Seventh Heaven

Now that the festival of the Boot is over can concentrate on more important matters at hand such as popular culture. Such a wide ranging of topics to choose to talk on such as Eddie the dog from Frasier dying, how the Hoff is a judge on a American Idol spin-off and speaking of Idol there are the shocking revelations that not only runner-up Katherine McPhee had/has an eating disorder, but that 22 year old McPhee has a 41 year old boyfriend!!!

But when the name Harry Potter comes up there can only be one winner. News came out yesterday that the finale of the seven book blockbuster will contain the deaths of two major characters.

HP is the biggest literary franchise the world has ever known and will likely ever see. Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain all probably generated a lot of buzz in their day when a new book came out but not to the extent of this.

William Shakespeare? Think he was appreciated more once he died.

In modern times maybe Jeffery Archer or possibly John Grisham. Grishma had heat for a bit in the early 90’s but then all his books became carbon copies, all featuring a lawyer from the South who ends up in the Cayman Islands and then everyone lost interest quickly.

What J.K.Rowling has been able to generate is nothing short of remarkable. She has created an empire. As everyone knows she started slowly but by the time the Goblet of Fire came out in the summer of 2000 everyone was going mental for Harry.

The first four books came out every year from 97-00 but since she has had two year gaps between books with Order of the Phoenix in 2003, Half-Blood Prince last year in 2005 and the unnamed book seven appearing as though it will come out next summer.

The hype has tapered off but that’s simply because there is no way it could be sustained at that level for seven years. But note how a simple announcement about what will happen in the book is enough to create headlines around the world.

When book seven comes it will be sheer and utter pandemonium. The desire and urge to find out how it all ends will be massive and hopefully those will want to read it but won’t have done so yet, don’t get the ending ruined by leaks.

Will be interesting to know how it all pans out in the end. For mind, Book 4 was the best in the series and a bit like the Matrix, the tale lost a bit of direction since it peaked then.

Speaking of books, one of the things in particular about fatherhood I am looking forward to is reading to the little one. Whether it is Dr Seuss, Sweet Pickles, Where the Wild Things Are or whatever else is out there.