It's Harry Potter eve!

When the first few books came out, I was curious. When people starting having midnight release events around book 4, I scoffed. Then I read my way up to book 4.

Tonight, book 6 comes out. I am unreasonably excited for someone my age. I don't care. Listen to the books on audio [read by Stephen Fry, because I'm sorry, but WHO can tolerate "Hawwy!" coming from the mouth of Jim Dale for more than 10 minutes? not me. but i digress] and you'll soon realize how weak a writer JK Rowling is. But how BRILLIANT a storyteller, at the same time. I have never been so swept up by a saga written by anyone else, despite the overuse of words like "rage" and owls that only "hoot". Would SOMEONE please buy Ms Rowling a thesaurus?

Still, the story is brilliant. Book 4 remains my favorite -- a clever, menacing, complicated story. LOVE IT. Book 5 was so dark, it put me in a pissy mood the whole time I read it. And then I forgot that, and got in a new pissy mood while I listened to it on my iPod a year later.

Anyway, I'll be at my local Book City picking up my copy at midnight tonight with the rest of the geeks. Party at Kew Gardens! Woo hoo!

p.s. I love this: [courtesy Torontoist] The Canadian edition is printed on recycled paper, so Greenpeace and the US National Wildlife Federation are asking everyone to buy the CDN edition, to help the environment. Torontoist says Harry Potter has saved 30,000 trees and about 8500kg of greenhouse gas emissions so far. Also, as far as I know the CDN editions are the same as the British ones. But the US editions have had changes made to the text to make them suit American readers, supposedly. Words like "lift" and "boot" and "braces" are replaced with the US equivalents ["elevator," "car trunk", "suspenders"]. You know the first book was RENAMED in the US, but not up here, right? Not that we're bragging or nothin.