So, if I like Richard Price, and Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude" and I want a similar vibe but maybe want to stretch a little

Several days later, may I suggest Edward Conlon's Blue Blood ? Non-fiction, recently in paperback, a work about being a cop in the Bronx, and an interesting mix of city-born tunnel-vision with college literaryness. Funny stories, and biography of glad-handing (or tight-fisted) Irish grandparents, and thoughts about Serpico and The French Connection.

It came out in hardcover probably a year and a half ago (I saw him interviewed on Letterman), but I've only gotten around to reading him now.

That does sound very interesting, Nutty.

Looks like there's a remote chance HP7 will be out in 2007 (although, knowing JKR, it'll probably be more likely 2008).

J.K. Rowling Prepares Final Potter Book

By Associated Press, December 27, 2005

NEW YORK -- J.K. Rowling expects to have a busy 2006, "the year when I write the final book in the Harry Potter series."

"I contemplate the task with mingled feelings of excitement and dread, because I can't wait to get started, to tell the final part of the story and, at last, to answer all the questions (Will I ever answer all of the questions? Let's aim for most of the questions); and yet it will all be over at last and I can't quite imagine life without Harry," the British author wrote in a recent posting on her Web site.

The sixth installment of Rowling's fantasy series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," came out last summer. It has sold more than 10 million copies in the United States alone.

Total worldwide sales of the Harry Potter books top 300 million.

On her Web site, Rowling said she had been "fine-tuning the fine-tuned plan of seven during the past few weeks." She noted that "reading through the plan is like contemplating the map of an unknown country in which I will soon find myself."

Rowling expects to start on the final book, not yet titled, next month.

and yet it will all be over at last and I can't quite imagine life without Harry

Dear Ms Rowling,

Anne Rice used to say the same thing about Lestat. Please, no matter how much you miss the boy, let the series end.

Thanks,

Burnt once, twice shy

I read Ibid: A Life, by Mark Dunn, over the holidays. It was interesting, structurally, but the same things that made it interesting kept me from falling into it. I'm glad I read it.

Please, no matter how much you miss the boy, let the series end.

ITA. Although, I wouldn't mind if she'd follow up on a half-baked thought she had during one of her interviews that, after Book 7, she might do an Encyclopedia of Harry Potter and flesh out all the backstory that she was unable to shoehorn into the books.

Like what happened to Harry's grand-parents, etc. Heck, she could do oodles of stuff with the Founders.

I'm almost tempted to suggest that she should write a prequel series-- either with Hogwary's Founders, or MWP&P-- but then I wonder if we mightn't end up with midiclorians something dire, and I come back round to the saying she should let it end.

That's what I like about the encyclopedia approach--she'll be able to present the details that she's worked on for over a decade now without having to pull it together with a connecting plot.

an Encyclopedia of Harry Potter and flesh out all the backstory that she was unable to shoehorn into the books.

That would be very neat. Like LotR's appendices.