This edition is carelessly edited -- section headings are treated as run-ons from the previous section. EXAMPLE OF CHEESY SECTION HEADING"
Kessinger Publishing (2004), Paperback, 96 pages
AADL Receives Space Needs and Facility Study for Downtown Library | Ann Arbor District Library
As an aside, I have my family in other parts of the US in awe over the fact that I walked into a branch of our public library at 9:00 and walked out with HP 7 at 9:05 a.m. this last Saturday, thanks to your organizational abilities, service, and spectacular website!
They also had zoom lend copies still available when I visited West Branch at 5 pm — which is also impressive! Great job AADL.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Forty-eight hours before the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Madam Trelawney sat down with me for a Divination session based on the leaked chapter titles.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Clearly Voldemort, climbing a flight of stairs, perhaps.
Unfortunately, I know better, thanks to my big-mouthed daughter Kelsey, who shared with me a spoiler publicized by The Guardian. Apparently (or apparatently?) the book begins with two wizards Apparting in a moonlit lane and one asking, “Any news?” The other replies, “The best.” Clearly, they are referring to The Guardian.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: This chapter must refer to Dumbledore. But wait a minute: didn’t they already have the funeral at The White Tomb?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: And not a moment too soon, if you are as sick of the Dursleys as I am. Unfortunately (sound familiar?) Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times spoiled this chapter for me, too, with an aside that even Dudley Dursley has hidden depths. Very hidden.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: What, one’s not enough? We only know about four, as far as I can tell: James, Lily, Petunia, and Harry. It is odd, isn’t it, that we’ve never met Harry’s paternal grandparents (that would be two more Potters) or any of his other relatives.
The book seems to be taking a sudden swerve into movie territory with The Seven Potters being a logical follow-up to The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: We haven’t really met any warriors in this series, have we? Many authors would have been inspired by the “war against the Dark Lord” storyline to create vast paramilitary edifices of officers, sergeants, and regiments, but J. K. Rowling’s mind doesn’t seem to work that way. She created schools (Hogwarts, Durmstrang …), bureaucracies (the Ministry of Magic), and vast efflorescences of individual creativity, but no armies. Even the Aurors and the Death Eaters are really just groups of individual wizards, not armies. So a true warrior in the archetypal sense will come as something new in the series.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Ghoul school! Pajama party! This sounds pretty silly.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Ok, I definitely want the phoenix, the corner office, and all the super-cool magical objects that Dumbledore has acquired in the course of a full lifetime as the greatest Good magician in the world, or at least in the UK.
Seriously, though, exactly what is it in Dumbledore’s power to bestow? Presumably his will only extends to his own personal possessions, not Hogwarts, which has a Board of Governors.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Bill and Fleur, what a lovely couple! They’ll be lucky to get through the wedding without a car bomb going off. Oh, wait, this isn’t Iraq.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Sorry, buddy, there’s no place to hide from THE DARK LORD.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Oh, man, what’s this nasty little critter doing in the book? I thought we had seen the last of him in OOTP. Seriously, though, how does Harry get Kreacher to spill?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! Some moola, baksheesh, grub—and, as we all remember, Harry is loaded. Why not use some of his money to get the crucial 411?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Sounds like Voldemort’s campaign slogan.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Another faux bureaucracy from the fertile mind of J.K. Rowling. Scotland must be full of these absurdist leftist vestiges which the United States thankfully extirpated in the 1990s, when my home state of Michigan replaced “Social Services” with the aptly named “Family Independence Agency.” That’s as in “independence from government assistance…”
This doesn’t sound good for Hermione.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Ok, now it’s time for {Argus whatsisname} to justify all the investment Rowling has made in his character.
Although the term “thief” could just as easily be applied to Harry, who, after all these years at Hogwarts, is quite the practiced second-story man.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: We haven’t met many goblins in the series, but what we have seen, makes it seem quite plausible that a Goblin’s revenge will be not just nasty but quite effectively vindictive. If it is Harry who was the thief, the revenge will be a great loss to him. Hermione or Ron, perhaps?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: The home base of Pottermania. The place where it all began. Named after Godric Gryffindor, the founder of a House devoted to courage. Does the Hollow itself have any special powers or properties related to courage? It would be a heck of a place to make a last stand. Did the Potters know that?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Ok, who’s Bathilda? Giantess? House-elf?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: What? Lies? Nooooo!!!! Actually, it has been quite obvious throughout the series that J. K. Rowling’s preoccupation is with growing up, maturing, and seeing the world through a more complex (more clouded?) vision. That being the case, it seems inevitable that we will have to adjust our rosy-coloured view of Albus Dumbledore to allow for the possibility that he made mistakes, even selfish ones, and told untruths, not just white lies, but the occasional great big black ugly self-interested stinker.
What could Dumbledore have lied about? Well, the thing that jumps to my mind is that his story about why he accepted Snape simply has never made sense. Maybe Dumbledore had a very good reason to take Snape’s word about his reform because Snape had something on him.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Mom!
