I finished the seventh book in the series yesterday. Wow. I was sad at the end, not because of the deaths (well, maybe a little) but because it was over. The whole series. No more looking forward to the next one, no more waiting to find out what happens, no more fighting between kids and adults to read. To READ! People are fighting over the chance to read because of J.K. Rowling. Many people have critiqued her for not being an excellent writer, and yet she crafted a story and an entire world that inspired people to pick up a book (or seven). I have to wonder who will fill those shoes.
Like Tim, I do wish that Hogwarts had played a larger role in the story. I found a couple of chapters to be slow and almost dispensable; tThe first one-third of the book was a little slow for me. The latter portion was exciting though, and I was surprised more than once.
A few fun Harry Potter things to note, and then I’m moving on:
The current issue of Muse magazine has an excellent article on the whole Harry Potter phenomenon worth checking out. Some factoids:
400,800 trees were needed to make the paper for the initial print run of HP. According to Eco Chick (warning - spoiler), Scholastic saved 200,000 trees with the US printing by using eco-friendly paper.
J.K. Rowling earned $75,000,000 in 2005.
The Deathly Hallows audiobook will run 21 hours long.
Mugglenet, a HP fan site created by a (then) 12-year-old homeschooled boy by the name of Emerson Spartz averages 1.5 million hits per day. A site with this kind of traffic can generate as much as $4500 per DAY.
Play Harry Potter Hangman or try your hand at a HP crossword.
Harry Central at Kidsreads.com features the aforementioned spellbook, a Harrypedia, and free bookmarks.
Finally, in response to the Harry Potter spoilers and the gargantuan efforts made by the publishers to avoid them, Seth Godin writes:
) and I laughed out loud to see that there are 68 people ahead of me in line. Maybe we’ll get to read it by Christmas! hahahaha!
Miranda said,
July 28, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
Twenty-one hours long for the audiobook? Wow! I just finished reading the book aloud to my family. I guess I clocked something like that. It just flew by.