Harry Potter Day
The day the world [well, some of the world] has anticipated for a decade is finally here: the final Harry Potter book is available to buy and people will figure out what they have been told in the last six books.
I won’t buy the book immediately, because I never have, and don’t worry about “spoilers” because Ms Rowling has set things on a pretty straight forward path if you have been paying attention. The clues were all there. At this point the title, The Deathly Hallows, should simply confirm what you suspected.
But now I can update my own site with the information gleaned from The Half-Blood Prince because I have always waited until the release of the next book before including information from the last one. The books are released on a Friday night / Saturday morning in the summer so that the people who must read them immediately can and still be ready for the work week.
For those who complain it isn’t great literature – some people read to enjoy themselves, it’s not against the law. As Николай Васильевич Гоголь writes in his short story, Нос :
А все, однако же, как поразмыслишь, во всем этом, право, есть что-то. Кто что ни говори, а подобные происшествия бывают на свете, – редко, но бывают.
10 comments
babelfish is great fun, but it wasn’t very helpful here, though possibly i agree, since i would read harry potter even if it were illegal.
usually i put my name on the waiting list at the library for popular books, and if they come out in paperback before the library calls me, then i buy the book instead. i’ve bought every single harry potter book so far.
I would be very surprised indeed if Babelfish could deal with Gogol’s satire, especial since the story, The Nose, is a fantasy about a nose that is accidentally cut off by a barber and then goes out and becomes a member of the imperial court.
Apparently if the Potter series were more obtuse, the subject matter wouldn’t be a bar to the canon. Imagine James Joyce writing the series – that would really sell 😈
Well, if the series was written James Joyce, it would be just one long sentence.
I think it would be fun to see what other authors would do with it. Imagine it written by Faulkner, Hemingway or Ann Rice. And if it was Tolstoy, it would be 3,000 pages – per volume.
If it were Tolstoy we would complete genealogies of every character of every species, and that would just be the first book and would destroy many of the mysteries. Actually, there’s a bit of Dickens in the revelations about family and connections in the series.
Faulkner would be interesting.
[…] was over at Why Now? where Bryan has some thoughts on the last Harry Potter […]
Well, I’ve put up a challenge at BBWW for readers to make suggestions.
Thanks for the inspiration, Bryan.
Keith Olbermann’s version of the ending was clever but I’m not sure I agree with his idea that the scar on Harry is a horcrux and the ending battle lets Harry survive but lose his wizardry powers.
After all the Potter rumpus dies down and we’ve all read it, post what you thought and how much it matched Rowlings, Bryan.
If you click on the graphic, Ellroon, you’ll note that I have been documenting the series. It’s through book five, and I will be adding book 6 shortly, as I wait until the following book has been released to avoid spoilers.
Wow! I missed that completely! How fun…:)
Once an analyst, always an analyst.