EXCLUSIVE (but fabricated) Harry Potter spoilers
Scholastic, the publisher of the "Harry Potter" books, printed 12 million copies of "Harry Potter And the Deathly Hallows", one of which arrived at our door, personally delivered by the mailman, last Saturday."I never leave them at the door because people steal them," he said.
(This guy is an improvement over our last mailman, who wouldn't leave anything except a trail of incompetence.)
I am currently 550 pages in, and can reveal a couple of spoilers:
- Voldemort is a girl
- Wizards do not produce saliva
- The action takes place in Salt Lake City
- Cthulhu is involved, and Mitt Romney
- The whole series is revealed to have been a dream
I looked for the top-selling novels of all time and, though sales figures are disputed, the following titles are believed to have sold over 10 million copies in hardcover and paperback:
* Jonathan Livingstone Seagull - Richard Bach
* The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty
* Jaws - Peter Benchley
* God's Little Acre - Erskine Caldwell
* Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
* To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
* The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
* Peyton Place - Grace Metalious
* Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (estimated 28 million copies)
* 1984 and Animal Farm - George Orwell
* The Godfather - Mario Puzo
* The Carepetbaggers - Harold Robbins
* The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
According to many, the bestselling novel of all time is Jacqueline Susann's "Valley of the Dolls". Growing up, I knew a bunch of older ladies who owned that book, but I remember my late Aunt Grace telling me that she'd read the first page and then quit reading it.
In other media, last month's "Sopranos" finale was watched - at the time it first aired - by 11.9 million people, which was over a million people fewer than watched "America's Got Talent" on NBC at the same time. Conclusion: you can't treat books like TV.
I couldn't help thinking that commercial events are second only to world events in getting everyone on the same page at the same time.
Everyone remembers 9/11, but a great many people also remember June 29, 2007 when the iPhone was released as well as July 21 when the final "Harry Potter" showed up. It is nice to think that if upwards of ten million people (by now) are doing the same thing, that that thing is reading a book.
Previously: Potter familias
See also: The Internet Public Library, Amazon.com Harry Potter store
Labels: books
posted
by Marty Barrett at Wednesday, July 25, 2007
3 Comments:
If it's all a dream, will Harry wake up with Suzanne Pleshette or will he walk in on Patrick Duffy's Ron in the shower?
...or Flo Howes?
some day we'll all be asking one another "where were you when apple released the iSteak?" and thinking fondly about that day
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