Hogwarts Fandom News: All Aboard Pottermore at last in April! SXSW Super Panel of Leaky, MuggleNet, HPEF, and AccioLisa

Some ‘time sensitive news’ Potter Philes will be interested in:

Read the press releases beneath jump!

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Tim Parks: ‘The Writer’s Job’ in The New York Review of Books A Hogwarts Professor Conversation About the Literary Machine

At The New York Review of Books, Tim Parks has written a bleak and challenging assessment of the ‘life of a writer’ in the early 21st Century, ‘The Writer’s Job,’ and the consequent ‘state of literature,’ Capital L. John Patrick Pazdziora wrote a group of friends and HogwartsProfessors with his thoughts about Park’s gloomy picture, which note inspired a reflective exchange both on the history of this kind of assessment and what a writer’s life is like at any time among his correspondents. With their permission, I share that exchange below. Please read the Park article, enjoy the conversation, and feel free to contribute to it here in the comment boxes!

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Get Your Lionsgate Nail Polish For the Hunger Games Opening Ceremonies! Stylist Endorsed, It’s To Die For, Capitol-ites!

You couldn’t make this stuff up, right? China Glaze: The Hunger Games Specialty Colour ‘Hook and Line’

For the first time ever, China Glaze has partnered with Lionsgate Films to create a specialty promotion for their movie adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ gripping trilogy, The Hunger Games, premiering in theaters March 2012. The polish shades are inspired by the Capitol of the nation of Panem!

The Hunger Games Specialty Colour Collection includes 12 amazing full coverage shades: Dress Me Up, Foie Gras, Fast Track, Hook and Line, Stone Cold, Smoke and Ashes, Agro, Mahogany Magic, Harvest Moon, Riveting, Electrify, Luxe and Lash.

The best part, though, is that the email sent out by Sally Beauty came with this provocative question: ‘Deborah, What Will You Be Wearing to the Opening Ceremonies?’ (Hat tip to Deborah for this!)

Aren’t we supposed to be sympathizing with the Tributes and despising the Capitol viewers? Has Lionsgate decided to cast us in the role of those viewers and to despise us with a story we pay to see, a film featuring themselves as the Gamesmaker Shadow-Casters? Give me the clunky coal miners outfit and keep the nail polish, please. [There are Reaping Clothes available, too, if you’re dying to look nice! What’s next, Life is Beautiful tank tops?]

J. Robert Barth: ‘Romanticism and the Religious Tradition’

Okay, okay, it is ‘Hunger Games Month’ at Hogwarts Professor, so we’re spending some time every day with the best selling books and the ironies woven into ironies of the Big Sale from the Capitol Gamesmakers making a Giant Hollywood Media Spectacular from books largely about the soul corrosive qualities of those Giant Hollywood Movie Spectaculars. But there’s time still to talk about the substance, the ‘inside bigger than the outside,’ of literature and the spirituality implicit to fantasy fiction that, per Eliade, drives its popularity.

For a wonderfully generous helping of that main course and dessert, please watch the late J. Robert Barth’s (SJ) talk on ‘Romanticism and the Religious Tradition.’ You’ll understand Katniss and Kompany, I’m guessing, as well as our love for her and our experience within her story, better for this time in the ‘Front Row’ at Barth’s Boston College talk.

Shared Text: Does This Product Exist Except for Harry Potter?

If you have to have a ‘Kymera Magic Wand Remote Control,’ I’m told they’re only $75.95 during today’s “flash” sale. Enter this under “You know you’re an Adult Fan of the Hogwarts Saga, when… you turn on your toaster with a wand from across the room.”

I suppose it’s possible that the inventor could have pursued this idea in a world without Harry Potter fans with disposable income (or friends of fans trying to find the magic gift). But I’m confident whoever has the patent on this beautie was able to sell it to investors for production and marketing money on the strength of Harry’s popularity and over-sized space in our imaginations. Your thoughts?