About Harry Potter

12 million copies printed for release. 3 million sold in the first 24 hours. The latest adventure of this boy magician has suddenly got the world thinking about the literary brilliance of Rowling, the upsurge of reading among the youth and the return of the good old bed time story. Or.. has it? Truth be told, not really. Every Potter release is marked by a similar pottermania, only that each time, it gets bigger, better, costlier. Every time, I hear similar run ups, the same midnight release parties, the same fear of hearing a rumour that might turn out to be true.

Rowling's Potter, makes a very good, not to mention addictive read. I give full points to the author for creating a good children's book, and sticking by story even after being turned down by 55 publishers. But is it an exceptionally outstanding? I hate to admit it, but no. What it is, is an exceptionally brilliant marketing campaign, making Rowling, and the Publishers a great deal of money. And there is nothing wrong in that. The people at Bloomsbury and Scholastic did something that had never been done before, they made people fall in love with a series during the course of its writing. All the media hysteria, all the movies, and games, the big publicity events made it much more than a stupid book release. Never had people actually waited for a book before its release, and it didn't help that the book was actually good.

And now we are sad because this is the end, the end of the 7 books. There is speculation that Rowling will write an 8th book. Well, she might.. she might not, but that is besides the point. We will have more Potters. Other publishing houses have realised that by proper marketing, they can create a best seller out of any good fiction story. Already we see a whole bunch of new series in the magical fantasy genre. They will use it, and we will see other books that have as large fan followings.

The TIME magazine ran an article this month on the extensive security precautions to prevent leaks during the printing of 12 million copies of the latest Potter. Imagine trying to prevent anybody from reading that many copies of a book that is supposed to be sent all over the world. Amazing effort. Its a shame it failed. Personally, I don't think it was necessary in the first place. There is a pleasure in reading a book, the old way, with a cup of tea, or late at night in bed. I don't care if someone tells me the ending of a book, I will still read it. Its the read that matters, the story, in its entirety, not only the ending. Anyways, for better or for worse, Harry Potter, goodbye !

Its done..

Finally.. (I think), its over.. all the tweaking.. all the head scratching. Now for the hard part, writing. Junking all the previous test posts. For some reason, Opera is still not displaying the fonts, and their sizes correctly. Even are giving substitute fonts, it is only displaying mono spaced fonts instead of the serif family of fonts. Sans-serif is coming out fine. Ah.. well, I think I will leave it as it is.. wait for the latest version, then check. IE 7 is rendering it fine, although I would recommend Firefox to all the viewers.

PS: I have put in a lot of effort behind the designing of this blog, so any suggestions or comments are most welcome. ;)