BOOK REVIEW #1: Harry Potter and the Order of the Court: The J. K. Rowling Copyright Case and the Question of Fair Use by Robert S. Want

Since I have been reading Steve Vander Ark's "The Lexicon" book and was intrigued by the discussion on the court case from a few archived PotterCast episodes, I thought it would be wise to understand (as completely as possibly) the nature of the case.

This book is a useful tool, in that it briefly summarizes both the plaintiff's (in this case J. K. Rowling with Warner Bros. involvement as her licensees) and the defendant's (RDR Books with Steve Vander Ark) positions as well as some background on the Judge hearing the case (Judge Patterson) and his decision, etc. The book then moved into how the fair use doctrine works and how it has applied to cases in the past. These passeges are also available online at Stanford's Fair Use Project website, as they were written by an author other than Want himself, who had the permission to reproduce them for his book.

Page forty-one on through to the last page contains important court documents (which are public material) including Patterson's decision. This makes up the majority of the book, but to Potter fans they are key as they contain the whole of Rowling's testimony. She is eloquent as ever.

Anyway, an interesting book and another one to be used while studying the history of the Harry Potter phenomenon as well as how Harry Potter has changed an aspect of society, in this case a legal proceeding.

The book is available, to my knowledge, through both Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, and I'm sure it's available elsewhere online. I wonder how many bookstore stocked this book.

A Successful Harry Potter Easter

So, the Harry Potter Easter bags were a success! I will include pictures in the next post, but the items in the bags included: a Harry Potter Easter card, a phoenix (with a tag explaining the relation of phoenixes to Christianity), the lily and cross w/rose candies (with another tag explaining the relation of these Christian symbols to Harry Potter) and a painted heart magnet that reads "The Weapon We Have is Love" and a citation of "Harry and the Potters", which on the back reads, "Check out: www.thehpalliance.org"

Some also got a card (that was too big to be a card) with some of the words from Dumbledore's scene in HBP which seems to relate to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, which was rolled up as a scroll in their bags.

Anyway, again, I'll post pictures later, and to all: Happy Easter! He is risen! He is risen, indeed! squee :)

"A Bit of Light Reading"

Hello everybody! How are you all doing today? I've been looking through online book retailers, especially Amazon.com to find more Harry Potter analysis books and I've had a bit of success. For Easter, I think I'll be ordering Muggles, Monsters and Magicians: A Literary Analysis of the Harry Potter Series by Claudia Fenske (this being the priciest book: it's over $50 (but I bet she hasn't sold too many) and get this, it's nearly 500 pages long and published post-Deathly Hallows. That's my kind of cup of tea.

Another book I'm planning on reading is this one: Harry Potter and the Order of the Court: The J. K. Rowling Copyright Case and the Question of Fair Use by Robert S. Want. Now that's around $20 (I generally spend $15-30 for these books; lately as I've read more and more I've been going for the more unusual books or the ones with much less hype so I can gain the knowledge and insights therein, review the books online for the author and generally hope to give them more exposure). Anyway, I've been hearing more and more about the April 2008 court case and it would be nice to see an analysis of those court documents.

There seems to be a series of books written by Graeme Davis called Re-read Harry Potter and the... Today! An Unauthorized Guide. I'm curious as to the quality of the writing here, and the page numbers are short, but since it's under $20 a volume, I am tempted.

I eagerly await a number of books coming out in the coming months. That list includes the following:

Reading Harry Potter Again: New Critical Essays by Giselle Liza Anatol: Hardcover (that makes it pricey), ? pp., publish date 30 May 2009

Mugglenet.com's Unofficial, Unauthorized and Unequaled Harry Potter Debates by Emerson Spartz and Ben Schoen, Paperback, $14.95, 180 pp., publish date 1 June 2009

Re-Reading Harry Potter by Suman Gupta: Hardcover (again, pricey-ness), 240 pp., publish date 7 July 2009

Harry Potter's Bookshelf by John Granger: Paperback, $15, 336 pp., publish date 7 July 2009

The Politics of Harry Potter by Bethany Barratt: Paperback, $24.95, 288 pp., 24 November 2009 (though I saw a May 2009 release date for this on another website - the Nov. date is from Amazon.com)

The two books coming out on July 7 are released on the same day that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows debuts as a paperback novel, so market-wise, that makes a lot of sense. So, it seems to be one book each month. Except April, which is why I'll probably get the books I mentioned above over the Easter Holiday. I'm sure there's books coming out August-December 2009, but I just don't know the information yet about them as Amazon.com probably doesn't have all of their pages up yet. I hope to see something about Hog's Head Conversations edited by Travis Prinzi and Does Hary Potter Tickle Waking Dragons? (Book 2 in the Harry Potter Tickle... Trilogy) by Nancy S. Villaluz, but Prinzi hasn't said anything yet on his website, and the Ramance Press website for Villaluz's book is not yet operational.

Oh well, there's some happy reading. And there's a few others not on that list that were published pre- and post-Deathly Hallows that I have not resolved to look into yet.