Harry Potter and the death of reading

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/01/harry-potter-reading-jk-rowling-wizard

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Last week I was invited to a party at Watermark Books in King’s Cross station. It’s next to Platform 9 3/4, where there’s always a snaking queue of Harry Potter fans waiting to have their picture taken while holding the handles of a baggage trolley rammed halfway into the brick wall, one foot raised behind them as if running, with a gift-shop employee holding out the long end of a Hogwarts scarf to simulate motion. I always find the eerie patience of the people in the queue – many of them adults unaccompanied by children – dispiriting. Do they not have actual trains to catch?

Watermarks Books is small: 100 square metres, 7,000 titles. It opened just three years ago, but in that time it’s earned itself a devoted following. It’s always busy when I drop by, but on this particular evening it was jammed with authors drinking prosecco, signing books and celebrating Independent Bookshop Week. This show of support for bookshops, alas, came too late for Watermark Books. It’s closing down, so the event was also a farewell party.

And what’s to take its place? Apparently the Harry Potter merchandise outlet next door will expand. It’s often suggested that the Harry Potter phenomenon has done much to encourage reading, particularly among the young, but in this case the books are making way. I’m not suggesting that Harry Potter is killing reading, exactly, but it’s still a darkly ironic turn of events.

The bookshop remains open until the end of the month, if you want to remember how things were. If you want to have your picture taken with the baggage trolley, I’m told a waiting time of 45 minutes is not unusual. My advice is: bring a book.

Package deals

I am not immune to the fleeting thrill of buying stuff – particularly online – the cheap gratification of same-day delivery, or the tantalising prospect of Amazon’s newly launched one-hour delivery. But when the stuff I’ve ordered arrives, I am, like a small child, often more interested in the box than the contents.

This isn’t wholly idiotic: the items I buy are usually quotidian necessities – a replacement computer keyboard, say, or a new power supply unit – while the packaging they come in is often fascinating. I’ve got a cardboard box on my desk of such elegant and ingenious construction that it makes me want to start a collection – stones, bottle caps, anything – just so I can store my collectibles in it. Right now the only thing I collect is cardboard boxes.

Who’s hottest in the House?

It seemed a stark choice. Who would I rather have sex with: Mike Penning, Conservative MP for Hemel Hempstead; or Patrick McLoughlin, the honourable member for the Derbyshire Dales? This was my introduction to sexymp.co.uk, a website that obliges you to pick a putative partner from the Commons, thereby contributing to an overall rating for all MPs. Once you choose between two, you’re presented with another pair of MPs; it just keeps going until you get too creeped out to continue. I didn’t last long.

The only reason I even know about the site is because it’s the most blocked website on parliamentary computers, according to a freedom of information request by the Telegraph. In 2014 there were 484,683 attempts to access the site from Westminster, and 52,786 of those were by people savvy enough to get round the internet filter to see it. Their interest is only natural (when I checked in, Owen Paterson was in the lead, followed by about 50 women); but one presumes the more determined hackers were actually trying to influence outcomes. The numbers suggest that if parliament had been allowed a free vote on this, the results might have been very different.