Why?

I'm reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows right now, so I can't talk long.

Seriously, why? Why are those books so absorbing? When I was 18, I quit eating desserts for an entire year and a half. No sugary anything at all--my birthday cake was a sugar-free banana bread. Anyway, towards the end of the year and a half (actually, AT the end of the year and a half, as you shall see), I was waitressing at an Italian restaurant, and someone ordered a brownie sundae, but when I brought it out to them, they were rushing out saying they had to go and had left the money on the table. They were last table of the night, and what was I going to do with this ice cream? So I sat down and ate it, and there aren't even any English words for how good it was. Maybe the Eskimos have a word for brownie-sundae-after-not-having-eaten-sugar-in-a-year-and-a-half good, but us gringos don't have one.

And that's what Harry Potter is like. It's not good for you--it's just good in a way that makes your heart feel like it's wearing a little fleece jacket.

Also: J.K Rowling always has this brazenly smug look on her face (Exhibit A, above). I wonder if it's just her photo face, or she's made that face so much in her life that it stuck that way. Or maybe she makes it because the alternative is that she looks like a kind of harried normal British lady (See Exhibit B).

Exhibit B