Fun With Harry

So it's Harry Potter day (well, really not till tomorrow, but if you stay up till after midnight to buy the book, it's almost like it's today. Or something). The last time a new HP book came out, I wrote a couple of "top ten" articles for work:

• 10 Things Writers Can Learn From Harry Potter: your basic run-of-the-mill trying to teach something about writing from what everyone is reading. It was fun to write, anyway.
  
• 10 Books Better Than Harry Potter: my attempt to get people to read some of the really good stuff in YA fantasy fiction (I do like Harry, but there really is a lot of better stuff out there).

And here (via Making Light) are some of the entries to a recent Guardian contest: The alternative Potter: Dumbledore's death, because someone important is rumoured to die in Book 6 (wasn't that the rumour for Book 5, too?). The fun continues in this Making Light post: Pushing Up Dumbedores (and especially in the comments).

I admit, I didn't read them all, but my favouite of those I did read is this one, in the style of William Carlos Williams:

This Is Just To Say

I have killed
the wizard
who was in
your novels

and whose death
you were probably
saving
for book seven

Forgive me
he had it coming
so beardy
and so old

So, do I buy the new book tomorrow, or do I hope somebody gets it for me for Christmas?