Today I  found out there were successors to the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone book.

Naturally went to Wiki and found out----some people argue that the stories have no value because they present no lessons.

The stories are FICTION. Give me an example of fiction having life changing effects.  Plus they riff on real life, and academe, so they have a value in illuminating our world. Doesn't mean you want to read them.

 

 
                       Frame your mind to mirth and merriment, 
                       Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens                             life.

                                        —The Taming of the Shrew

 

Rainer Maria Rilke —Translated by A. Poulin, Jr

Cemetery Is there an after-taste of life in these graves?  And in the flowers’ mouths do bees find the hint of a word refusing speech?  O flowers, prisoners of our instincts toward happiness, do you return to us with our dead in your veins?  Flowers, how can you escape our grip?  How can you not be our flowers?  Does the rose really use all its petals to fly away from us?  Does it want to be only a rose, nothing but a rose?  No one’s sleep beneath so many eyelids?

                                                             John Donne
                                                  (1572 – 31 March 1631)

                                                    "Death, Be Not Proud"

                            Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
                            Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
                            For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
                            Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
                            From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
                            Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
                            And soonest our best men with thee do go,
                            Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
                            Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

                            And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
                            And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
                            And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
                            One short sleep past, we wake eternally
                            And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Quoting Isaac Newton

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Because Straight UP is the shortest route

 

                                               Italo Calvino observed, 

behind the doors of the bookshop a formidable array of needy volumes is always waiting to ambush you.