BOOK REVIEW: "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" by JK Rowling

UK Release: 4 December 2008

I may be wrong, but isn't JK Rowling richer than God?

Seriously, if she wanted, couldn't she walk into any town hall pretty much anywhere in the world, open her purse and just outright buy the town with her small change? And then bulldoze the place and build a nice casino with the even smaller change lodged in the folds of the purse?

So why then did she decide that she would write yet another book? (She apparently wrote a bunch of other books about some boy wizard and no, it wasn't Johnny Mysto. I know, I was surprised too.)

OK OK, I know, she created the original handcrafted copies of Tales for friends and charity, but come on: surely she could have handed over the cash directly to the charity instead of wasting our time? Amazon bought one of them for £1,950,000 for Christ's sake. (AND they now insist on waffling on about it being an "artefact".)

So anyway, having decided to do this thing where she creates yet another something that makes loads of money with the good intention of said money being given to charity, why then publish a paperback of the stupid thing for general release, with only a more expensive "special edition" hardback giving some of the proceeds to charity? Everyone's going to buy the cheap as chips paperback and all that money's going straight into JK's already scary sized bank account.

UPDATE: All net proceeds from sales of this unnecessary book are going to charity. So it is An Good Thing. But still: JK darling, you're richer than God - just give your own money away. Then if you must, print up a few zillion copies of Tales and hand it out for free. There's no way you're going to run out of money. Unless all those lawsuits are cutting into your mad money?

Anyway, Tales of Beedle and the Bard is a thing from one of those other books she wrote, the last one I think and it was referred to in there so all these wannabe wizards will piss their pants with glee because oooh now they have a copy of the book that was in the book and how awesome is that and now I have to put on my wizard hat and take out my wand and wave it around and around and around and JK can go on pretending she's as Important and Literary as JRR Tolkein and that this is her Adventures of Tom Bombadil when she's at best an adequate storyteller with a seriously overrated talent.

Ok, that was harsh. I quite like the Weasleys. Don't tell anyone.

Shatner rating: Denny Crane
Should I bother? Buy it if you want - you're going to anyway, right? But give some money to charity too. That part's a good idea.