links for 2009-10-09

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Pandagon’s Harry Potter Thread

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The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows discussion over on Pandagon – The Life and Loves of Severus Snape – is a thing to be hold, weighing in a something like 892 comments so far (including mine, added below the fold here).
Including some excellent dissection of the book, the series, the author, and an interesting discussion of its place in Great Literature of The Ages that is the only subject I responded to after enduring several pompous lectures on the subject from a twenty year old calling himself “Opoponax.” Snore. You’re not the first guy to read Joyce in the history of the world, kiddo.

Continue ReadingPandagon’s Harry Potter Thread

Rejected Openings for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

From theonering.net

One morning, when Harry Potter woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single wizard in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wand.

The sky above Privet Drive was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Stately, plump Neville Longbottom came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Wingardium leviosa!

To Severus Snape she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Lily Potter. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind … and yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Lily Potter, of dubious and questionable memory.

There once was a boy named Dudley Dursley, and he almost deserved it.

Dumbledore was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Harry Potter signed it: and Potter’s name was good upon Diagon Alley, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Dumbledore was as dead as a door-nail.

Once upon a time there were four little wizards, and their names were Neville, Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of “Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone;” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Ms. J. K. Rowling, and she told the truth, mainly. There was things which she stretched, but mainly she told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Petunia, or Professor Dumbledore, or maybe Hermione. Aunt Petunia – my Aunt Petunia, she is – and Hermione, and Professor Dumbledore is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

When Mr. Harry Potter of Privet Drive announced that he would shortly be celebrating his seventeenth birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk in Hogwarts.

In a cupboard under the stairs there lived a wizard. Not a nasty, dirty, dark cupboard, filled with threadbare sheets and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, cramped cupboard with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a wizard’s cupboard, and that means comfort.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wizardry, it was the age of Muggles, it was the epoch of Dumbledore, it was the epoch of Voldemort, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Hogwarts, we were all going direct to Azkaban –in short, the period was so far like the present period, that the Daily Prophet insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Hermione Grainger was not beautiful but young wizards seldom realized it when caught by her brilliance as Ron Weasley was.

Call me Hagrid.

Last night I dreamt I went to Hogwarts again.

Continue ReadingRejected Openings for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I finished reading the new Harry Potter book last night. Throughout the book I had a notion in my head of the answers to two of the mysteries; who the half-blood prince is, and who dies in the book (don’t yell at me about spoilers; the death is commonly known!). I was wrong on both counts, and regarding the half-blood prince, I shouldn’t have been at all. I should have guessed that one right away (and so should Harry and Hermione, frankly.)

I was so certain about both answers, though, that it colored my impression of the book, and I kept telling Stephanie all the way through that “this is my favorite of all of them!” Well when I found out the answers I was surprised, and it did change the way I feel. I was expecting a quite different ending.

I also thought there was way too much unresolved at the end of it; more so than in any of the others, and I hate that; it’s one of my pet peeves of sci-fi fantasy series novels, that they don’t wrap everything up from one book to the next so you’re left hanging for the release of the next book. If you’re going to do that, just write one big book, instead of chunking it up into pieces. My mind is littered with the half-way points of fantasy series that I gave up on in disgust because they insisted on dragging everything out for the cash from one more mass-market paperback. (Robert Jordan, I’m talking to you!)

In the case of Harry Potter, I’ve never felt like that with any of the rest of the books, and this series doesn’t follow any other sci-fi fantasy genre clichés, either, which makes them enjoyable to read. I know that the next book is the final one, and there’s no way I would miss it.

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Read the book before the movie

Favorite thing that happened yesterday: I was watching Entertainment Tonight, where they were covering the premiere of Harry Potter in England, and they interviewed all the celebrities going to see the movie, including Cher. And they asked them “Are you excited about the premiere of the movie?” And every one of the had to admit they hadn’t read the books. That’s pretty funny.

Continue ReadingRead the book before the movie