ninme

Well, now that the rampant and terribly stressful speculation on Bush’s potential nomination to the Supreme Court is over (culminating with the first Hispanic Woman ever nominated, btw), I can interject that I finished Harry Potter last night and it’s very good.

I shan’t say any more or Peter will kill me.

Update:

I guess I can mention something that was hovering in my mind for largely the entire book: that it’s a good book for kids in a post-9/11 world. Not that there are any silly parallels (who’re the Iraqis and who’re the American Imperialist forces, like in War of the Worlds, Revenge of the Sith, and Kingdom of Heavenjust this summer), but given the existence of a evil bunch of people (an evil ideology, you could say) you have the kids and their families and teachers leading normal lives, but always with a constant threat lurking. The Weasley’s 9-handed clock (one hand for each member of the family which tells where each member is and how he is doing) is constantly pointing with all hands at “Mortal Danger.” And isn’t that sort of how we all are? (London Underground, Beslan grade schools, Turkish tourist traps) Obviously it’s not on our minds all the time, because that’s too exhausting for humans to handle, but it’s still there, and it’s serious and they don’t just ignore it till it goes away (that was the last book) (see here, btw, on the Churchillian parallels that I linked to last week). I know I’m attributing meaning that she may not have really meant (I’m sure she had this planned well before 9/11), but it’s there nevertheless and we’re here and it’s nice that we’re all here at the same time. If that makes any sense.

Update II:

Oh, one more thing that just occured to me, while reading the WaPo review of the book (curtsies to Wheat & Weeds):

Because her novel of suspense is also a tale about teenagers, Rowling devotes many pages to the rush of hormones and their effect on adolescent hearts. In the common rooms at Hogwarts, there’s a lot of “snogging,” or making out, going on.

I was absolutely and irreversibly prejudiced against the American publication of the first Harry Potter because they changed some of the Britishisms for the dumb American kiddums. So I was reading this new one, that I bought here on Saturday, and saw the word “bogeys” and thought, “huh, I wonder if they’ll change it to “boogers” like they did the first one for the Americans.” And only that sentence on snogging reminded me and made me realize that I was reading the American one and they didn’t change it!

So, I guess the moral of the story is that a non-American needs to make a minimum of a billion dollars before the Americans will respect their work and not hack it to pieces.