Scuttlebutt Pipeline

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Now we all heard about the helplines and support centers that were created in anticipation of the great amount of stress and grief many readers would endure as a result of the conclusion of the popular Harry Potter series. Whether it be because the much beloved series had reached an end or the deaths of many characters, therapists and authorities alike feared what the outcome might be. I think we all laughed and rolled our eyes at what could only be perceived as an alarmist reaction yet according to this blog post a young girl in the Philippines took her life after downloading and reading, what she and her mother believed, to be the real-deal.

Prior to the book’s release many real and false copies of the book were floating around on the internet. The “book” the girl read was indeed a fake, and after it’s sad and gruesome end the young girl locked herself in her room and hung herself.

After stumbling upon that I’m really at a loss at what to say here. I want to be sympathetic to the girl and her family but I just can’t get beyond the absurdity of it. Yeah it was a good series, but folks, it’s fiction and not even real. Chill.

Yes folks you read that right, J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, is coming on a small book tour to the United States in the fall of 2007. She plans on making only four stops, one in Los Angeles, one in New Orleans, and two in New York. But before you get excited and make plans to head on over to the closest location for a book reading and signing with Ms. Rowling you should know that for the majority of fans luck will probably not be on our side:

J.K. Rowling on U.S. Book Tour

J.K. Rowling is going on the road.

The British-born “Harry Potter” author will give four readings in the United States this fall, her first U.S. promotional tour since 2000, when she was just becoming an international sensation and had yet to give birth to her second and third children.

“What J.K. Rowling loves most is to talk with her readers, and that is what she will be able to do on this very special U.S. tour,” Lisa Holton, president of Scholastic Trade and Book Fairs, said Thursday in a statement.

Rowling’s seventh and final Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” comes out July 21, but will surely remain deep in her fans’ hearts when she arrives in the United States in October.

On Oct. 15, she will read at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, followed three days later by an appearance at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, then two readings Oct. 19 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Rowling, 41, will take questions at each of the readings and sign books.

Don’t bother rushing for tickets. For three of the readings, Scholastic will pick schools to send children. For the fourth reading, at Carnegie Hall, 1,000 fans will be chosen from a Scholastic sweepstakes, with each winner receiving two passes.

Details on the sweepstakes will be available July 30 on http://www.scholastic.com/harrypotter.

(Article Source)

This will be Rowling’s first US tour since 2000 and it is so completely limited and exclusive that I can’t help but to feel a bit disgusted. I mean really, what are we a bunch of lepers that Rowling can’t be bothered to tour here more regularly and when she does come it’s tiny little events that are, by and by, not open for the majority of her fans? And don’t give me that baloney that tours are expensive. There is no way Rowling is strapped for cash.

Thank you Rowling, I’m really feeling the love here.

Okay, actually he’s already been there and done that so to speak and so he’ll be adding the defeat of the Wizarding World’s nastiest dark wizard ever to his long list of accolades. But that won’t be happening until July 21st, which for us die-hard fans is a long way off. Besides going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in theaters soon what else can one do to wile away the time?