Have you seen the covers of the UK versions of Rowling's famous books? They're really cool. I happen to know that the Italian covers are terrible, even though it would be cool to read Harry Potter in Italian. I almost bought the first Harry Potter book while I was in Italy, but it was expensive and ugly, so I didn't. I have the first one in French in paperback already. I intend to buy the UK books, although I haven't decided whether I want the hardbacks or the paperbacks. The hardbacks would be cooler, but they would also cost more. I'll keep an eye on Ebay, but maybe I'll just wait until the next one or two come out and buy them all. Of course, there are so many other versions, too. I was in an academic bookstore and saw not only the Italian version, but the German one, two varieties of Spanish, and some others. Actually, Rowling has been published in at least 46 languages, for sale on a website I found (see below). Languages including Latin, of all things! Here are the languages they list: Afrikaans - Albanian - Arabic - Basque - Bulgarian - Catalan - Chinese - Croatian - Czech - Danish - Dutch - English - Estonian - Faroese - Finnish - French - Galician - German - German (Regional): Low Saxon - Greek - Hebrew - Hungarian - Icelandic - Indonesian - Italian - Japanese - Korean - Latin - Latvian - Lithuanian - Norwegian - Persian - Polish - Portuguese - Russian - Serbian - Slovak - Slovenian - Spanish - Swedish - Thai - Turkish - Ukrainian - Urdu - Vietnamese - Welsh My plan is: get all the UK hardback. Then, I will try to get copies (preferably hardbacks) of book 3 in other languages. A couple of reasons why I want book 3 only: it's my favorite, and getting all the books in multiple languages doesn't strike me as being the best way to spend my book money. Can I read all these languages? Heck no, although I've studied French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese (I have retained none of the Japanese). It would just be cool to have books in cool languages. I'm happy for Rowling that she is able to sell her books around the world, and happy for non-English speakers that they have access to her stories. And I just like learning foreign languages. I'm thinking of taking a shot at Portuguese, since it's so much like French, Spanish, and Italian. Oh, and about the movies: they did a great job with the first one. A great book, a great story. Full of magic and wonder. The second movie was, at best, as good as the second book, which is the worst of the five. And I'm really just not a fan of spiders. Creepy. The third movie? Welllll, I'm not going to see it, I've decided. For a couple of reasons. Their original Dumbledore had to be replaced, for one thing. But mostly it's two other reasons: I heard that the director has changed the style of the movie from the others. In order to portray the characters as more normal teenagers, they dispensed with the wizard robes, etc. The most important reason, though, is that I don't want the movie to replace the book-pictures in my head. That's what happened with the first book: now when I read it, I see the movie. I can't imagine the story for myself anymore. They did a good job, and it's a good movie, but it changed the way I experience the book. I don't want that to happen with the third book, since it's my favorite. Can't you tell. Books by J.K. Rowling(O=own, R=read, E=enjoyed)
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