I don't know how it escaped my notice that J.K. Rowling hand wrote seven copies of The Tales of Beedle The Bard, one of which was auctioned at Sothebys (complete with "brown Moroccan leather and embellished with five hand-chased hallmarked sterling silver ornaments and mounted moonstones"). Since I have a Sotheby's login (don't ask) I went in and snagged a screenshot of a zoomed in title page. In case you can't read it, it says "The Tales of Beedle the Bard translated from the original runes by J.K. Rowling" How cool is that?!?! I love self referential literature, especially fictional books that come from another work of fiction (ie, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, a companion to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, with an excellent self-referential and meta-fictional introduction.
Anyhow, in case you wanted to bid on the book at Sotheby's (assuming you have $3.8 million lying around) too late! It sold to amazon.

Labels: geekdom