> I have no opinion yet of the increasing length of these books. I haven't read book four yet, because I was waiting for five to come out. I'm interested in seeing where Rowlings goes with the series, because part of what makes the first three books so good is how tightly plotted they are.

Book four is just as tightly plotted as books one through three. There's no "bloat" or anything like that, despite it being a lengthy novel. I don't know why, exactly, the length keeps increasing so dramatically, but I have faith in Rowlings. She spent a lot of time writing book five when it was pretty clear she could have released a rougher version of the book and made a ton of cash. Likewise, it's been my understanding that she has been involved in making sure the films remained faithful to the stories.

The woman seems to have no end of imagination, and book four makes the general story arc for the final three books pretty clear. In addition to the general story (fighting Voldemort, of course) I'm certain she has a ton of surprises in store. One of the interesting things, though, is how even things that seem like flights of fancy end up being crucial to the plot by the time it's over. A quidditch match is rarely just a quidditch match. I think this is one of Rowlings' biggest accomplishments with the series.

> But if this trend continues the seventh book could easily exceed a thousand pages. The challenge of filming these longer books is another matter to consider. The film version of book three is scheduled for release in summer 2004; after that, we'll see just how they manage to transfer the mammoth book four to the screen and still have it be reasonably coherent. To maintain the ratio of screen time to book pages, the adaptation of book four would have to be something like five or six hours in duration.

I have no clue how book four will be filmed. There's little to cut, and if they want to keep it under three hours (remember books one and two, the shortest in the series, were each about 2-1/2 hours long and yet were still missing some great scenes) some changes will have to be made for clarity. Also, given some of the detail that Rowlings has in the early books that turn out to be important later, it's hard to say whether or not something that seems trivial now will be important in a future installment.

At any rate, I'm now excited for June.

Stephen