The final Harry Potter book comes out in less than 24 hours, and while the media hype has been immense, it does not take away from the fact that these were very good books indeed — much better than the vast majority of children’s lit and a good swathe of “adult” lit.

It’s pretty rare that books make the news anyway (this doesn’t count): the last time a book there was this level of popular interest in a literary character was (this doesn’t count either) probably when Arthur Conan Doyle brought Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in 1903. So it’s great to live through something that probably won’t be repeated for quite some time.

So here’s to Harry and the Gang, and thank you to Jo Rowling for bringing them to us! (the picture above has been tested by independent experts and guaranteed to make you go “awww”)

And oh, some wicked Muggles have even put up pre-embargo reviews of Deathly Hallows (no major spoilers in there). I took the opportunity to put down some of my predictions for Book 7 as well.

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I enjoyed reading Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and so was especially glad to be able to read The Ladies of Grace-Adieu, her book of short stories (apparently her next novel is a ways off).

The stories, (mostly?) all written before the novel, foreshadow the excellent intermingling of dry wit – and surrealism and darkness – that made Strange so popular. Strongly recommended to Strange fans and to all those curious about all the fuss but unwilling to pick up an 800-page tome.

And to give you some idea of what you’re getting into, here are some examples. Clarke’s writing tends to combine finely crafted prose with droll humour, and these extracts demonstrate both.

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Got some new books to read over the weekend:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: like many in engineering and science-related fields, I can relate to Christopher, the mathematically talented but socially inept protagonist of this tale. The best bit about Mark Haddon’s writing is that at no time did the book start to pall, it retained its Chapter One zest even during moments that lesser writers would have ruined with pathos — which, of course, meant that I read it in one swell foop and lost the better part of a night’s sleep in the process (Dang, Joel Spolsky had warned people about this).

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell is large, dense book written in a dry, almost pre-Dickensian style. Yet the six chapters I’ve read so far have been riveting, more so than portions of Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. You may have heard this book described as “Harry Potter for adults” or even (rolls eyes) “a cross between Tolkien and Austen” (as a recommendation I saw pasted to a board in Madras’ Landmark bookshop put it), but it isn’t– it is fantasy, but it has its own distinctive voice and pace. Definitely a promising read.

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Way to go - Mil Millington of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About fame has published his second novel.

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I saw this on Boing Boing and it’s worth repeating: Hugo-Nominated Short Fiction for 2004 is available online. Especially recommended are

• Jeffrey Ford’s The Empire of Ice Cream - it’s a shame to label this beautiful genre-defying story SF. It could just as easily be labeled romance, or even horror. If I were voting, this would get my vote.
• Neil Gaiman’s A Study in Emerald - I read this with no idea about the anthology in which it originally appeared, but the story stands on its own even if you know its premise in advance.
• David Levine’s beautiful, fable-like Tale of the Golden Eagle.
• Vernon Vinge’s hard-SF vision of escaping a Groundhog Day-like workplace:
  Cookie Monster.

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I’m now tucking into Part 2 of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, The Confusion. For a change, Landmark in Madras actually stocked the book in time for its April 13 launch date :-).

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When it rains, it pours. After a long time of staying off paper, I have a
good reading list to work through:

• Snow Crash (done)
• White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
• Guns, Germs and Steel
• Quicksilver
• The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Machine Crusade

Can’t wait to dig in.

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How do you think about nights? Chances are, you don’t. Nighttime is time to spend time at home, at pubs and restaurants and cinemas and concerts. Or maybe escape it all and spend a few moments under the stars with a loved one (or a telescope, or TV, or an all-night codefest). But what if there were no lights to go back to?

Roger Ekirch teaches history at VT and is interested in the nights of the pre-industrial era. And, as anyone who has read Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall will know, dealing with darkness is not everyone’s cup of tea. Guess what? Earth today is not very different from the story’s Lagash. But five hundred years ago, Prof. Ekirch’s research reveals, there was a world where crime and occult thrived, and where darkened evenings eroded interpersonal barriers, a world with its own entertainments, fears — and even sleep patterns. Fascinating read.

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Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Canto XIII, 103-108:

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Great SF short stories online.

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