It's Only A Book...

I'm sick of people talking about Harry Potter. I want to read it, I'll enjoy it when I read it, but it really is not worth the fuss that has been made over it. It is only a book. Kids getting all excited about it is fair enough, but the media milking it until its teats are red-raw is quite something else. It's only a book.

For the record, I'm also sick of people complaining about the hype, complaining about shops being overrun, and people saying "get a life, it's only a book". Yes, this does mean I'm sick of me. Probably. One thing that did bug me was a comment I saw online of someone saying "it's only a book, it's not going to change lives". While I understand where they are coming from, this is a pile of bullshit. Books change peoples lives all the time. And I'm sure the Harry Potter books are no exception.

What annoys me most about Harry Potter right now is that our copy hasn't arrived. When we were away at the weekend an attempt was made to deliver it, but since we weren't here all we got was a little card telling us that it and all the DVDs I'd been waiting for had not been delivered because we were out, and could we go and pick them up please. So this morning I went to pick them up. I came away with 9 packages, because play.com always send everything separately. I should have come away with 10. My package from amazon was nowhere to be seen. I went back tonight to try and get it again and what they told me amounted to saying that they needed to talk to some other guy to check something before they could be the slightest bit of use and, say, maybe come up with the parcel.

This is the sort of fuckwittage that gets me every time - the generalised corporate ineptitude where no one in particular is specifically at fault, but no one can do anything to help because of the unwieldy organisational structure, and because of the infinite degrees of removal between the lofty decision makers and the people who get to look stupid because of the lofty decisions.

I guess I'm also annoyed about being annoyed about it. It is only a book, after all.