Sunday Salon: Random Bookish Thoughts

--My daughter C1 is knitting a Slytherin scarf (in the Prisoner of Azkaban style) for one of her friends to use for Harry Potter cosplay. This got me thinking about the status of the Harry Potter series as a newly-minted children's classic. I tried to get my younger kids interested in Harry Potter series when they were 10 and 11. Not all the books had been released yet and the Hogwarts fever was high around the country. They were having none of it and turned to other stories. Now all of a sudden, my kids as well as their classmates have gone potty over Potter. Could it be because the movies are still being released, or is the series really a classic that they have finally become old enough for? Years from now, will there still be little groups of geeks who consider themselves Potter aficionados the way there were "Lord of the Rings" geeks in my school back in the day?

--Today is one of those days that makes me understand why some booksellers are anxious to get devices like the Kindle into readers' hands. I just finished reading Changeless and it ended in a cliffhanger. Even though I am not much of a book buyer, I would have been sorely tempted to plunk down the $7.99 and have the next book in the series wing its way to my e-reader if I owned such a device. After years of DVDs, DVRs, and streaming online video, I've come to expect having my media when and how I want it. I no longer have patience for cliffhangers!

--I think I've lost my taste for graphic novels. The last few that I've tried to read just put me off. This week I got my hands on Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life which I've been waiting for the library to get in since 2008. Unfortunately, I'm not enjoying it at all. This may sound shallow but I think I am turned off by the black-and-white artwork. I know that it is more expensive to produce full-color books like Rapunzel's Revenge, but those are the only graphic novels that seem to draw me in.