The first trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been released, featuring a wee Voldemort. Movie is out in November.
The NY Times has released their list of the 100 Notable Books of 2007. Because of the amount of online reading I do and Ollie, my book-reading rate has declined dramatically...I only read two of the books on this list and one of those was Harry Potter 7.
Jon Hicks has a nice slideshow of typography from the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. (via waxy) Design Observer did a piece on the typography of Order of the Phoenix becoming its own character.
It is The Daily Prophet which emerges in this film as a secondary character, performing interstitial cameos made all the more exhilarating because the camera sweeps in and out, ricocheting off the page, magnifying and dramatizing a typographic vocabulary that combines a slightly mottled, letterpress-like display face with great portions of illegible calligraphy.
A primary school in the UK has moved from the bottom 25% of schools to near the top 5% using a curriculum based on Harry Potter.
During the most recent visit from Ofsted, the inspector witnessed a maths lesson where the children were motivated to learn about subtraction by pretending that it is a magic formula created by Harry Potter. Pupils were not allowed to answer questions without first saying a spell -- "numerus subtracticus", which they devised themselves.
(thx, david)
Order your Dumbledore pride tshirts, now available in rainbow "I always knew" and "Wizards Are Gay" varieties.
Rita Skeeter J.K. Rowling:
Albus Dumbledore is gay and had fallen in love with fellow wizard and friend, Gellert Grindelwald.
Fan fiction writers, you know what to do.
Owls lost in translation
A summary of one of the several Chinese knockoffs of Harry Potter, courtesy of the NY Times:
Snape breaks into Hogwarts and rescues Lucius Malfoy from Azkaban Prison. Harry believes that he can defeat Snape and Voldemort only by strenuously practicing charms. Professor Slughorn, inspired by a book from the East provided by Cho Chang called "Thirty-Six Strategies," devises a plan enabling Harry to seize Snape in the Ministry of Magic. But Gryffindor's sword, which hung in the headmaster's office, assassinates Professor McGonagall.
When Harry confronts Voldemort at Azkaban, the Dark Lord tries to win Harry over as a fellow descendant of Slytherin. Harry refuses, and together with Ron and Hermione, kills Voldemort instead. Now what will Harry do about his two girlfriends?
In another of the books, Harry is assisted by Gandalf. No appearances by Han and Chewy, AFAIK.
An update regarding Harry Potter and the Phantom Delivery: Amazon issued me a refund for the book. I'm close to the end of the book...I hope it ends as well.
Harry Potter and the Phantom Delivery
Back in April, I pre-ordered Harry Potter 7 from Amazon. They guaranteed delivery on its release date, Saturday July 21 before 7pm or they would refund the cost of the book...the details of that offer are here. All day Saturday until shortly after 7pm, the UPS tracking information indicated that the package containing my copy of the book was "IN TRANSIT TO FINAL DESTINATION", which is UPS-speak for "the UPS guy/gal who will deliver your book does not yet have it in his/her possession"...the magic phrase for that action is "OUT FOR DELIVERY".
At some point after 7pm, the UPS status page updated to say that a notice was left at 3:36 pm, implying that a delivery attempt was made and no one was home to receive it. (Amazon's tracking page says that UPS told them "Delivery attempted - recipient not home".) No such notice was left. My door buzzer did not ring at 3:36 pm (I was home all day on Saturday) and the doorman of the building next door who takes the deliveries for our building when people aren't home reported no notice or delivery attempt. Here's the complete tracking info from UPS:
Location // Date // Local Time // Description
NEW YORK, NY, US // 07/21/2007 // 3:36 P.M. // NOTICE LEFT
NEW YORK, NY, US // 07/20/2007 // 12:00 P.M. // IN TRANSIT TO FINAL DESTINATION
NEW YORK, NY, US // 07/19/2007 // 4:51 P.M. // DESTINATION SCAN
NEW YORK, NY, US // 07/19/2007 // 4:50 P.M. // ORIGIN SCAN
US // 07/19/2007 // 1:34 P.M. // BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
Maybe I'm lying about being home or maybe the person trying to deliver the package made an honest mistake, but it's curious that a delivery attempt could have been made when the package was not even "OUT FOR DELIVERY". Here's what I think happened. I think UPS's network was overwhelmed by Amazon's Potter-volume in some parts of the country and they had no way to deliver all those packages. (The forums for the book at Amazon and Google Blog Search are full of similar complaints from others...warning, spoilers! UPS even offloaded some of the volume to the USPS for "last-mile" delivery.) So, UPS just marked all of those packages they had no intention of delivering as "oops, we missed you, you must have been out".
