Grief counseling will be made available for those who are shocked by the events that occur in the final Harry Potter book. I have never read any of the books in the series, but I do have a lot of people on the inside who have secured copies of the final book before its official release. I'll summarize some the events below, but remember that I have not read the books so don't scream at me if I mess up a detail or two, or spell somebody's name wrong.


SPOILERS*********************SPOILERS********************
The real spoiler is that this book is a total rip-off. The whole thing about multiple main character deaths was trumped up to increase publicity, as if Harry Potter needed more of that. NONE of the main kids we watched grow up will die. Harry Potter marries Ginny, Ron marries Hermoine (I bet that's not the correct spelling). A few villains die, several Hogwarts faculty members bite the dust, no big deal. The publisher who might see this post will probably try to shut me down. I don't really care, the only reason they don't want these spoilers out is because they know the final book is a really lame ending and a cop-out from a writer who can't part with her precious characters.
Highmark Caring Place Grief Counseling Expert Available to Speak to Media Regarding Harry Potter

Kurt Vonnegut, one of the leading writers of the counterculture movement, has passed away at the age of 84. He was best known for "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle", but also had best-sellers with "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater", "Breakfast of Champions", and many others .

Dark comedy was constantly present in Vonnegut's stories. He was a pessimistic observer of the human race. In an interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last year, he commented that the earth's immune system was trying to destroy the human race - and it should.
Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84 - New York Times

A little-known secret held by the literary world is the fact that Amazon.com's sales rank can be easily manipulated by authors, editors, publishers, or anyone else who has an interest in seeing a book succeed.

While most best selling lists rely on data from stores around the country, Amazon.com's list is just for sales on their website. The difference between being lost in mediocrity and being in the top 1% of sales could be just a few book sales in a day. If any sort of promotion can be orchestrated to sell a few hundred books in a day, that book could land in the top 25 sales, which would garner it much more attention from people who regularly use that list to select new books to read.

If promoting a book seems like too much trouble, authors or publishers have been known to just buy a few hundred copies of their own book. They might have to eat a loss of several thousand dollars, but for some the value of the being in the top books by sales is more than worth it.
The Numbers Guy - WSJ.com

I'm not sure if Ayn Rand qualifies as literature or not, but I do enjoy listening to some of her philosophies. I found this great interview of her by Mike Wallace. Can you believe that Mike Wallace was doing this kind of thing back in 1959?

I just love articles like the one I've linked to. The author rants about the poor quality of writing online, especially regarding punctuation, but then uses punctuation is such an annoying way that one begins to wonder whether those little marks are really helping the state of writing.

It's one thing to complain about people writing really long sentences without any punctuation whatsoever and just going on and on and on without any comma or any other chance to pause... ok, I'll stop. The writer of this article seems to go out of his or her way to prove that they know how to properly use a semicolon and a dash. I'm so impressed by sentences like "The worst part of it all is that nobody seems to notice this gradual decline; or care." Why is it necessary to write that sentence in a way that requires a semicolon, when it would be much clearer if the words were just rearranged to make it read straight through without any punctuation?

Frankly, I can see why people would rather write in "netspeak" than in the unclear, awkward style of this writer. Read the whole article, and tell me it doesn't create that sensation of being a passenger in car that is continually starting and then stopping abruptly.
Punctuation is Dying | nostrich.net

Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926 without a trace. She eventually turned up at a spa hotel, where she had been staying under an assumed name. So what happened to her in those 11 days? A biographer claims to finally have the answer.

Andrew Norman has done a lot of research (cough), and his plausible explanation: she was in an out-of-body trance with amnesia-like memory loss. The condition was caused by stress.

I don't want to question Mr. Norman's research... oh wait, actually I do... anyway, I've always been a believer in the simplest explanation being the most likely. Agatha Christie's husband had plans to spend a weekend with his mistress before she vanished. Could the stunt have been a ploy to gain attention from her husband and keep him from his mistress? No, of course not. She was having an out-of-body experience. She may have even been abducted by aliens during those 11 days. I'm sending Andrew Norman to look into it.
The Observer | UK News | Christie's most famous mystery solved at last