Steady on. It's only a book about a boy wizard at a posh school. OK, to be fair I haven't read past Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, or 'Stone' as I imagine it is called by the cognoscenti in the way that hardcore fans always refer to classics in coded abreviation. I started 'Chamber' but didn't get very far. It felt too much like a repeat and life felt too short.
But good book or bad (frankly I don't really care) one thing that is becoming clear is that the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, thanks to the scale of its readership, is news. Which means the Observer, as a newspaper, has to pay it some attention. Curses.
The sacred text is so secure that our reviewer is not even allowed to touch it. He must remain strapped to a chair and blindfold while the book is read to him by an armed member of the authorised Hogwarts Praetorian Guard. Ok. That isn't true, but he does take possession of the book under secure delivery from a warehouse in South West London at 00:01 am on Saturday, traffic permitting.
But still, the book isn't so secure that a random sample of Canadians haven't already got their hands on it. (Thanks to Culture Vulture for the link.) Doubtless before Friday someone will have the scoop on how Dumbledore and Voldemort are in fact twins separated at birth, or lovers, or both or whatever.
In fact we are just using the blog as an outlet for the cyncisim that crept out in a weekly news conference - a pressure valve in response to the confected hype - because, come Saturday, our news glands will be secreting normally again and we will get into the spirit of the thing. After all, I am reliably informed that kids love Potter, he gets them reading voraciously. It is all good clean fun and a boost for literacy and children's literature. And books, lest we forget, are a good thing.
