Unless you’ve been deliberately avoiding it (and you might have, because it’s troublesome these days), you’ll know there’s a Harry Potter celebration on New Year’s Day. The stars of the movies are getting back together to celebrate the 20th Anniversary ready to reminisce about what must have been a huge part of their childhoods. I’m interested to see what is revealed. But I was also super interested to see a four part quiz special hosted by Helen Mirren pop up on Now TV.

This short book about how the play came together was, of course, right up my street. It’s a fascinating look from the producers at every corner of bringing the two-part production to life. From the early days of meeting JK Rowling and coming up with an idea, through the writing and rewriting process, through first rehearsals to tech run-throughs, make-up, costume, illusions, and finally the opening nights across the world.

There was quite a lot of excitement surrounding the recent release of a new Harry Potter game on iOS. It was your chance to attend Hogwarts, learn lessons, immerse yourself in the magical world that we’ve grown to love. It was even touted as Harry Potter meets The Sims, which, as you can imagine, immediately got my attention. Early reviews of the game weren’t so positive though, suggesting that whilst the story is interesting enough, it’s really just one of those ‘gouge-as-much-money-from-the-user-as-possible’ games which is free to play but perhaps not so free to fully indulge in.

I recently got a chance to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the two part HP play that is currently featured in London’s West End. Around the same time, the play broke records for Olivier Award nominations and actual award success, so I was going in with some pretty high expectations. Naturally, I have to #keepthesecrets but it’s fair to say that I can fully endorse the awards for production, lighting and sound.

I think Harry Potter & the Cursed Child was the first book that I pre-ordered, waited for midnight for the download to begin, and started reading that very same night. I didn’t finish it in one go, but was done by lunchtime the next day, and my feelings on it veer from one direction to the next depending what mood I’m in. I did love the story, because seeing how the next generation interact with each other is fascinating, and throw in elements of time travel, and I’m on board.

The history My experiences with Harry Potter have been something of a rollercoaster. I enjoyed the books during their first run, but wasn’t hugely passionate about them - happy to wait for the paperback version, rather than stand in line at midnight for the final book’s release. I somehow ended up owning just six of the seven physical books, so was super keen to own them as ebooks so I could a) complete my collection and b) ditch the last standing physical books I owned.

Over the weekend, the fabulous Stuart asked if I would be reading the new release from JK Rowling. The answer is quite simply that yes, I do think I’ll read it but no, I haven’t yet. I’m a big Harry Potter fan, but somehow this new book from JK Rowling doesn’t worry me in the way other “next projects” for beloved people do. It feels as though HP is such a phenomenon that she a) doesn’t have to write ever again and b) could write nonsense forever and it wouldn’t take away from that world.

I have been waiting for Harry Potter to be available on the Kindle since I first heard about the concept of an eBook and this crazy device from Amazon. I understood that JK Rowling wanted to do it properly, in her way, but the waiting wasn’t good for me. The Harry Potter books that I already own are some of the very few that I have kept hold of. I didn’t think I would want to read the physical copies again - reading a real book is such an odd experience these days!

When JK Rowling announced Pottermore, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The Harry Potter books are some of the few physical novels that I still own, and I haven’t wanted to dispose of them until I had an ebook copy to replace it with. It’s been driving me crazy, as I only own six of the seven books, and that gap on the shelf is hard to live with. However, I don’t want to buy the missing item, only to dispose of it later.

According to the introduction of the book that came free with The Times, Number Place is the rough translation of Sudoku. In case you live under a bridge and don’t know what this is, it’s a square number puzzle involving placing the numbers from 1 to 9 in the correct places. You know that I’m not one for faddy trends that come and go, and I try and stay away from things if the the rest of the country is going mad for it (Harry Potter?