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Seventh Harry Potter Book Named
Croakyvoice writes "JK Rowling has today given fans of the Harry Potter books the name of Book 7 of the very popular series via a Christmas present on her site, to get to the name you need to follow a complicated procedure but thankfully the name of the book has been revealed as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
I'm so obsessed with Harry Potter. This was the best Christmas present she could give out... short of the book itself.
What part of the "stuff that matters", don't you understand?
Are you implying that because an English writer will dominate the Best Seller list for a while?
Or perhaps you are concerned about millions of kids who have discovered books can be entertaining thanks to Rowlings books?
Or maybe you're just point out how stupid you are in that you didn't realize one of the biggest selling modern writers is neither American nor are her novels set in America, or that literature and popular books are completely independant?
Seriously, a book has been titled? So what?
I can't believe this is on the Beeb and Slashdot's front pages.
OMG! Wau!
And a good thing, because that title would have embarrassed the proofreader something fierce.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Amen. I teach 5th grade and it is astonishing to see how engrossed nearly all the students are with the Harry Potter franchise. It's not the movies that draw them in either, that's just icing on the cake. I ask them about a new Potter film and they will tell me, "It's not as good as tht Book." or "This was different in the Book." Older children and young adults love these stories, and why not. A Fantasy world set in the modern era, with young teens as the protagonists who become wrapped up in a mystery at a fantastic magical castle while casting magical spells, defeating monsters and overcoming issues teens their age face (puberty, dating, school/studies). Who has the right to say to readers, "This is crap, read something better," especially to budding readers who are already at an age when young boys begin dropping off from reading as it becomes "uncool." Maybe Harry Potter isn't listed on "great literature" lists, who cares. Kids are reading, and that is reallly the most important part. They are challenging themselves to read a significant novel of considerable depth and length for people their age. If they enjoy these stories, you can turn them on to other works they might enjoy to push their boundaries and reading capabilities. Enough witht he Harry Potter bashing, if you don't like them, don't read them.
I was hoping it was going to be "Harry Potter and the Balance of Earth" and that it would come bundled with a copy
of "An Inconvenient Truth" and some moon sapphires...
I don't think so. As another poster pointed out, "hallows" can mean "relics". Now, what would qualify as a "relic" in the previous book, that's associated with death?
... "Harry Potter and the Horcruxes".
Perhaps a good translation of the title might be
"The Hallows could refer to the Four Hallows of Arthurian legend. They are intimately connected to the Grail and ultimately probably go back to the Four Treasures of the Tuatha de Danaan of Irish myth.
8 09&st=0
The Four Hallows are:
The Cup or Chalice
The Baton or Wand
The Sword or Dagger
The Coin, Disc or Pentacle
I think we were right all along in connecting the horcruxes to the four elements. These hallows are associated with the elements, and match up quite nicely to the remaining horcruxes:
Cup (HH)
Baton or Wand (RR)
Sword or Dagger (GG)
Pentacle (SS locket)
Just my two knuts!"
Read here: http://www.leakylounge.com/index.php?showtopic=36
"I don't quite understand, Sir," said Harry.
Dumbledore took him by the shoulder. "Ah, Harry, that's what I like about you. Sometimes you're thick as a brick. Which allows us to keep the series going for so many books."
Hermione interrupted. "*I* understand, Sir."
"And I've been meaning to speak to you, Hermione. About those candles, broomsticks, and bowling pins the housekeepers report littering your bedchamber..."
---- sometimes, you just DON'T want to see the parts Rowling edited out of the draft manuscripts...
Mod me down if you must but damn, the one time I don't have mod points to use and like the majority of comments are just flamebait and trolling. Quite a few nerds are into Harry Potter, let's not forget nerds extend into the fantasy genre, and there has been plenty of news on such things as Lord of the Rings or Warhammer on /. in the past...So why the hate for HP? If you dislike the novels for their story and such, thats your opinion you are entitled too but damn, don't dis on Neil for putting up a story many of us are interested in.
Aw Frell this
Man, that naming formula is even more boring than Star Wars' "Episode NUMBER: VERB of the NOUN".
sic transit gloria mundi
I don't like it because of one point you raised (but I think you didn't emphasize enough)- the protagonist is merely average. And yet he manages to overcome through sheer luck of the draw and general bumblingness someone who is by no means average and has an advantage over him in just about every way possible, other than being bigoted.
Reminds me of that quote from Spacebattles:
"Evil will always win... because good is STUPID!"
It just annoys the hell out of me that the bigots always lose because they're bigoted. Sure they're bigots, but I really don't care. The fact that Harry's incompetent bugs the hell out of me a lot more.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Maybe it's because the character has flaws that millions of people identify with him?
If you look at Bilbo, Frodo (as you pointed out), or, actually, most contemporary (low- or high-brow) fantasy, you're going to find bumbling characters who make mistakes and only pull through because of Deus Ex Machina, luck of the draw, or some moral accomplishment.
I think it's the fact that we all recognize our own faults and inner issues, and can see them portrayed in these characters, that makes us, as readers, identify with the heroes of these stories.
We fuck up. We make mistakes. Sometimes, we're jerks to our friends, we don't put enough time into our relationships, and we make the wrong moral decisions.
