NP Harry Potter Redux

Derek C. Maus dmaus at email.unc.edu
Tue Jul 18 13:47:18 CDT 2000


On Tue, 18 Jul 2000, Murthy Yenamandra wrote:

> No worse than "if you liked books by this author, why not buy books by
> Rowling" and considering that Andrews McMeel is primarily known (to me)
> for publishing rather nice comic strip collections (most notably _Calvin
> and Hobbes_), it gives you about the same level of information. 

Somehow, "publisher" is not the same level of information to me as
"author"...for 'zample, I did not by _Mason & Dixon_ because of its
publication by Holt (witness my lack of feverish anticipation at the
release ofthe new Holt novel...), but rather because of its authorship by
Pynchon. Admittedly, Andrews McMeel is known for collections of C&H and
The Far Side, but I don't remember them authoring either of those strips.
At least using the author instead of the publisher in this formula doesn't
make the commercialism *quite* so painfully obvious.

Which, of course, makes me wonder what the hell is so scholastic about
Harry Potter books anyhow, since they are published by a firm with the
world "Scholastic" in the title.

> One could a lot worse than picking up a copy of the _Essential C & H_.

True.

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Derek C. Maus               |   "Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be
dmaus at email.unc.edu         |   human beings if you didn't have some 
UNC-CH, Dept. of English    |   pretty strong feelings about nuclear
http://www.unc.edu/~dmaus/  |   combat."  --Major Kong, DR. STRANGELOVE
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