In total there were fifty writers who contributed to the auction some highlights included a Quentin Blake illustrated first edition of Matilda which went for £30,000, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day sold for £18,000 and Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel hit £16,000.

Rowling’s contribution was the jewel of the show.  Her annotations talked about the film adaptations as well as little tidbits like how Quidditch came to be and she also included 22 original illustrations; including Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback dragon.

The novel tells the story of Pagford, a quintessential English small town with a cobbled market square and historic abbey. But life is anything but peaceful behind the hanging baskets and manicured lawns. An empty seat appears on the town council when Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly and the subsequent election sparks conflict and turmoil amongst the townspeople. Sounds like it could make for riveting English television.

No word yet on number or length of the episodes, but the series is expected to air on BBC One in 2014.

Original drawing of Hogwarts by artist David Edward Byrd

According to The Guardian, Harry Potter creator JK Rowling is either a tremendously inconsiderate nuisance, or the coolest, most fun mother ever, depending on who you ask.

The author has been given the go-ahead to build two elaborate, Hogwarts-inspired, two-storey treehouses in the garden of her suburban Edinburgh home. As her home is situated in a conservation area and the structures will be large enough to be highly visible, upset neighbors protested to city council members and urged them to reject Rowling’s request. But too few objections were received, so the writer was victorious and plans will go ahead.

The buildings will be for Rowling’s two children, David and Kenzie. They will be built on tall stilts, connected by walkways and rope bridges, and have turrets, an owl perch, baskets and pulleys, as well as a fireman’s pole, a trapdoor, slides, staircases and more. No word on whether Rowling furnish the owl-perch with an actual owl, but less surprising things have happened.

As much as I can sympathize with the neighbors (who have already been frustrated by previous renovations and disturbances ongoing at the mansion), my main reaction is one of awe – that’s a pretty great perk to growing up with a wealthy and creative mum.

Tickets go on sale September 10th – I expect to hear some Emergency Room stories of badly-sprained dialing fingers.

I guess she’s repaying a favor – after all, J.K. Rowling did name the boy wizard after the Queen’s grandson, Harry*.

Apparently, the Queen, now 86 and celebrating her Diamond Jubilee, is very interested in dogs, and personally names all the puppies born at the breeding kennels belonging to her country estate. I knew being the Queen came with perks, but if unlimited puppy-naming is among them, perhaps I should have given more serious thought into being born into the Monarchy.

*as far as I know, this is in no way true.

It must be lovely to be J.K. Rowling – I think it’s beyond argument to say that her hopes and dreams were wildly exceeded with the overwhelming success of the Harry Potter stories, so now, she really just has the freedom to try whatever she likes. She can experiment with genres, writing styles, and not writing at all. She can argue with editors and publishers, give scads of money to charity, float about in the Mediterranean or pen strange experimental poetry, and if it all flops, she’s still set for life.

Still, we were water-cooler-chatting about it around the office today, and I suspect the book will be a good one. I have no doubt it will be successful, with rabid Potter-fans needing their fix of anything that even offers a faint whiff of the boy wizard, but if Rowling brings half of the creativity, detail and imagination to this new book that she brought to her former efforts, it will be an excellent read.

But what’s new and nice is that apparently, while Britain’s high taxes played a part in Rowling’s demotion to millionaire, another largely contributing factor was her own generosity, to the tune of $160 million in charitable donations.

Two of her most-favored charities include One Parent Family, a non-profit organization dedicated to help, resources and opportunities to single-parents families, and Lumos, a charity of her own creation (along with Baronness Emma Nicholson) devoted to helping institutionalized Eastern European children regain safety, stability and some semblance of childhood.

Rowling is no newcomer to chairty, either. Her donations have been applauded and acknowledged throughout the non-profit and literary worlds alike. In a past interview on philanthropyuk.org, Rowling was quoted as saying “You have a moral responsibility when you’ve been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently”.

Harry, Ron and Hermione would approve.

One of the newcomers to this annual list is American businesswomen Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx slimming knickers. I never tried them. Apparently they work but leave a line on your tummy.

We should all own invisibility cloaks (I would use it to sneak into major sporting events without paying and at work to allow me to sleep at my desk) and it seems scientists at the University of Texas are one step closer to actually inventing such a device.

The BBC reports “Researchers have ‘cloaked’ a three-dimensional object, making it invisible from all angles, for the first time.

They apparently made an 18cm-long cylinder invisible to incoming microwave light. The story is too scientific to actually understand but the writer points out that a Harry Potter-style cloak is a long way off.