Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

I'm not going to include any spoilers, and there is probably nothing for me to say that will make anybody choose to read or not read this book so I'll tell a story instead.

My partner ordered it from Amazon and was out of town when it arrives, so I went to the post office with his little slip telling him he had a package. There were several people in line and they were all picking up their copies, shipped by Amazon.

They probably just should have had a special Harry Potter mail truck driving around the neighborhood passing them out.

So the series is done. I was satisfied.

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The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon's new book is part detective story and part character drama. It's set in an alternate reality in which Israel, after World War II, didn't last long before its neighbors wiped it off the map, and the US provided a federal district near Sitka, Alaska as a Jewish homeland. (This was actually a real proposal, but one which was defeated thanks to the efforts of Alaska's delegate to Congress; in Chabon's alternate world, the delegate was killed in a random car accident in DC, and the proposal was passed.)

As "reversion" of the Jewish district back to the US (and subsequent displacement of its residents) approaches in weeks, Chabon follows a detective in Sitka as he tries to solve a murder case that winds up involving intrigue, faith-based politics, and the detective's own personal journey.

It's dense, but readable; I had a hard time at first because the narrative is a bit slow in the first quarter of the novel, as Chabon introduces us to the characters and their many demons. But in the end it all pays off, though not in the way I would have expected.

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