'arry Potter, Part 1

Now some of you know this and some of you don't (hey - that made me sound like DJ Kool), but I'm a big ol' Harry Potter nerd. This wasn't always so - I once refused to read any of the series, on the grounds that I was already a big Lord of the Rings fan and adding another series (whose movies came out around the same time) was just bandwagon-jumping.

However, when I went back to Edinburgh in May of 2004 to visit my friend Kate (who'd spent the whole year abroad there), she had a ticket already bought for me to see "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." So, like it or not, I had to be caught up on the movies in one night. And, as was easily predictable, I loved them.

Kate then gave me the first three books as a gift and you can see them in the photo below, on the lefthand side. However, in addition to being a new Harry Potter nerd, I have always been a literary nerd and booklover. Because she gave me three of the series in the British juvenile edition (published by Bloomsbury Press), I decided I had to buy the rest of the series in the same edition. I know - I'm a little crazy when it comes to books. Luckily, a Canadian publishing company (Raincoast Books) produced a version of the Bloomsbury edition for the Canadian market, so I was able to buy the other four books on my annual PEI vacation. Whew - major disaster narrowly averted, right?

Anyways, part of the point here is that Justin and I were at Barnes & Noble last week and I found some awesomeness in the childrens section. See below:



Yes, that is a boxed set containing two books from the Hogwarts Library, specifically "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and "Quidditch Through the Ages." The books, as reproduced, include fake wear, imprints of Diagon Alley publishers, introductions by Dumbledore, and in the case of "Fantastic Beasts," notes in the margins by Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Can you stand it?!? I barely could.

They were written by Rowling to support a charity called Comic Relief, which gives 100% of the proceeds of book sales (less taxes) to improve the lives of children around the world. I love it.

(Stay tuned for part 2 of "see, I'm a really big Harry Potter nerd.")