Let's go back to Amazon's guarantee, which states that the refund "does not apply if delivery is attempted, but no one is available to accept the package". Amazon would be pretty angry with UPS if they cost them a bunch of money due to refunds and, more importantly, the loss of a bunch of customer goodwill...maybe Amazon would switch a larger portion of their formidable package output to another carrier, for instance. So UPS intentionally misclassifying those deliveries covers their ass with Amazon and covers Amazon's ass with regard to the refund.
My copy of the book from Amazon will be here sometime today (UPS doesn't deliver on Sunday), by which time I'll already have mostly finished the copy I bought at Barnes & Noble about 7:30 pm Saturday evening. The extra $20 isn't a big deal to me and neither is having to wait all day to start in on the book. But this book was a *huge* deal for Amazon (2+ million pre-orders out of a first printing of 12 million) and for their customers who desired their instant Potter gratification. Amazon should be hopping mad at UPS over this; UPS shifted the blame from themselves to Amazon's customers...who are in turn going to blame Amazon, doubly so because Amazon probably won't might not issue refunds for those "missed" deliveries because they don't need to. A customer service-oriented company like Amazon shouldn't take this kind of crap from their shipping vendor...incidents like these will erode customer goodwill and eventually their customer base, the retention of which is one of Amazon's stated primary goals.
Update: I've asked Amazon for a refund and am waiting on their reply. From the emails I've gotten from readers so far, it sounds like Amazon is being liberal in the refund policy, as one would expect.
Update: No word from Amazon yet, but the USPS (not UPS) delivered my book Monday morning. It had a UPS sticker on it with instructions to the Post Office to deliver it to me. No update on the UPS tracking page that its been delivered. I'm tempted to leave it unopened in its custom Amazon box as a collector's item. Maybe I can get JK Rowling and Jeff Bezos to sign it.
Update: Amazon issued me a refund for the book.
The rules of unicycle quidditch and juggling quidditch.
Taking a page from the Harry Potter books, there's a sign for Platform 9 3/4 (and a lugguage cart that's half-disappeared into the wall) at the real-life King's Cross Station in London.
Harry Potter = Luke Skywalker. Also, entire industries created by Harry Potter are due to come to an end with the publication of the final book.
Amazon's running a contest to see which town in the US orders the most copies of the final book in the Harry Potter series. Towns in Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Georgia seem to dominate the rankings so far.
The cashier at Barnes and Noble, she sure saw me coming. "You trying to catch up before Book 7 comes out?"
"Yes'm," I said, staring at my shoes. My vacation reading plan had gotten me hooked on the Potter series and I was now devouring the series at a work-shirking rate. Oh sugary literature, I can't resist you! The first three books were bit boring (I'd already seen the movies) and had I not been on vacation, I might have given up on the whole thing. I decided to press on, and, like my friend Adriana assured me, it started to get more interesting about halfway through Goblet of Fire when Rowling starts pulling back the curtain on an entire world of wizardry and backstory. I raced through Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. Since I somehow hadn't heard any spoilers about the series, the end of HBP left me reeling, my mind racing, my body jonesing for another hit. _______ killed ____________!!!1!1ONE!
