• Running Grave: Ring Reading Index

    ByNick Jeffery
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    Links and Summaries of the Eleven Strike7 Ring Posts, Three Take-Aways, Value of Structural Analysis in Evaluating the Reviews of ‘Running Grave’

    Last week I finished my series of eleven ring-reading posts about Rowling-Galbraith’s Running Grave, her latest Cormoran Strike novel, in which series I did a structural analysis of its 944 pages using Mary Douglas’ criteria for chiasmus from her Thinking in Circles. Today I am posting a one-stop collection of links to each of these posts with a short summary of each post’s contents as well as my conclusions and take-away thoughts about the month long project for the convenience of future readers. It is the Strike7 Ring Reading Project Index; enjoy!

    For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free.

  • Running Grave, Part Nine: A Ring Reading

    ByNick Jeffery
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    The Final Interior Ring of Strike7 and Its Meaning In The Middle

    What a great finish! Let’s jump right into the Running Grave Part Nine ring reading with a breakdown of how the final Part works as a ring. Tomorrow I’ll do a deep dive into the last Part’s connections with Parts One and Five in the whole-novel ring and then I’ll close this series with my first thoughts at the end of this marathon structural analysis of Rowling-Galbraith’s latest effort. To show my hand in advance, I’m pretty sure the author’s ring writing in the Parts as well as the book as a whole explains in large part the chief criticism of the more recent Strike novels made by newspaper reviewers and Amazon readers alike.

    For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack Part A here and part B here. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free.

  • Beatrice Groves – Hits-and-misses, Folk Horror and Shakespearean Pastoral

    ByNick Jeffery
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    To celebrate Halloween with a delve into the folk horror of The Running Grave, Beatrice Groves, Research Fellow and tutor at Trinity College, Oxford, and author of  Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, has written a Hogwarts Professor Guest Post: ‘Hits-and-misses, Folk Horror and Shakespearean Pastoral: Running Grave first thoughts’. To find out more about spooky ash henges, dreadful dollies, and magnificent magnolia, join Prof Groves after the jump:

    Read More “Beatrice Groves – Hits-and-misses, Folk Horror and Shakespearean Pastoral”

  • Rowling’s ‘Running Grave’ Video Shorts

    ByJohn
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    The Rowling Library has compiled all of Rowling’s answers to questions, all originally posted on the Robert Galbraith Facebook page, in one very convenient YouTube package. I think I speak for all Serious Strikers in thanking them for that collation. Their transcript of these twenty questions can be found here.

    After the jump, a review of what irked many listeners and my own thoughts about what made the event easily forgettable. Read More “Rowling’s ‘Running Grave’ Video Shorts”

  • Running Grave, Part Eight: A Ring Reading

    ByNick Jeffery
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    Part Two Parallels, Eight’s Latch, Turn, and Turtle-Back Lines, Answers to Robin’s Questions, Guesses about Strike’s Epiphany, and the Pizza Mystery

    It just gets better and better! Running Graves’ Part Eight turned up the excitement with a Papa J – Cormoran Strike confrontation, a car chase and shooter, and, as Robin says to Cormoran after the Brewster-Edensor dialogue, “Loads of information!” In this post I’ll be laying out the larger ring parallels between Parts Two and Eight, sharing my thoughts about Part Eight’s individual ring elements, and then giving my last guesses about whodunnit before all is revealed in Part Nine. If the sun isn’t up before I’m done, I’ll put up some thoughts about Rowling’s “meaning in the middle” and other points that this long look at the structure highlight.

    For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free. Look out for the Part Nine conclusion tomorrow!