The final Harry Potter novel sold over 8.3 million copies in the United States in its first day of publication. It deserves every one of the sales, and many more.

My wife and I purchased our copies, and one for our daughter, a few minutes after midnight on Saturday, at a Barnes and Noble a few minutes from our house (our son and his girlfriend bought their copies around the same time, in the city). When we left the store, kids with their copies were sitting in front, eagerly reading. I should have taken a picture.

I finished the novel around 5 this morning. My family had finished about a day earlier (hey, I had to leave a little time for watching television - but I also like to read at a leisurely pace).

There were so many things I loved about the novel. I'll go over some of them here. But consider this review a work in progress.

The interactions among the magical species were better than in the any of the previous novels: The banking, sword-making goblins, in particular, were fleshed out, and played a crucial role in this story. So did house elves, and the giants and centaurs put in good appearances, too. Harry, Hermione, and Ron even got a chance to ride another dragon.

All the beloved elements of the series got a great workout: Whether you like Patronuses or Nearly-Headless Nick or the magic of wizardry painting (enabling the people in portraits to talk to viewers, move to other frames in their vicinity, or even migrate to other portraits of themselves, wherever they may be - as a media theorist, I especially like that) - they're all here.

It was good to see radio in the picture: Harry, Hermione, and Ron spend an amount of time on the run, cut off from knowledge of what is happening to their friends and enemies. As I was reading a heart-warming, riveting section in which Ron is able to tune in a pirate radio station - Potterwatch - I realized that only someone from Britain could write this so effectively. When that country teetered on the edge of falling to the Nazis at the beginning of World War II, it was Winston Churchill's voice on the radio that kept it going. Harry Potter is in many ways a uniquely British contribution to the world - at once British and universal. Much like the Beatles, it reflects the special genius on the other side of the Atlantic for entertaining and educating the world.