That was all a few weeks ago. The other day, I did a very bad thing. While in the bookstore on non-Potter-related business, I stopped by the kids section to see if they carried a book that my friend David had alerted me to, Mugglenet.Com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7 (warning: spoilers). When David told me about it, I was adamant about not wanting to know anything about Deathly Hallows before it comes out. But now that I was confronted with the thing in person, I was unable to resist taking a peek at the table of contents. Snape. RAB! Horcrux!! Are my pet theories true? I flipped through a couple of chapters, little kids flowing around me in the aisle, feeling exhilarated (and a little disappointed) that the authors' theories agreed with mine and ashamed at what I'd become, a 33-yo man with deeply held theories about future plot developments in a children's book series.
My willpower finally returned and I returned the book to its shelf, but I think I might go back for it. I just need to think of a good hiding place so that Meg doesn't catch me with it. I fear for the future of my marriage and, more importantly, the fates of Harry, Hermione, and Ron! Hurry July 21, you cannot come soon enough.
The international trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I am officially as hooked on Harry as everyone else.
Update: And here's the US trailer...slightly different footage.
Harry Potter movie franchise in potential jeopardy: Emma Watson reportedly refuses to play Hermione Granger for the final two films. Paging Emmy Rossum. (Emma, Emmy, Emma, Emmy, Emma, Emmy, Emma...)
How to learn a foreign language: read Harry Potter in translation. "The plots and scenarios are familiar enough that I can pick up the gist of what is going on even if the grammar and vocabulary escape me; but after a few times reading about the impatient lechuza in Harry's room, I can't help but gather that it is not lettuce but an owl."
Reading at a 4th grade level
We're leaving tomorrow for a trip of the relaxing sort, so I went to the bookstore this morning to collect some reading material. I had decided not to read anything that felt too much like work or that I had to think about. What I needed was fiction like television: passive but engaging. Having procured a paperback copy of The Da Vinci Code in the B section, I wandered over to the Rs. Robbins. Roth. Rowlandson. Salinger. Hmm. No luck in the Teen section either. Finally I hit paydirt in the Kids section: the 1085 pages of the first three years of Harry Potter's adventures at Hogwarts.
Perfect.
So, I'll see you in a week. Posting will be light until then, but feel free to enjoy some random posts from the last 9 years of kottke.org, peruse the Best Links of 2006 list again, look at some of my photos from Anguilla in 2004, dream of NYC in the snow (will it ever again?), imagine if Manhattan visited other US cities, or visit the many fine sites in the sidebar of the front page. I'll send you a postcard when I get back.
The latest Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is available for pre-order at Amazon and is currently the #1 seller in books.
The DrawerGeeks are a collection of artists and illustrators that all draw a fictional character every couple of weeks. The Harry Potter page is a good introduction to the work. (via snarkmarket)
In an age of media fragmentation, here are ten cultural events that are still shared collective experiences among US citizens, including the Super Bowl, Harry Potter, and The Da Vinci Code.
Related to the stories about binding books with human skin from earlier in the week, apparently architect Le Corbusier bound one of his favorite books (Don Quixote) with the hide from one of his favorite dogs (Pinceau). The result looks like that textbook in Harry Potter that you needed to stroke the spine to get it to open without biting you.
Forthcoming books in the increasingly mature Harry Potter series. "Harry Potter and Some Seriously Bad Acid".
Scientists are having a bit of fun wondering about the genetics of wizardry in Harry Potter. "This suggests that wizarding ability is inherited in a mendelian fashion, with the wizard allele (W) being recessive to the muggle allele (M). According to this hypothesis, all wizards and witches therefore have two copies of the wizard allele (WW)."
An unauthorized electronic version of the new Harry Potter book is now available online. Rowling won't do an e-book version of the Potter books, but one made its way onto the web about 12 hours after the hardcover was released in stores.
The Harry Potter book series as allegory for 1930s Europe. Voldemort as Hitler, Dumbledore as Churchill, and Potter as FDR's America?
Harry Potter and Willy Wonka are going head to head this weekend. Something tells me that Harry's gonna win.
The difficulty of pre-ordering the new Harry Potter book online. If the book is ordered online, how much after the midnight release will the book be delivered? Next day or wait until after the weekend?
