Mon Jul 16, 2007 — by Andrew Wheeler

Fall of the House of Harry Potter Mania!

More Harry links than ever!

In honor of Daniel Radcliffe's roving eyes, today here's a picture of what Emma Watson looks like on a regular movie screen, and what she looks like in IMAX 3-D. Quite a difference, eh? (And if you want to see the photo I almost used here -- which is probably not safe for work, and presumably is from Daniel Radcliffe's stage work in Equus earlier this year in London -- it's here. The caption would have been something like "Hey! That's not Hermione!")

NPR interviews Arthur Levine, J.K. Rowling’s American editor.

The Philadelphia Inquirer profiles J.K. Rowling.

The Guardian profiles Christopher Little, Rowling’s famously tough agent.

My god, even Eddie Campbell has gotten into the act. Must everyone in the whole wide world write about Harry Potter?

The San Jose Mercury News, running a bit behind, files the standard Harry Potter story (interviews with kids, librarians, and booksellers; lots of impressive numbers; thumbnail history) that everyone else was doing last week.

KansasCity.com thinks the Harry Potter readers will be writing their own fantasy novels in six years. (So, agents, if you start getting a flood of boy wizards in 2014, remember that Kansas City called it first.)

Newsday, from bucolic Long Island, New York, gets a bunch of people to recommend other fantasy books for Potter readers.

In the category of Every Damn Thing Is Up on the Web: 7 Days provides a run-down of Harry Potter-branded merchandise now available in stores…in the United Arab Emirates.

HeraldNet, the voice of Snohomish Country) brags that the Harry Potter-est towns in America are mostly in its geographic area.

The Hindu proves that Potter fever is not limited to America and Europe; India’s getting pretty excited as well.

Salon reports back from the unlikely world of Wizard Rock. [via GalleyCat]

USA Today reports that some towns with extensive Harry Potter accouterments to celebrate Deathly Hallows might not take them down quickly.

The Cape Cod town of Sandwich (speaking of accouterments) is completely transforming itself on July 20th.

The Beat – Publishers Weekly’s comics blog – has a long post on all things Potter, with the amusing title Pötterdämmerung.

The Beat also had a roundup of Potter links -- not nearly as exhaustively comprehensive as mine, of course – which had a picture of a disheveled Daniel Radcliffe staring blankly at what I must assume to be Emma Watson’s off-screen cleavage.

According to CityNews, two Alaska teenagers are already camping out in front of Gulliver’s Books in Fairbanks, California. (I suspect that was actually supposed to be Fairbanks, Alaska – otherwise, they’d have gone a long way to get in line – but I could be wrong.) [via Monsters & Critics]

The New Zealand Herald profiles Angela Sargent, a fourteen-year-old who is the only New Zealander to be among the 1700 winners of an online competition to meet J.K. Rowling in London on Deathly Hallows’s publication day. (I hope we’re not in for 1,699 similar stories from everyone else’s local papers.)

The San Diego Union Tribune lists some of the stories that will be open at midnight on the 21st to sell Deathly Hallows, and chats with a few fans.

Blogcritics obsesses about the wait for the last Harry Potter book.

The Star questions five random Potter fans from all walks of life.

The Chicago Sun-Times does its civic duty and lists some bookstore Potter parties.

The Detroit Free Press has a recipe for Wand Snacks.

India eNews insists that Rupert Grint (who plays Ron in the movies) is going to run an ice-cream van on the movie set.

The Telegraph has all of the UK numbers (two million copies ordered, and so on), and UK publisher Bloomsbury’s defense of their retail price.

The Telegraph also has a story about the expensive security measures -- £10 million worth of them – but doesn’t connect the expensive security to the new higher retail price.

The LA Times explains how the battle of the discounts will reduce most booksellers’ profit on Deathly Hallows to nearly nothing.

Publishers Weekly’s Book Maven blog reports on an unspecified “literacy expert” who wants kids to read more non-fiction post-Potter.

The newspapers are running out of Harry Potter stories without running low on a desire for Harry Potter headlines, so we’re getting a wave of “here’s my personal experience with Potter” stories. For example, here’s Saaba Saleem Tahir in the San Francisco Chronicle writing about how she converted her husband into a fan.

Kevin Nance, of the Chicago Sun-Times, is on the other side: he was originally a Potter denier, but has been seduced, like everyone else.

The Desert Sun goes a different route – instead of something from the reporter’s own life, they lead off with an extended account of a Harry Potter-themed trip a ten-year-old girl and her grandmother made to Las Vegas in 2001. (What made it Harry Potter-themed? The fact that they declared it so…and that’s about it.)

Ron Charles of the Washington Post doesn’t like Harry Potter anymore and feels compelled to explain why to us. He also kicks dogs, takes candy from babies, and denies the existence of Santa Claus...

Colleen Mondor replies to that Post article, which deeply irritated her.

[some links via GalleyCat]

Jump to comments (5)