Vietnam released Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Monday, making the country the first in the world to put out an authorized translation. In an interesting twist, it will be released as a 15-part series. The much-anticipated book is being released as a 15-part series, for about 30 cents an installment, so …read more!

Michael Handelzalts questions the reading habits of Harry Potter and crew in this article from Haaretz.com.

To close out the weekend, another article on Nimbus 2003.

Some people continue to choose illegal electronic downloads of Order of the Phoenix over the ‘hardcopy’ of the book.

At an hour a session, how long will it take to read Order of the Phoenix out loud? One children’s librarian will find out.

Karen Hicks of Houston, Texas, won the 7 day/6 night contest to Great Britain, sponsored by Beyond Boundaries, VisitBritain, and Border’s Books & Music. Congratulations, Karen!

Heidi’s been nice enough to keep us posted on what’s going on at Nimbus. First off, Nimbus was featured on CNN News this morning! Also, banners made by Gena Priest went for over $1100 and a bidding war ensued over the padfoot banners – in the end one went for $420 and the artist agreed …read more!

Fans of Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe raise more than £1,000 for the National Autistic Society. Nice work, everyone – and much thanks to Tara for keeping us updated!

Constantine Pleshakov, a freelance writer living in Moscow and a former member of the Russian Academy of Science, comments on what is wrong – and right – about Harry Potter.

Early word is that the PoA “footage” shown at Comic Con wasn’t actual footage at all: It featured Dan Radcliffe and Alfonso Cuaron talking briefly about PoA. This from Meg: All they really talked about was the cast and the new things appearing such as “quidditch in the rain and hippogriffs”. As happy as I …read more!