Regular Expressions Ratatouille
The Amazon.com page for Regular Expressions Cookbook now shows the book’s cover. That cover is actually a draft. The final cover will be (slightly) different.
When our editor sent the cover for comment to Steve and me, I wrote:
I’m concerned mostly that neither of you have a hatred of rats.
I replied:
The rat in Ratatouille is pretty cool.
I guess the cover was designed during the year of the rat, which was last year, when we wrote the book. This year is the year of the ox.
In Thai, the word for mouse or rat is commonly used as a first person pronoun by children referring to themselves when addressing their elders, and as a 2nd or 3rd person pronoun by elders referring to youngsters.
So, no, I don’t have any cultural issues with rats.
Steve didn’t have any issues with the rat either. So if you buy our book, your regular expressions will be free of bugs, but cooked up by a rat pulling your hair! 
Hey, O’Reilly books with rats are great! “Learning Python” used to be a favorite of my then 17 month-old son:
http://oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/letters/2004/python_1104.html
Tim
Comment by Tim Pietzcker — Thursday, 19 March 2009 @ 3:26
Cover looks great! But is that perhaps a shrew? Or vole?
Comment by Dave Jenkins — Saturday, 25 April 2009 @ 1:20
The first page proof, which I just reviewed, describes it as: “The animal on the cover of FILL IN TITLE is FILL IN DESCRIPTION.”
Comment by Jan Goyvaerts — Sunday, 26 April 2009 @ 10:55
The final book describes it as: “The image on the cover of Regular Expressions Cookbook is a musk shrew (genus Crocidura, family Soricidae).”
Comment by Jan Goyvaerts — Wednesday, 27 May 2009 @ 11:40