Well, one week 'til Harry Potter & the License to Print Money is released on the suspecting public. We've got the machine-gun emplacements in at the bookstore, and the earthworks are nearly fully dug.

I confess that my opinion of the Harry Potter phenomenon is not cast in stone, but rather swings radically back and forth. On the one hand, it's fun to see kids actually picking up a book that is all words (and lots of them!) and enjoying it, as it flies in the face of much of the modern criticism of youth ("Short attention spans!" "Hooked on video games!" "Too much TV!"). I've read the first couple of books in the series, and, while they're not going to chase J.R.R. Tolkein from his place in the pantheon, they're enjoyable enough. On the other hand, it's going to be $46.95 (Canadian) for a children's book, and the hype is starting to drown out any possible literary benefit; kids, I fear, are starting to read the books not out of any enjoyment of them in and of themselves, but because it's Harry Potter and Harry Potter is cool.

Now, the funny thing about this whole situation is that there's a fairly decent chance that Canada Post will be on strike by next weekend, thus thwarting the devious aims of Amazon.com et al. and forcing people to actually walk to actual bookstores to get their copies, or wait however long it takes the strike to get resolved. He-he.