Forgive me for loving this web page at money.co.uk, on which the Twilight and Harry Potter book and film franchises are compared strictly in light of money made and spent — by movie makers, by products, by authors and actors/actresses. I have been trying to think of a more senseless basis of comparison. Page counts? Number of translations? How about counting the number of Onion parody stories each mania has inspired?

I can see three points of value in money quantity comparisons:

• I learned something: Hermione Granger is smarter, well, better at making money, than the whole lot of actors and actresses, i.e., life imitates art.
• On this scale, at least, Harry Potter has at last vanquished The Lord of the Rings.
• I think quantities of money is as valuable a measure as the usual literary taxonomy gauges and personal preference standards many readers and fans use to compare the two series.

Reading The Deathly Hallows Lectures and Spotlight: A Close-Up View of the Artistry and Meaning of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga is much better way to go about comparing the two series. Even just looking at these posts at Forks High School Professor makes more sense than the money measure — and it’s just as inexpensive! Ka Ching!

Two other links for serious readers to follow today: John Patrick Pazdziora on literary alchemy and fairy tales, Snow White and the Philosopher’s Stone, and an interview with the editor of a Tolkien essay collection focused on LOTR’s Christian content.

I’m packing up and heading out to Lexington, Virginia, this weekend for my eldest daughter Hannah’s graduation from the Virginia Military Institute. Some of you have been around here long enough to remember her departure for ‘Rat Year’ back in the fall of 2007 and my request that you write her an encouraging note. She received more cards and letters that week than anyone else in her company and, she thought, perhaps more than everyone else in her company.

HogPro All-Pros have a special fondness for Hannah because she was the eleven year old girl who prompted me to read Harry Potter in the first place, albeit only so I could explain to her “why we don’t read trash like that.” She is a wonderful young woman, if I say so myself, and VMI has been very good to her. Read about her successes here and here so I don’t have to write it all out, shamelessly proud as I am. Lt. Granger is the centerpiece in the picture above.

And while I’m in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, I’ll be giving one formal talk, sitting in on one children’s literature class, and “leading a discussion” in a Rhetoric course on the state of Harry Potter criticism. For details about those events, at least one of which is open to the public, skip over the jump.

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