The West Asheville Branch of the Asheville-Buncombe Library System in North Carolina won Scholastic’s competition for the first signed American edition of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the LibraryJournal.com reports. The book was hand-delivered by a representative of Scholastic this week and won among 9,000 entrants. Because response to the competition was so high, …read more!

Arab News reports that even though HBP does not yet have an Arab edition, it is the hottest selling English book in Saudi Arabia.

The Sunday Mail actually reports today that JKR purchased a silver model of a Dodo bird from jeweller Patrick Mavros, in a news item that we would nominate for the We Can’t Believe They Wrote That Award, if it existed.

Goblet of Fire tops Entertainment Weekly‘s list of films the staff can’t wait to see this fall. Thanks Lee!

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire composer Patrick Doyle gave an interview where he calls Potter “the biggest thing I have ever been involved in.” More at the link! Thanks Lee!

Ralph Fiennes, who plays Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, will be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight to discuss his film, The Constant Gardener.

A church in Pennsylvania has started to use Harry Potter books in its vacation Bible school curriculum – and as a result, enrollment doubled.

Barnes & Noble joins Borders in reporting difficult sales thanks to deep discounts on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Bookstores engaged in something of a price war leading up to the book release as they competed for customers. B&N is the number one US bookseller, and at the end of a quarter in which …read more!

HPEF has published “We Solemnly Swear That These Papers Were Worth The Wait,” a collection of essay papers from the Nimbus 2003 Harry Potter convention; you can order it from Amazaon US, UK and Canada in paperback and hardcover right through the Cauldron Shop. You can see the table of contents here; the book contains …read more!

Bill Amend’s “FoxTrot” will give HP fans a chuckle this morning! Thanks to all who sent this in!