Clampdown

It's an early post for a change. I'm going to the home of friends to spend some time with them and see their baby. Then I'll brave the bookstore. Have you heard that there's a new Harry Potter book being released tonight?

It is truly amazing to see the feverish coverage there is for a book--a book!--and how newspapers are tripping over themselves to publish early reviews from copies obtained through unofficial channels. The other day I read that CBS News promised not to reveal who gets killed on their Saturday evening newscast. How generous of them.

The lid had been kept on any spoilers for quite some time, but this week they bubbled over, especially from a mass media all too eager to tell everyone what happens despite the book being unavailable for purchase until 12:01 a.m. Saturday. I've been able to avoid most of them, but even an article about J.K. Rowling expressing her displeasure about it managed to reveal how many characters die in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Film critics take a lot of flack for spoilers, justifiably so in some cases, but publications usually don't make a point of turning the biggest surprises into front page news prior to or on the day of release.

Many fans plan self-imposed media deprivation this weekend so they can discover all the twists and turns of the final novel in the series for themselves. I'll take my chances, but I intend to get through the book as quickly as possible lest some jackass ruin it.

I picked up the first book because I thought I ought to read it in preparation for reviewing the first film. I zipped through the first three and waited patiently for the next four. I wasn't feeling the anticipation that some people have, but less than six hours from getting it in my hands (or waiting to pay for it), I'm getting excited. American culture has mostly fractured into niches so that even the most popular music, movies, TV shows, and novels are consumed by fewer and fewer people. To take part in the buzz around the true blockbusters like this Harry Potter book is to regain a smidgen of that.

Back tomorrow with knitting content and maybe, hopefully, possibly, a finished sock.