Oh, and Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix arrived this morning. I'm 10 pages into it and already I've had a 'Harry Potter Is Evil And Leads Kids To Wicca' arguement at work about it :)

Amazingly the other 99% of the fantasy novels I read at work never elicit this response even though they're by far a lot 'worse' with regards to the various wacky supernatural goings-on contained within their pages.

All I have to say is that I, unlike maybe all the other impressionable people running around reading Harry Potter, can distinguish FANTASY and FICTION from REALITY...

Wow! What a concept.

Sometimes I wonder how people go through life with such a lack of imagination.

I won't even get into the fact that a lot of my sci-fi/fantasy novels have had some very interesting philosophical and religious questions and/or overtones that gets me mulling over tidbits of my own faith that your average sunday sermon might not touch on. And a lot of times some of the books might be critical of Christianity or tenets thereof. The arguements they give in some of these books get me thinking of how I would best debate someone with that kind of viewpoint. They at least show me the methodology behind why people might think that about either Christianity or religion/faith in general...

But man, it's like people think that I'm going to go start sacrificing goats to the Dark Lord Satan because of the devil-witch J.K. Rowling.

Sigh.