Harry Potter and the Waitlist of Doom
Borders just called; the two copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Rah and I reserved on Saturday are now available. Rah's been reading every review and every spoiler she can and she is almost more keyed up for this than I, so as soon as I post and shower we're going shopping! The kind of shopping I like! (Rah's also become very envious of my mp3 player. I'll get her into the gadget stores yet!)
Anyway, despite the utter failure and rejection Rah and I underwent trying to buy Phoenix on Saturday, Scholastic still managed to reap the take from selling 5 million copies on the first day in the US alone, which is astounding. The Times points out that last year's best-selling hardcover novel, some Grisham thing (Grisham's law: bad books drive out good books, except I'm far too impressed with the ability of Borders and Barnes & Noble to not only stock but promote a healthy back catalogue that I start to wonder whether or not it should be "bad books subsidize good books"), sold half that in a year. To look at this number another way, and compounding one's vague guesses at enumeration, if you assume that the average sale price was twenty dollars, that means that every person in America, on average, spent four bucks on Harry Potter on Saturday (which doesn't make me feel any better about Rah and me being denied the chance to spend $34). $100 million in one day? Has any movie done that sort of business? I think the $100 million opening weekend is still the holy grail in movie sales, and generally films that come close to that need a three-day weekend (or even five days, if they do a Wednesday opening, as is traditional for the big July Fourth film -- which is usually an expensive action blockbuster like Independence Day or Men in Black but in a strange and pleasing turnabout this year is Legally Blonde 2). Astounding.
Much has been made of the darker and more mature tone of the new novel; this gives me some hope that Rowling knows what she's doing (or, more accurately, knows what I want her to be doing). I have, since reading the first four books straight through twice three years ago, entertained the notion that not only will Harry age a year for each installment, but the readership will too. The Plain Dealer today made the most recent of many Tolkien comparisons I've seen, and I'm starting to wonder if we can bracket off Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets as Rowling's The Hobbit, whereas with Azkaban we could see her as moving into a deeper, darker, more adult, Lord of the Rings-style epic. Judging from the polaroids of ankle-biters in capes and forehead scars on display on Saturday, the morning after Borders's midnight release party, I may be alone in this (of course, I first attempted Lord of the Rings when I was nine), but I have my hopes. Just spare me her Silmarillion.
Were Scholastic to recognize the more adult turn in Rowling's story, it might decide to finally curtail the bowdlerizing of English idioms that has so marred the English releases and that Masq and oyc have commented on. Phoenix will be the first of the novels since Stone that I've read in the American version, and I'm not looking forward to seeing sweater where jumper belongs. Still, the Americanization has had its defenders. I remember a discussion I had with mundus: he thought the American title was an improvement; I responded by emphasizing the actual historicity of the quest for the Philosopher's Stone, the long history of that name, the actual existence of Nicholas Flamel, and the fact that my first knowledge of the Stone came from Carl Barks's wonderful Uncle Scrooge and the Philosopher's Stone and if a freaking talking-animal comic book can respect my intelligence enough to expect that I won't be scared by the word "philosopher," so can the largest textbook publisher in America; to which mundus responded, "Yeah, man, but dig the alliteration!" I think he won.
Anyway, despite the utter failure and rejection Rah and I underwent trying to buy Phoenix on Saturday, Scholastic still managed to reap the take from selling 5 million copies on the first day in the US alone, which is astounding. The Times points out that last year's best-selling hardcover novel, some Grisham thing (Grisham's law: bad books drive out good books, except I'm far too impressed with the ability of Borders and Barnes & Noble to not only stock but promote a healthy back catalogue that I start to wonder whether or not it should be "bad books subsidize good books"), sold half that in a year. To look at this number another way, and compounding one's vague guesses at enumeration, if you assume that the average sale price was twenty dollars, that means that every person in America, on average, spent four bucks on Harry Potter on Saturday (which doesn't make me feel any better about Rah and me being denied the chance to spend $34). $100 million in one day? Has any movie done that sort of business? I think the $100 million opening weekend is still the holy grail in movie sales, and generally films that come close to that need a three-day weekend (or even five days, if they do a Wednesday opening, as is traditional for the big July Fourth film -- which is usually an expensive action blockbuster like Independence Day or Men in Black but in a strange and pleasing turnabout this year is Legally Blonde 2). Astounding.
Much has been made of the darker and more mature tone of the new novel; this gives me some hope that Rowling knows what she's doing (or, more accurately, knows what I want her to be doing). I have, since reading the first four books straight through twice three years ago, entertained the notion that not only will Harry age a year for each installment, but the readership will too. The Plain Dealer today made the most recent of many Tolkien comparisons I've seen, and I'm starting to wonder if we can bracket off Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets as Rowling's The Hobbit, whereas with Azkaban we could see her as moving into a deeper, darker, more adult, Lord of the Rings-style epic. Judging from the polaroids of ankle-biters in capes and forehead scars on display on Saturday, the morning after Borders's midnight release party, I may be alone in this (of course, I first attempted Lord of the Rings when I was nine), but I have my hopes. Just spare me her Silmarillion.
Were Scholastic to recognize the more adult turn in Rowling's story, it might decide to finally curtail the bowdlerizing of English idioms that has so marred the English releases and that Masq and oyc have commented on. Phoenix will be the first of the novels since Stone that I've read in the American version, and I'm not looking forward to seeing sweater where jumper belongs. Still, the Americanization has had its defenders. I remember a discussion I had with mundus: he thought the American title was an improvement; I responded by emphasizing the actual historicity of the quest for the Philosopher's Stone, the long history of that name, the actual existence of Nicholas Flamel, and the fact that my first knowledge of the Stone came from Carl Barks's wonderful Uncle Scrooge and the Philosopher's Stone and if a freaking talking-animal comic book can respect my intelligence enough to expect that I won't be scared by the word "philosopher," so can the largest textbook publisher in America; to which mundus responded, "Yeah, man, but dig the alliteration!" I think he won.