The next edition of RetroVision Magazine will feature a Harry Potter News Diary, chronicling in 35,000 words a month-by-month, year-by-year timeline of the Harry Potter phenomenon. It covers “everything from the first announcement that J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone had been picked up by Bloomsbury through the publication of this summer’s book …read more!

We’ve got another entry to the A.S. Byatt/Harold Bloom/William Safire school of HP-haters: Robert McCrum, who says: “The great children’s books were written by emotionally backward men and women who were writing principally for themselves….When all is said and done, JK Rowling is for children, their teachers and parents, the people who actually pay for …read more!

Today’s Poll is up in our Lounge asking the question ” Who will be the new Gryffindor Quidditch Captain?”. Hmm.. there are some good choices; cant wait to see if Harry and the Quidditch team will be back in action in Book Six ( and goooo Hufflepuff 🙂 ) The poll to yesterday’s question about …read more!

More than a million HBPs have been ordered at BN.com, making it “the bestselling pre-order book of all time.” Also, BN.com will be showing a taped broadcast of the J.K. Rowling reading from Edinburgh Castle; it will also be shown at the Union Square, NYC party where Jim Dale will be reading. The press release …read more!

The Kansas City Star today says: “Who can say whether Harry Potter would be as successful without those fans old enough to order a martini? Sarah Blair can. “Absolutely not!” says the 26-year-old Potter fan from Gladstone. “All the fans I know are adults.” And speaking of adult fans, she’s too shy to say so …read more!

As noted in our earlier report this morning, Bloomsbury is releasing footage of JKR signing a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This video and more is now online. After clicking at this link, click on where it says “Electronic Press Kit- Video and Footage”. Quicktime and Windows Media formats are available. There …read more!

UK newspaper The Mirror is running a week-long series all about the world of Harry Potter, and today they focused on the films, in particular the trio of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson. In an article that has focuses on how they have grown and changed through the years,the actors talk about things …read more!

Bloomsbury.com has posted that they are releasing an EPK (that’s a press kit) with footage of Jo Rowling signing the first copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (which, fans might want to note, will be released THIS WEEK) to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. Librarian Martyn Wade reports “we look forward …read more!

The Christian Science Monitor has a piece about the security measures surrounding HBP. They interview various booksellers and librarians about Scholastic’s secrecy policies, and booksellers like Russ Lawrence, of Chapter One Books in Hamilton, Montana strongly support Scholastic and their reasons for secrecy. Scholastic Inc., the book’s US publisher, has once again gone to great …read more!

MSNBC gets a little snarky about the release of HBP: A friend told me recently about an aspiring author named J.K. Rowling who has a series of books out with a recurring character named Harry Potter. I always do what I can in this space to give new scribes a little push out the door. …read more!