Just posted this to a BBC "have your say". It's unlikely to get shown there...

Their question was:

Are you caught up in Harry Potter mania? How will you get hold of your copy this weekend? Is the book worth the wait and the build-up? What do you think of the Potter phenomenon?

I'm not caught up in "Harry Potter mania" or any other mania (I hope).

From the extracts I have read, the books are reasonable but of lesser quality than say Tolkien's works and not especially original.

The power of the media to hype things up becomes more and more frightening.