Kindle Flash: CSL’s Ransom Trilogy Now Available as EBooks!

April 5, 2012 by 1 Comment

This time last week we learned that Joanne Rowling’s seven Harry Potter novels were available as eBooks on Kindle and other platforms and, in a marvelous bit of synchronicity, that three Unlocking Press titles, Harry Potter For Nerds, God and Harry Potter at Yale, and Harry Potter Smart Talk also came on line as eBooks at both Amazon’s Kindle store and Barnes and Noble’s Nook outlet, all for less than $10 and Smart Talk for only $4.99. Check those out for the best in Potter Punditry!

This week’s Kindle news is that HarperCollins has at last issued C. S. Lewis’ remarkable science fiction-fantasy classic, known variously as the Ransom Trilogy, Space Trilogy, or the Cosmic Trilogy, as Kindle books on Amazon: Out of the Silent Planet $7.99, Perelandra $7.99 , and That Hideous Strength $7.99. I suspect that Hunger Games newcomers to Hogwarts Professors will not know why new availability in interest in these books is an exciting event and I wonder if even some old hands forget the importance of C. S. Lewis’ first mythopoetic fictions. It’s a delight, in brief,  because of their alchemical artistry, ring composition, smuggled Christian content, and their remarkable if perhaps only indirect influence on books that we love, most notably Harry Potter and Hunger Games.

Three Reasons to Buy this Series of Books and Read them (or ‘Read them Again,’ for many of you): [Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis

New York Times: Forum on ‘The Power of Young Adult Fiction’

April 4, 2012 by 5 Comments

In the wake of Hunger Games’ remarkable box office success and the explosion since 2008 of so-called YA titles, The New York Times’ online forum ‘Room for Debate’ sponsored a discussion  about the merits, value, and power of Young Adult fiction. They gathered a librarian, three authors of books sold in the children and YA section of bookstores (two of which satisfy the Times diversity police quotas), one teenage blogger of note, and two critics covering the ‘over the top’ and ‘just right’ aspects of the subject. These last two deserve some comment, I think, and justify the very short time you might spend reading them.

Perhaps to balance the enthusiasm of author Patricia McCormick’s ‘Authors Taking Risks Isn’t Kid Stuff,’ the Times invited Joel Stein a shock-jock columnist at TIME magazine to express the “not worthy of adult attention” point that William Safire made about Harry Potter years ago. Mr. Stein’s wonderfully wide-open disdain and his acidic view is that ‘Adults Should Read Adult Books’ – — and nothing but adult books, frankly.

The only thing more embarrassing than catching a guy on the plane looking at pornography on his computer is seeing a guy on the plane reading “The Hunger Games.” Or a Twilight book. Or Harry Potter. The only time I’m O.K. with an adult holding a children’s book is if he’s moving his mouth as he reads. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

March Madness Hunger Games HogPro Posts Round-Up!

April 4, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Here they all are! The 35 HogwartsProfessor Hunger Games Month (March, 2012) posts have been rounded up at one link for you to review in case you missed any or for when you want to revisit some of the ideas and conversations down the line. They’re hiding beneath the jump.

Enjoy — and thank you all again for this great ride of discussion and exploration of Suzanne Collins’ Everdeen Saga and the LionsGate movie adaptation of the first book, Hunger Games. I’m just back from talks at Augustana’s Stronghold Castle and at the Indiana limestone fortress of the school called Chicagwarts (complete with Great Hall…) but will share tomorrow the talk on Hunger Games and literary alchemy I gave in the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel Monday night. Stay tuned! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hunger Games

What I Fear Is Coming (Has Come?) to Hunger Games Fandom

March 29, 2012 by 18 Comments

This almost certainly will be my last entry in the HogwartsProfessor Hunger Games Month of posts celebrating and exploring the artistry and meaning of Suzanne Collins’ wonderful Panem Trilogy. I have speaking dates Saturday at Augustana College (actually Stronghold Castle! left) and at the University of Chicago on Monday, so I will be out of pocket, as quarterbacks say, for blogging at least until next Wednesday. I leave the Marshaling of the Closing Ceremonies duties to the fair and profound Prof. Elizabeth Baird-Hardy and her associates, Profs. Kendall, Freeman, and Pazdziora. Thank you all out there for a delightful, engaging, and challenging month of conversation about these books, about the film, and the possibilities and inevitabilities of reading and film watching, in general. If I say so myself, it’s been one of our better month’s for discussion here, our best, perhaps, since the months before and after Mockingjay’s publication.

I spent much of yesterday chatting with John Patrick Pazdziora over virtual ButterBeers at the Hog’s Head pub, which conversation (really more a Q&A session about Hunger Games) he’s edited and posted at our sister site. I’ve taken one of my answers there to post here below the jump to start a conversation about a strong trend in Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games fandoms consequent to movie adaptations that I think is lamentable, if all but inevitable, namely, a change in focus from the search for and a loss of comprehension about ‘what books mean.’

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Hunger Games, Twilight

Happy Kindle Harry Potter Day! What a Cornucopia of Choices!

March 28, 2012 by 5 Comments

I know it’s Hunger Games month here at HogwartsProfessor, but as the site name suggests, we’re serious readers of Harry Potter here first and last so there’s no way the big news of Kindle availability for all seven Hogwarts Saga titles is going unheralded. You can read here about the crush to buy that all but crashed Amazon’s Kindle store when the buy possibility for the first books went viral in fandom. The first three books in the series are selling for $7.99 and the four bigger novels at $9.99, Amazon’s ceiling for the highest percentage of sales being returned to publisher as profit (though it is very unlikely that Ms. Rowling isn’t taking home almost everything she makes there…).

In a remarkable case of serendipity, all three of Unlocking Press’ companion books that open up the world’s best selling novels in unexpected ways, to profound depth, with no little humor became available on Amazon Kindle on the same day as Ms. Rowling’s work! Check out Harry Potter Smart Talk ($4.99), God and Harry Potter at Yale ($6.99), and Harry Potter for Nerds ($8.99), all three of which, an Unlocking House-elf tells me, will be available on B&N Nook in the next few days.

So, if you’re an e-reader as well as a serious reader and you’ve been waiting for years to download Harry’s adventures and revisit them one by one on your preferred device, or if Grandmom with myopia has Kindle Fire and can now find out ‘what all the fuss is about,’ get ye to PotterMore or Amazon and have a great day. If you’ve been looking for the electronic versions of these commentaries from some of the best and brightest Potter Pundits in and out of Harry Potter fandom, today is your first chance to get them at e-low-prices!

And for Hunger Games friends who think Harry Potter is “so yesterday,” your older sibling’s or youngest child’s thang, then the Kindle store special has just what you need, too. All three of Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking Trilogy are $.99 each today, 28 March, and you want to read these books, believe me. Horror meets dystopia on a Sci Fi planet nightmare — with a boy, a girl, and his dog chased by men made mad by universal mind reading… Almost as much fun as a Reaping and Hunger Games!

Have a great Kindle day whatever you’re downloading and reading!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes