Who'll continue Harry's magic? Well, I've finished the final Harry Potter! Probably the fastest I've ever read a book - partly out of sheer obsession, partly to escape the paranoia of wondering if every web page I looked at would spoil the ending.

I won't give anything away other than saying that it's amazing. But what's just as amazing as the book itself is the appetite and enthusiasm it - and all the others - have generated.

This, sadly, is an age when books don't normally get crowds of people so excited that they camp outside shops waiting for them to open at midnight. Yet the Harry Potter books have moved people to do this. We're not talking about spill-the-beans autobiographies, or the latest offering from a celebrity chef - but a good, old-fashioned, lovingly-crafted story.

It's great to see such euphoria caused not by a games console or mp3 player, but a bundle of printed pages. Something that encourages kids and adults alike to sit down and read - at a time when we're always being told that so many people aren't bothering to do that any more.

So, now Harry's story has come to an end, which writers have enough literary magic to recapture the world's imagination on such a grand scale - and make sure that books, like new technology, continue to spark a craze?

Labels: Harry Potter; Books

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