We got our three copies at 8:30 a.m. last Saturday morning -- Harry Potter day. The mailman said the Radlett post office was piled high with at least 60 boxes from Amazon. Ross and I returned to bed and raced through the first few hundred pages (out of 636!). Despite the length, it is as tightly plotted and fun as the earlier volumes. Some people pooh-pooh the Harry Potter phenomenon. I figure they either don't like children's literature anyway, or else they are comparing it to something quite different, like Alice in Wonderland or Lord of the Rings. These Harry Potter books are good mysteries, are pleasantly moral (despite the bible-belt damnation of Rowling!), have nice silly bits, and remind those of us who liked school how much we did like it. I suppose they most resemble the old Hardy Boys books, or Nancy Drew (I blush to admit I only read a few of the former, but the entire series of the latter). But I haven't read any of those for many many years, so can't be sure. I suppose you could say that many other famous "children's" books are written by people with some quite different axes to grind than just entertaining youngsters (CS Lewis, Tolkien, Carroll), unlike Rowling. They say she has already written the last chapter of the last book of the series of seven. That sure shows a firm grip on plot! The preceding book had almost too twisty an ending. I hope the next book changes the main scene from Hogwarts, which is getting a tiny bit repetitive. I can see why Ross rereads them - I feel the need to do so just to remind myself what all the references mean. That's the problem with living authors: too long between works!

Paul wrote: When I was a kid, our Public Library had two sets of Hardy Boys books, the originals, and those updated to be "modernized" ....not surprisingly the old ones are better, but I doubt they can be bought

BY THE WAY people marvel over amazon's website - I think it sucks - determining whether or not you are buying the updated version or a particular volume of a book is just impossible...

Jan wrote: Hi. I just finished HP IV and liked it a lot. I only bought one copy -- good thing A is still at summer camp. I had to make sure I finished it before he got home, or there would have been trouble.