Two online Canadian retailers [Indigo and Amazon] have slashed the price of J.K. Rowling’s fifth Harry Potter book by 40 per cent, months before its publication date. (From The Toronto Star.)

Stockhouse reports that Barnes & Noble stores across the US will remain open late on Friday night, 20 June, and sell Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the stroke of midnight.

BIG THANKS to Sarah, for risking life and bandwidth to get me this mp3. It’s 7.1 MB of me rambling, so download at your own risk. 🙂 Click here – I hope you enjoy!

This just in from RandomHouse’s Listening Library regarding the Audio Books we hope Jim Dale will narrate: Listening Library is in the process of negotiating the audiobook rights for Harry Potter 5, and therefore I can not give you any information on the audio edition of the book at this time. I encourage you to …read more!

The June arrival of Order of the Phoenix has some publishers possibly rethinking release dates of upcoming books. Quotage: In July 2000, the big titles coming out at the same time as Potter IV created a perfect storm that picked up publicity, production and sales of other books in its tempest — and resulted in …read more!

According to the BBC, Amazon, Borders and Waterstones are announcing record pre-orders for the 5th Harry Potter book. Other bookstores have mentioned phone lines being tied up and a large amount of people popping in to check on the book. Surprising? Hardly. Waterstones has also announced a day of special activities and massive in-store events …read more!

Thanks to Dennis for making sure we didn’t overlook this NME piece about musician Ian Brown making a cameo in the film, despite his agent denying it. Who will he play? With a face only a mother could love, perhaps Stan Shunpike of the Knight Bus or Walden Macnair, Deatheater and Executioner of Buckbeak….

No, not a pirate…that’s Yarrr. Yet Another Rumor: The Daily Mirror is reporting that Dinotopia actor David Thewlis has been cast in the role of Professor Remus Lupin in PoA. I have to admit, I like this rumor a lot more than I did AICN’s mistake that Timothy Spall was going to play the kind …read more!

FYI: Yesterday this site received nearly twice the amount of hits we usually get in a day – though not as many as the day of the auction – and today we’re already where we usually are twelve hours from now. Excited much, guys? Heh. So are we. Anyway, wanted to point out that our …read more!

Other films in the running include Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Spider-Man. (See the full list at Ananova.)