Despite all the hub-bub surrounding the premier of “The Simpson’s Movie” in Springfield, there was no overshadowing the release over the weekend of the 7th and final book in the Harry Potter series.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows set a record – selling 8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release. And those are just U.S. sales figures.
Now don’t worry about a spoiler alert if you’re still making your way through the 759-page volume. The man we’re speaking with this morning hasn’t read the book yet either, although he’s as excited as any Harry Potter fan to do so.
Matthew Dickerson is a professor of computer science at Middlebury College, and also an author also moved by the Harry Potter books that he wrote a book of his own about the young wizard called From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy. The “Homer” by the way has nothing to do with Simpson.
He spoke with VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb and says he wrote his book to help people understand the modern genre of fantasy.