Although spring has finally begun here, nighttime temperatures are still cold enough to require use of the furnace. After staggering out of bed this morning, I heard the heat kick on and I hate paying for heat. I decided to warm up the house by starting a fire in the wood-burning stove and needed some newspaper. I'm always behind on it, so I finally pulled the protective yellow baggie off Sunday's Star-Ledger in order to burn the sections I skip: Sports, Autos, and Real Estate.
The main news story, taking up the most prime spot on the front page, was "Harry Potter's Disappearing Act." How sad for poor, broken-legged, rib-fractured, stuck-in-the-hospital New Jersey Governor Corzine to be bumped to the side by Harry Potter. Corzine did get two front page articles: one on his speeding driver's affair with a married woman and the other about his staff's anxiousness to return him to power. But I didn't care. As I skipped the Corzine articles to read about Harry, I noted the subheading,"Even as he gets ready to take his leave, the wizard has the power to create wonder," and it made me chuckle. Clearly, on that particular day, a fictional character was a more powerful figure than a very real governor.
I'm not too much of a Harry Potter fan. Although I own the first five and plan on picking up the sixth now that the paperback can be found at discount prices, I've only read the first two. Eventually, I'll get around to finishing the entire series, so I'm not dying to find out what ultimately happens in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
The Star-Ledger article, though, does a good job rounding up Harry's impact on the world and brought a few new facts to my attention:
- By the time the seventh book is published, "Pottermonium" will have lasted 3,677 days (or 10 years), 4,195 pages, and 19.7 lbs.
- There are 325 million copies of the first six books in print. In terms of numbers, they are only beaten by the Bible and "Quotations from Chairman Mao."
- The fifth movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, will be released on July 13, 2007.
- J.K. Rowling is the first author to become a billionaire.
- Scholastic, the US publisher, will print 12 million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In contrast, the print run of the US release of the first book was 50,000 copies.
- The series can be read in 64 languages, including Latin.
Wow. Just...wow.
