I had to watch the Harry Potter madness from a distance, since I was travelling. Joe mentions that he was picking up the family copy in the morning. Well, I can tell you that my two Harry Potter kids (Becky and Johnny) had each ordered a copy, as did my wife. We don’t share Rowling books in our house! They went down to the local (small) bookstore at eight to pick up their tickets that would allow them to pick their three copies at midnight. Their numbers were in the high forties, hundreds of people were there at midnight. And if this isn’t bad enough, they actually re-read all the previous volumes (for the fourth or fifth time, I can’t remember) during the last month. They wanted to be prepared. The first thing Becky said to me when I got home was not, "Hi Dad, it’s good to see you, how was your trip," but this: "[character name] died." The whole phenomenon is quite remarkable, and I’m glad of it. I explained Johnny’s first encounter with Harry Potter when he was eleven years old (he is now seventeen; Becky is twenty-one) here. He is still enthralled. Good for him. J.K. Rowling made $36 million in one day. Good for her.