Sorry! An update post :)

Hey guys, I know I haven't updated in quite a while - I've just been busy job searching, etc., while doing my part-time work. (Isn't half the world doing that with the economy as such?) Anyway, with hard times come good friends (at least you know the friends you can count on), and the Harry Potter community is sticking together.

We're about two weeks away from the release of the sixth film, and I'll be giving a lecture titled "The Christian Elements of Harry Potter" at my church three days before the release of the film. Hopefully it'll persuade some more people to get on board with some of the work that some of our favorite scholars (Granger, etc.) have been doing for years.

I should be posting a new essay soon; or at least the first part, on the music of the Harry Potter films in time for the new movie. I hope you all enjoy it! :)

Happy Mother's Day!

Hey, everybody! I thought I'd share the interior message of the card I've desgined for Mother's Day based on Harry Potter. It reads as a poem (squee!). :)

Mothers in the Potter series stand for quite a lot,

There's Lily Potter, Molly Weasley and tragic Merope Gaunt.

Lily was the best of all, she gave her life away,

So that her son would master death and live to save the day.

Molly we know most about, the Weasley matriach,

We got a taste in second year when we heard her bark.

And her bite was powerful when in battle she,

Defeated cursed Bellatrix and set her family free.

Poor Merope Gaunt was abused - she had a cursed affair,

So she gave her son away and died in deep despair.

And yet we cannot fault her fully for the deed she'd done,

She suffered long and lost her will - she is a pitied one.

Women in this series are generally shown as good,

And from the evil ones we never see a glimpse of motherhood.

So it's said by some I know, that Rowling had her way,

The Potter series at its best is a gift for Mother's Day.

I hope you enjoy!

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.

Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon

I just received in the mail yesterday a new Potter analysis book, Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon by Susan Gunelius. I've read about a third of the book at the moment, and I can say that this is a well-edited book and an interesting read from the business-perspective of the marketing strategy of the Potter series. The author can be seen on youtube.com (by searching under her name), speaking about her book; she seems slightly nervous, however, by the end of the video. Gunelius will be speaking off-site as part of the Azkatraz Conference in July of this year.

The book is 194 pages long, but the text itself only runs for 163 pages. The remaining pages are bibliographic entries (always useful in Potter books to find more sources to read) and index. To be honest, though it's worth my reading this book as I have a collection of Potter analysis books and like to keep current with what's out there, I'm not sure if this a book worth the $35 price tag for people who like general books on Potter. I can see this book being used as a text in a marketing course with an emphasis on the Potter phenomenon - it would be great for that, and it's published by palgrave macmillan, which is a publishing company that does a lot of textbooks. In fact, this book probably is intended for or will be used for that purpose. In that light, it's price tag makes sense (if you know about college textbook costs, you know what I mean). At the least, it is a hardcover book.

I would love to see Gunelius condense the information she presents here as an essay in a collection of Potter analysis essays. She repeats herself a lot while she talks about different marketing strategies and tactics. Again, this is good for a college course in marketing, but not too great for a general book on Harry Potter.

The other thing about this book is that I wish that she had had the time to read Melissa Anelli's book, Harry, A History prior to publishing this one. She gets the information right, but Melissa's interviews with Rowling, Bloomsbury exec.'s and Scholastic exec.'s tell the same story in a much better way. It would have been great if she'd had that book to reference, but Gunelius' book was publsihed prior to Anelli's.

I agree with her opening: it's nice to write a book on the things you love and bring them all together as one. Gunelius likes business, marketing and Harry Potter. I like history and Central and Eastern European studies, music and Harry Potter. But it's not like I'm planning on writing a book...

Anyway, good read if you're a dork for all things Potter analysis like myself, to Potter fans this would have been better as a condensed essay - I think she could pack a marketing punch in a 30 page chapter on Potter marketing in a general Potter phenomenon book, and an excellent book for a college-level business course with an emphasis on Potter.

I'll update my blog for a complete review of this book when I'm finished reading the remaining hundred pages or so. Until then, keep safe and keep faith!

A Harry Potter Easter, Part I

Hey, I'm still working on the essays on Harry Potter and its Slavic elements, but in the meantime, I thought I'd update everyone on some of the work I've been doing at home.

I've decided to remind (or introduce) people of (to) the Christian elements in the Potter series by making all of my Easter baskets on a Harry Potter theme. Instead of Peeps or other baby chicks as the bird element, I'm making styrofoam phoenixes, using molds to create candies (lilies and crosses), and creating Harry Potter Easter cards.

I have one phoenix done and a card ready, and a picture below to delight you with:

And here's a close-up of the phoenix. I think I'm going to use it as my avatar on MyLeaky (lol)

I hope to update my blog with pictures of the finished Easter baskets, but if I forget to (which I probably won't), or I don't get to update it sooner, Happy Easter everyone! (And if you don't practice Christianity), happy springtime and April-ness. squee!