been sent off in the mail to cyber-pixie. There is a added bounus that comes with the book... Two cd's of neil gaiman reading his stories. please pass them along with the book. i also put in a mailing order in the book. Enjoy!

My first bookring!! WooHoo! AND it comes with goodies too!!

What a great book! I especially liked "We Can Get Them For You For Wholesale" and "Babycakes".

Don't skip the Introduction (as I sometimes do)... it's quite interesting, especially if you're a Gaiman fan.

Mailed to the next person on the list, however, it's taking a r-e-a-l-l-y long time to get there...

Hooray! Smoke & Mirrors arrived today. I had no idea it took so long for first class mail to get to Illinois from Canada. Sorry, cyber-pixie, for pestering you unnecessarily.
Thanks for organizing this, aaratnayake!

This is a terrific collection. I knew Gaiman was good at short stories and novels, but I didn't know that he writes poetry too. A sample:

He knew I lied, but wolves are born to lie.
I sat down on the beach to watch the bay,
stared at the sky as dawn turned into day,
and daydreamed of a day when I might die.

Wish I knew more about poetry so I could tell which are villanelles and which are blank verse. He seems to like the old styles, even though he combines old and new things in his work (fairy tales and the Internet, for example).

Agree with cyber-pixie about the introduction. "When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."

The CDs were a fun bonus! They were getting scratched from jostling each other, so I put them in a jewel case.

Daidy gets this next.

Still waiting to hear from daidy. She is in the process of moving, so I will hang onto this for another week or so. If I haven't heard from her by then, I will send this to the next person on the list.

Released on Monday, July 07, 2003 at to fellow bookcrosser in postal release, postal release USA.

Sent to daidy today via mediamail.

Thanks! Just received this today.

It's taken me a while to finish this, I know, but I'll be mailing it to Zmrzlina on Tuesday.

Oh my goodness...love the CDs! My post office box is in a neighboring town, so I have to drive 20 minutes to get my mail. I was able to start "reading" this book on the way home from the post office :-) I am pretty sure this will be a fast read and then off on its long journey. Thank you aaratnayake for starting this ray.

Wow. And I haven't even opened the book. The CDs are freaking amazing. I have got to own these. After some digging on the Internet, I've discovered the set is called Warning: Contains Language and is available from DreamHaven Books. Gaiman's narration is beautiful but more than that, Dave McKean, the illustrator for Gaiman's books (see Wolves in the Walls), does the music and it just blows you away. I'll post more about the actual stories later.

Okay, got an email inquiring about the status of this book today and since I haven't finished reading it, but absolutly loving it, I am going to get my own copy (hear that all you authors, of whom Gaiman is not one, who think BC cuts into your profits!!) and get this in the mail to the next person. Putting the CD in a soft plastic jewel case so it travels safer. The hard one cracked on shipping to me and I don't want it to scratch the CD if it cracks more.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for offering this book and CD for a ray!

Before I joined BookCrossing, the only things I had read by Neil Gaiman were the graphic novel "Death: The High Cost of Living" (with intro by Tori Amos), and a book of short stories inspired by his Sandman comics that was a gift from a friend of my husband's who knows my taste. (He also gave me "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories" by Tim Burton, another great overall artist.) But I digress... Since joining BookCrossing, I have begun to sign up for rings/rays for novels and books of short stories by Neil Gaiman and have suddenly realized that he is one of my favorite authors! All because of BookCrossing and the good taste of its members. I am obviously looking forward to reading this book. And many many thanks to aaratnayake for including the CDs! I am so excited about them!! I'm going on a long trip tomorrow and they are going with me! I have quite a few other bookrings/rays, but I'll likely be unfair and read this out of order! (And I eventually hunted down the individual comics for "Death: The High Cost of Living," just to have them, because I loved it so much.)