The new year brings the promise of a new best seller, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due to arrive on bookshelves soon. Along with Muggles and magic, this installment features a morbid resolution: Harry's creator, J. K. Rowling, kills off another character.
The British betting site BlueSquare.com is offering odds (natch!) on who will die. The best bet? Rubeus Hagrid. As John Sellers put it in this month's Atlantic, "Has Rowling simply run out of alliterative exclamations for this loyal brute, who spews nonsense like "Gallopin' Gorgons!" and "Gulpin' gargoyles!"?
That's fine with us, so long as nothing bad happens to the Goblins. Pace J.K and her unconvincing denials, those big-eared, greasy-haired, unemancipated, clannish bankers are my peeps.
Surah Malka's two cents
[Read more in The Atlantic Monthly.]