I finally started reading Harry Potter (you don’t need a link for that, right?). As with most good writing, the fascinating details make the story. (I’m also reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon where the interesting details actually tend to bog down the story for me — at least in the beginning.) Harry Potter is published in the U.S. by Scholastic which I knew in grade school as the company that sold rather cheap paperback editions of various children’s titles through school programs. My parents raised me on the library so I was sometimes a bit jealous when my classmates would receive their shiny new book orders. I remember them getting a lot of “pop trash” though, books about current TV shows and movies, rather than “literature”. Not surprisingly, Scholastic’s business has been doing better recently. They were reporting losses a few years ago which prompted a turnaround plan. Their stock price took a huge dive in 1997, right before they outbid other publishers for the right to publish Harry Potter in the U.S. The New York Times did a little looking into Bloomsbury, the British publisher who lucked out on their Harry Potter find. Their stock price languished in the dumps until Harry took off.