I’m not busily reading the new Harry Potter. I didn’t even pre-order. I don’t care.

I started out well enough with all this years ago, when I bought the first three together at once for an old boyfriend and then stole them back before he even had a chance to get started. I read them back-to-back over the course of a week and then waited six months for The Goblet of Fire to come out. We bought dual copies of it and read them together over a weekend. By the time The Order of the Phoenix came out, we had long broken up and I was spending the summer with Mister Husband and his mother in eastern Oklahoma. I read it in a few days of couch surfing and road trips.

I pre-ordered The Half-Blood Prince in Minnesota out of habit. And never made it more than 100 pages in. One would think I’d have finished it at some point in the past two years, but no. Not interested in the slightest. Nor am I all that interested in the movies. An old girlfriend insisted that we see the first one on opening night, in the rain, after waiting for a replacement for a reel that snapped. The rest I’ve seen on cable. I asked C if she wanted to go see this one, more because it seemed like a fun summer flick than because it was HP. She wasn’t really up for it either.

I suppose at some point I’ll pick up a used copy of The Deathly Hallows and then read it and THBP back-to-back, just to be a completist. I’ll keep watching SHARP-L argue over whether or not Harry Potter has saved the publishing universe or just made it infinitely more stupid until we finally come up with something else to talk about. (Although it is fun to see what serials everyone read as a child, since the list is quite international.) But this weekend I’m watching documentaries and Bond movies and reading more encyclopedia history, and pondering ice cream. As in, should I make it or should I buy it? And either way, what kind?