Harry Potter and the Shuffle Off to Buffalo (no spoilers)

Amazon and the United States Postal Service came through for me and delivered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on release day. I'd finished the book by the following afternoon — after spending a week or so trying to avoid anything that even slightly resembled a spoiler.

The verdict: Good show, J. K. Rowling! I might have minor quibbles about a few things, but on the whole the book delivered the kind of payoff I was looking for from the series. I'm glad I stayed along for the ride on this series unlike others I could name. The Wheel of Time and Chung Kuo leap to mind.

I was also amused to learn that two of my friends also sat down and immediately read the books on the first day (this from a trio of thirty through fifty-somethings). I very much expected this from one friend, but wouldn't have guessed that the other had been bitten by Pottermania in a million years. For the curious, the reviews from the others were also thumbs up — even if they had many of the same quibles that I did.