We learned in Prisoner of Azkaban that James Potter and Sirius Black taught themselves to become Animaguses. Surely James Potter chose the stag knowing that Lily’s Patronus was a silver doe. Good one! That’s a smooth courtship maneuver, bound to impress even the most hardened young witch.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: This may sound bizarre to some readers but to science fiction fans the word “xenophile” is familiar territory: someone who loves that which is alien or strange. Let’s hope this is actually a good character and not a perv.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: James, Jacob, and Jeremiah Potter?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Arrrgh! Thanks to big-mouthed book reviewer Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, I unfortunately know that the Deathly Hallows are not a place, as many of us thought, but rather are three precious relics that give the power possessor over death. I even know that a crucial plot twist involves Harry’s decision whether to follow Dumbledore’s original instructions (go after the Horcruxes) or take off on a frolic and detour (as lawyers in the first week of {Contracts} learn to call unauthorized expeditions) in search of the Deathly Hallows.
Thanks a lot, New York Times! The only thing that prevents me from excoriating Kakutani is that I’m not sure whether she realized what a big spoiler this was.
Anyway, now that the Fates have revealed to me that there are three deathly hallows, what are they?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Place I never want to be (n.) I’m guessing that this will be the site of some pretty intense and, alas, ill-fated adolescent rebellion as Draco questions his father’s orders and gets the Cruciatus curse for his pains.
I hope Harry’s not going to try to break into this joint … but if he does, at least he knows from a conversation overheard in Prisoner of Azkaban that the Dark Objects are hidden under the drawing room floor.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Creepy old Ollivander explains how it is possible that Harry and Voldemort have the same wand.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Do I remember this joint from anywhere else in the series? I don’t think so … which leaves it pretty much wide open. It does sound as if it’s by the seashore.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: What, again? I thought we were at Gringott’s in “The Thief” and “Goblin’s Revenge.”
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: For Harry, or for the deathly hallows?.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Ok, if the previous chapter was “The Final Hiding Place”, how is it that there’s a missing mirror? Shouldn’t the previous chapter have been called “Almost The Final Hiding Place”?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Darn it, I’m always losing my diadems. (Diadems, for those who are rusty on their magical objects, are jewels set in a crown.)
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Yay! But the brilliance of J. K. Rowling is that Snape might just as easily be fired because he is a secretly Good wizard under a Dark administration at Hogwarts as because he is a slimy, oily, greasy murderer.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Boom! Now we’re talking. Let’s see some rubble flying. Start by giving me a window view.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Is it possible that Harry’s wand is somehow elder than Tom Riddle’s (even though Riddle’s was made almost fifty years previously?)
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: I hope this isn’t a whole chapter with that horrible man Snape explaining how he was actually a good guy all along.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Again thanks to big-mouthed book reviewer Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, I unfortunately know that Harry spends quite a bit of time in the dark Forest near Hogwarts. Oddly, the Forest always seemed rather pint-sized to me.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: The train station? Another round of first-years entering Hogwarts? Can it be?
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Ain’t there always.
My Trelawney-Inspired Predictions: Let’s have a pool on how many years later … if J. K. Rowling wants to forestall any immediate sequels, she’ll give herself a nice long gap of ten or twenty years so that everyone’s unrecognizably grown up.
“For more than 35 years my routine varied very little. I would start writing in January and the deadline for the manuscript to get to the publishers was mid May. Proof copies would arrive in three or four weeks and I would have to read them over and over to correct the printing errors. I would then take a summer rest and a holiday. All the time I would keep my eyes and open to think of a new story and to do some early research. Publication was September or October and I would spend a few weeks doing some promotion work in both the UK and the USA and sometimes in Canada or Australia and New Zealand. Then there would be a month or two of serious thought and research ready to begin writing again in January.”
(from THE DICK FRANCIS COMPANION by Jean Swanson and Dean James)
If it worked for Dick Francis, it’s not a bad routine … I’d be hard-pressed to think of an author who had a better run of work.
‘Harry Potter’ publisher gets subpoena to identify pirate - Los Angeles Times
Scholastic Corp., publisher of the new “Harry Potter” book, obtained a subpoena to learn the identity of a user who allegedly posted copies of the final sequel, scheduled for release Saturday, on a California website.Scholastic said in a court filing Monday that “materials hosted on Photobucket.com’s system” contain materials that infringe copyrights owned by Scholastic and J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. Photobucket.com, a News Corp. unit, is a website for sharing photos and videos on social networks such as MySpace.
The subpoena was sent to Gaia Interactive Inc. in San Jose seeking the identity of a user on gaiaonline.com, a social network, according to the filing in San Francisco federal court.
Gaia complied with the subpoena, removed the material and temporarily banned the user from the site, said Gaia spokesman Bill Danon. The postings included scanned material and a discussion of the material, he said.
SPOILERS (obviously…)
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BREAKING NEWS: Joseph Wilson Endorses Hillary Clinton
A conference call announcing the endorsement of Hillary Clinton by Joseph Wilson was just held with bloggers to hear the breaking news. This is a huge deal for Candidate Clinton and a big endorsement for her candidacy. That it was broken on the blogs sends a powerful signal.
Wow, this is a painful indictment of the liberal blogosphere…
This was the top story on Memeorandum, meaning that lots of political bloggers are linking to it …
I had to read the story to remember who Joseph Wilson is (the former Ambassador whose factfinding trip to Niger blossomed into the Plame scandal).
Who cares who he endorses?
Wilson’s endorsement will switch zero votes in the general election. This is strictly an Obama v. Clinton issue, and, to repeat, who cares? The unfortunate cynical truth is that the entire primary race is going to be decided by massive amounts of TV advertising in January 2008.
Technorati Tags: Joseph Wilson, who cares?, HIllary Clinton, Obama
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