Well, I'm spending the day like millions across the world. Waiting for Harry. We ordered Harry Potter from Amazon and expected to get the book by now. I thought that they were going to ship to arrive today. Of course they're using the US Post Office which has a shoddy, useless tracking system. We've had great success with getting books 2 - 5 delivered to the door. Not for me the midnight parties at the book store. Has anyone else gotten their books from Amazon yet?

If you're interested, Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times has done some speed reading and has up a review already. She seems quite pleased with the book. On the other hand, Darren Waters at the BBC sort of live-blogged his reading of the book and wasn't all that impressed. It really isn't a substantive live-blogging since he refuses to give any real details about what the book is about. He thought it was slow for a good deal of the book. Personally, I don't mind if the Rowling spent some time and space revisiting the earlier books. I tend to get them confused and have forgotten plenty of details. Maybe, I'll spend some of my waiting time reading the Spark Notes.

Jonathan Last had a very interesting take on the last Harry Potter book. He noticed the general theme of appeasement and saw allegorical overtones to Britain in the 1930s.

Through sleight-of-hand, Ms. Rowling took a children's book and transformed it into a parable about 1930s England. We've heard a lot recently about London and the Blitz. Ms. Rowling's unfolding saga may illuminate that dark historical moment, not only the ordeals that led up to it but also--who knows?--the triumphs that followed.

The parallels between this volume and Britain's prewar dithering are so great that the book is perhaps best read as a light companion to "Alone," the second volume of William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill.

Dumbledore is Churchill; Voldemort is Hitler; and Minister Fudge is Neville Chamberlain. In this period of time when there are people who don't want to take the fight to the terrorists or deny that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with terrorism or are afraid that we're going to make North Korea or Iran angry at us if we tell the truth about their governments, it was very intriguing to read Book 5 in the summer of 2003. The parallels seemed so clear at the time. You had the weak bureaucrats who wanted to deny that Voldemort was evil and conspiring to rule the world. You had those who feared Voldemort but feared to even utter his name. And you had the ridicule of everyone who said that they should fight Voldemort. Supporters of the war in Iraq have often pointed to the dangers of appeasement and sought to draw parallels to the 1930s and 40s. So, Jonathan Last's thesis makes a lot of sense to me.

Of course one-to-one correspondences would detract from the richness of the book. So, there is no way I buy any comparison between Harry Potter and FDR. Few authors wants to be bound in a straitjacket of historical allegories.

UPDATE: I take it back. It arrived today in my regular mail delivery. Now I just have to wait for my daughter to read it.