It’s a throw-away line at the very end of a long Daily Show with Jon Stewart piece about Congressmen “playing the race card,” but the line “Nice work, Dumbledore!” gets a very big laugh. Which represents, of course, the degree to which this fictional character’s appearance has become part of the shared public imagination.

Any other recent sightings? Or is that “citings”?

We focus on Harry Potter here and have a good deal of enthusiastic discussion about Twilight and the Hunger Games books (10 more days to Mockingjay!) but there are a lot of other books out there we neglect by necessity in saying as much as we do about these series. To help correct that imbalance, long time HogPro All-Pro Deborah Chan, aka Arabella Figg, a writer living in eastern Washington State, offers her recommendations in a guest post titled ‘Young Adult Books Offer Great Reading.’ Enjoy!

Every time I go into bookstores or the library these days, I get discouraged by the adult selections. I’m an eclectic reader, so I can’t just head over to a particular genre section and find a treasure trove. Instead, I circle around the new and general/genre book section, picking up, putting down…and often leave empty-handed and discouraged, wondering if there will ever be anything good to read again.

Adult fiction has been overtaken by what I call The Jodi Picoult Syndrome (Picoult writes bestsellers—I’ve read two—that are literary, compelling, and… vastly depressing). This Syndrome means that a novel will plunge me into a gloomy, psychological story, full of angst, dysfunction, family secrets, rocky and wrecked marriages, creepy people, disturbed or damaged children, tragedy, forbidden love, and an ending that can’t possibly have an edifying or uplifting resolution, given the whopping freight of human misery leading up to it. Last fall I tried to read Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge for a book club and the unpleasant narrator drove me away by page three. [Read more…]

Story here with more Emma pics!

I was just finishing up my essay on the choice of 1692 for the date of the International Statue on Wizarding Secrecy, when my wife received this post on her FaceBook page from HogPro All-Pro, Jerry Bowyer:

“Hey, Mary, has John ever noticed the parallel between Arthur Weasley in HP and Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the British PM?”

The answer to his question is “No, I hadn’t” but it is a great catch and I blush that I hadn’t made this connection. I think it’s a match for three reasons: [Read more…]

S. M. Hutchens of Touchstone magazine has written a rejoinder in ‘Harry Potter Coda‘ to Michael O’Brien’s assertions that Harry Potter is not good reading, ‘good’ in the sense of its being well written or of its being spiritually edifying.  Mr. Hutchens is not a Harry Hallower by any means; he believes the books are dangerous and encourage unfortunate beliefs and behaviors. He insists, though that Harry’s adventures in the end reflect “the Story Upon Which All Stories Worth Hearing are based” and will foster the imagination and heart of those who do and those who do not yet know this Story.

Mr. Hutchens and I are not on the same page about such story points as the mandrakes and the Dumbledore-Snape “suicide pact.” I do think, however, that his thoughtful comments, with all its concessions to Mr. O’Brien, will be a much more effective invitation to the Harry Wary among Catholics and conservative Christians to read the books than my own efforts. And that is cause for celebration. (H/T to Perelandra!)