View From the Bushes

We had my family's Christmas party last night. I made out pretty well: I got some biking gloves, the Annotated Lolita, Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, a couple of other DVD's and a B-52's CD (Time Capsule), plus a bunch of other cool stuff. Of course, my wife had already bought Lolita and Gigantic for me, so that threw a little wrinkle into the holiday spirit. It also illustrates one of the weaknesses of the Amazon Wish List (though I assume they consider it a feature). If you buy the gift from somewhere other than Amazon (say OverStock.com) it does not indicate that on the wish list.

In other news, J.K. Rowling finished Harry Potter book six and it scheduled to be released on July 16th (you can order it from Amazon right now for 40% off). I think that may be one of the strengths of the Harry Potter series, that unlike some series (*cough*Wheel of Time*cough*) it has a definite end, of course. I'd be willing to bet significant amounts of money on seeing some other books in the Harry Potter world within a decade of the end of the first series.

The thing I'm actually the most curious about is how long the book ended up being. I have noticed that most successful authors exhibit a trend towards increasing longer books. Certainly J.K. has thus far fit the model, though it's hard to imagine her topping the 870 page whopper that was book 5. In any case, I'm not ashamed to admit that I'll be one of those lined up at midnight on July 15th...

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross