1930

The Wall Street Journal includes a book index in its Friday edition, providing numerical ratings for books sold, where 100 is the average sales of the #1 book in the previous year. While I don't get the newspaper, I did visit a bookstore to check on the index score of a certain book released last Saturday.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows had an index score of 1930.

And this index score is based on the sales of several major retailers (including Waldenbooks, Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon). If it actually related total book sales, this figure would have been even higher, as sales at other outlets, including those that sell few books or almost no books, aren't included. Not many books are sold at the local grocery store!

And 1930 is an appropriate number. Come next year, looking at the stock price of Scholastic and Bloombury, you might think the year is 1930!

Just finished Book 7

It was remarkably hard to pick up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at midnight Friday, then set the book aside and attend to other plans for the weekend. And it was also hard to read Sunday night, then put aside the book and actually get some sleep, then not touch it until after coming home from work. But now I'm done. I found the conclusion satisfying, although I would love to see how the world develops.

On a spoiler-free topic of discussion, Megan McArdle is unhappy with the lack of a consistent economic system for the Harry Potter series' magical world. I suspect J. K. Rowling actually has put more thought into this topic than has shown in the books; after all, the books are long enough without a detailed treatise on the fundamentals of magical exchange.

The one question I have is, how do all these Muggle-born wizards, lacking any of the wizardly world's coinage, buy all of their school supplies?