An interesting editorial from the Madison Capital Times talks about the book market, first editions and auctions. “Here,” he says, handing over an advanced reader’s copy of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” “This is worth $2,500 on the open market.” It’s a breathless thing, really, to hold something so small and so valuable. But …read more!

Four San Antonio, Texas students (out of 2,672 entrants) won copies of Harry Potter books signed by J.K. Rowling after answering all the questions, asked by the San Antonio Express-News in a trivia context, correctly.

The New York Times has an interesting article about how the success of the Harry Potter book series has encouraged the C.S. Lewis estate to start a marketing campaign to publicize The Chronicles of Narnia. ”They’re turning Narnia into a British version of Mickey Mouse,” said John G. West, co-editor of The C. S. Lewis …read more!

I hereby nominate Jason Gay for the Vernon Dursley award for his satiracal comments in a recent New York Observer piece: Everybody in New York wants to be a kid again. Ride the subway, and what do you see? Thirty-year-old bankers and 26-year-old assistant editors squinty-eyed, obsessing over Harry Potter books. “They’re really good,” they …read more!

To remind us of how cool the first trailer is, (while we await trailer #2 in July), the Philippine Daily Inquirer reviews it in detail.

Heya, I’m back from holidays and – sad to say – there is still no Arabic translation of the Harry Potter books out yet, at least not in Egypt. An unfilled gap? Harry Potter is huuge in Saudi-Arabia and the Emirates (in the English version), so why shouldn’t it be a success in the rest …read more!

We have received confirmation that the images we show in a previous post (as well as the ones we link to) are, in fact, official. Below is the statement from LEGO’s US Public Relations Manager Michael McNally: The image to which you’re referring is of the LEGO Creator Harry Potter PC CD-ROM title, to be …read more!

And to continue my vicious editorializing, (we all know what I think of Nancy Stouffer), to balance heidi’s fairness, I’d like to include one of the reviews that a reader sent us from the Barnes & Noble Web site of Ms. Stouffer’s book. As the reader pointed out (and I wholeheartedly agree) this sickeningly sweet …read more!

Two different readers emailed us what appear to be VERY realistic images of box pictures for one of the Harry Potter LEGO Creator titles we mentioned a while back. We have calls and emails into LEGO to check the validity but meanwhile, enjoy them – they still look really cool. We want to make sure …read more!

In the interest of fair and neutral reportage, we hereby report that Nancy Stouffer’s The Legend of Rah & The Muggles can now be purchased at Barnes & Noble’s website. The review section shows a smattering of good reviews and a slightly larger number of bad ones, giving it an average review of three stars. …read more!