Links we liked for July 28, 2007

Here are a few links you might have missed in the last couple of weeks:

Sue Bursztynski's review of HP7 for January Magazine was one of the most balanced I came across in a week when J.K. Rowling's final Harry Potter novel broke sales records around the world and for a while even competed with the weather for the attention of British news journalists. That's how big it was. John Crace provides a digested read: "Harry knew he was up against it this time. A favourite character from an earlier book had been killed off within the first 80 pages. That Rowling woman meant business."

On a not unrelated subject, as anyone who waded through HP5 will testify, Salon had an excellent article on the unsung heroines and heroes of the literary world: 'Let us now praise editors'.

The BBC covered the problem of literacy with a rather sad piece about parents who struggle with reading to their children. Here's the shocking statistic:

More than 10% of the 1,000 parents asked had struggled to understand some words in the stories they had read to their five to 10-year-old children.

Looking at it more positively, at least they are reading. Here's the link to the BBC article.

Would Jane Austen get published by Penguin as a new author in 2007? Here's the answer.

And finally, from Language Log, intellectual cereal packets. I insist cereal packets taught me to read. I'm not sure how that might have worked if Martin Amis and Immanuel Kant had featured. Here's the link.

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