Superman doesn't have those problems.
Harry Potter has those problems.
Remember the success of Spider-Man? From the Wikipedia article: The Spider-Man series broke ground by featuring a hero who himself was an adolescent, to whose "self-obsessions with rejection, inadequacy, and loneliness" young readers could relate.
One of the best comments ever was in a long thread about the technicalities of RAID hardware. Someone wrote four long paragraphs, and halfway through the second, tacked on to the end of one sentence "and besides, Hermione dies in the last book anyways." *
The outrage was tremendous because, before you even realized you were reading a spoiler, you'd finished and comprehended it. Sweetest troll ever.
* No one knows who dies in the last book, if someone does. At the time, Rowling explicitly said she hadn't decided who. It wasn't a real spoiler, and isn't now. Don't freak out.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Harry is the anti-geek: he isn't smart, isn't the best in school, doesn't give a rat's ass about magic, etc. The only thing he is good at is flying his stick; Harry is a JOCK! People love him, help him cheat or give him secret help so that he always looks good in public and the people with real talent around him are diminished. His only claim to fame is his heritage.
Somehow, I want to imagine Harry as a closet RPG and fantasy geek who keeps his 'hobbies' hidden because of the ridicule hed' get from his friends for being a real wizard who's into fantasy...
"Harry", said Hermione, "Are you ready to... take this to the next level?"
"You bet", said Harry. "I'll put on my robe and wizard hat."
"What? That's not what I'm..."
"I cast Level 3 eroticism. You turn into a beautiful woman, instead of a flat dork."
"What did you call me?!?!"
"I wave my wand of undressing and you turn naked."
"You have no idea what to do, do you?"
"I look through the Pokedex for the best creature. Hermione, I choose you!"
"My god, you're somehow more pathetic than a muggle dork, you play pretend magic even though you're a real wizard?!"
"Okay, if that's the way you want to play, then I'll use this tome of unspeakable horrors I found in the library. The Necronomicon."
"What?! Harry, you're not supposed to-"
"ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Ia! Ia!"
"My god, what is that thing!?!? It's all tentacle and-"
"I hope you enjoy this, Hermione, I saw this in a Japanese cartoon once..."
"*NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!* *mrrrrhhhh*"
Ah, well. One can dream, can't he? (References to bloodninja and Cthulu)
Amen to that.
A couple of years ago, I did a little work around the periphery of the publishing industry. At no point was I even close to anybody who was close to anybody who was involved with any of the Harry Potter books. However, a few of the things that were common knowledge then seem particularly relevant now.
What J.K. Rowling is increasingly suffering from is Celebrity Author Syndrome. This, simply put, is a state in which no editor has both the guts and the backing from above to stand up to the author in question and insist upon necessary changes. In some cases, this goes hand in hand with the author being a self-important prick, but that's absolutely *not* an essential pre-requisite (and I have absolutely *no* idea what JKR is like to work with).
Let me explain...
The vast majority of manuscripts that are submitted to publishers by first-time authors are seriously long. They contain repetition of scenes, subplots that are never developed, page after page of background exposition on characters and vast amounts of unnecessary description and digression. Reading the average freshly-submitted manuscript is a pretty depressing alternative; by the time you've waded through all the padding, you can hardly remember anything about the plot and the characters. Now, of course, most manuscripts submitted to publishers go straight in the bin. Occasionally, however, one will be considered interesting enough to pick up. What happens in this case (with some variation across the industry, but the model remains more or less the same) is that some money might change hands and the publisher might indicate to the author that they could conceivably be convinced to publish the book, provided the author work with a designated editor to strip the work down to something fit for public consumption.
This process is often pretty gruelling for the first-time author. They've suddenly got an editor, who they likely see as a pen-pushing bureaucrat and spawn of the devil, demanding that they cut out whole chunks of words that the author has sweated blood over. Emotionally, this is surprisingly difficult. However, most first-time authors who have made it this far have a strong incentive to comply with changes demanded by their editor and will comply. After all, the editor's say-so can kill the book. The publisher looses relatively little from killing the project, while for the author, this could mean months or years of work going to waste. Ultimately, it is very rare that a book is not improved beyond recognition by this process.
However, this dynamic changes massively with a celebrity author (as in, a celebrity who is famous for writing, not a celebrity who has decided to write a book). The publisher suddenly has a lot more to loose if the relationship goes sour. Whatever contractual obligations the author might be under, they know that they'll always have a market for their words elsewhere in the future. If the author is a prick, they can therefore change editors at will and refuse to make changes as they see fit.
However, even if the author is the nicest, most compliant person in the world, the editor is still going to be under a lot of stress. They know, and the people who pay them know, that this author has been lucrative in the past. The editor knows that his future job security almost certainly depends to a large degree on him managing this author right. There is therefore an enormous temptation to just sit back and assume that the author knows best (even though the wisest authors might realise themselves that this isn't the case).
We saw the results of this with the 5th and 6th Harry Potter books (and to a lesser extent, the 4th). The 5th book in particular had a stupidly high number of redundant scenes, most of which could have been excised at will. The bizarre, only-half-realised political commentary surrounding Dolores Umbridge ended up eating a significant chunk of the book without adding anything significant to it. The character could (and in an earlier book, would) have been ha