Of course the big news this weekend was the arrival of the new Harry Potter book. Yawn. For some reason I have just never been too thrilled by Harry. I tried reading a couple of the books, and there was just so much not to like. Harry is a wonder boy who can do everything and who everybody worships. His steparents are evil and nasty and totally ridiculous. His enemies in the rival fraternity or whatever are one dimensional bullies. It just does not work for me. I've watched both movies - boring.

You want some good books about a young English boy who discovers he is a magician? Try 'The Dark is Rising' series. There is a great series. It'll teach you about more about Celtic mythology than you can shake a stick at. The characters are complex, the villians are ancient and ominous. The plot is riveting.

I really do not understand what people see in the Harry Potter series. And it is amazing how many people like them: my nieces, 2 of 12's kids, who both hate most fantasies; an ex-girl friend's mother who was the vice president of a gigantic company, and my roleplaying buddies from college. Even streetsmart ninja kickboxing reporter says she will borrow 'Order of the Phoenix' from a friend at some point.

So why did I bother to read a second book after not liking the first, and why would I watch both movies? My daughter of course. Harry Potter is what got her into reading and writing. Three and a half years ago she picked up book one and whoosh, the next month that was all she would talk about. Now I've watched her go through lots of phases and have enjoyed seeing things through her eyes. I loved Barney because he made her so happy as a toddler. The Power Rangers were just great. I even enjoyed rediscovering popular music (a little anyway) when she became the world's biggest 'Back Street Boys' fan. But I am just not with my daughter on this Harry Potter thing.

However, I am grateful for Harry. Ever since reading those books, my daughter has just been a reading nut. She's gone through 'The Chronicles of Narnia', 'The Lord of the Rings', 'His Dark Materials', 'The Dark is Rising', and half a dozen others that I've never read. She even likes the Robin Hobb 'Farseer' series that I've been hyping since spring. She reads a lot of other stuff too; mainly horse and Victorian age related material. And then there is the writing. This weekend I took her to a meeting of her young girl's writing club and helped edit five poems and excerpts she was submitting to a little magazine the girls in the writing club were putting together. Not that my editing could have helped that much.

So anyway, naturally this weekend we ran around to a bunch of stores looking for someplace that had the latest Harry Potter book. I think they deliberately understocked as part of the hype. We couldn't find a single store that had a unreserved copy. Or maybe they have them, but they aren't letting them out as part of some publicity stunt about how quickly all the stores ran out. Oh well, maybe I can use it as an incentive to get the kid to go to next weekend's family reunion.

Oh yeah. I saw 'Finding Nemo' the other day too. It was raining all weekend so we did the movies Sunday afternoon. It was a very pretty movie and I thought Ellen Degeneres did a great job as the blue fish, but I really just wanted to take the father fish out of the water, smack him around a bit, and then fling him a long distance back into the ocean. You'd think I'd have a certain sympathy for a father worried about his child, but this guy was WAY too whiny.