On Thursday night last week, James Thomas, Travis Prinzi, and I, the Potter Pundits collectively, did our first live PotterCast program with video feed. It was a lot of fun, as always, with the usual laughs, insights, interruptions, and graciousness of three friends talking about books they love.

The format of the show, fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you feel about listening to some one else talk at length), does not allow any of us to explore any particular topic at much depth. We’re volleying like a three-way tennis match rather than running marathons solo. I hope this week, consequently, to write out two or three things about names here that I could only touch on in the show last Thursday before we veered off what I was trying to get at (to talk about goblin names and flower references and other fascinating stuff we had to squeeze in).

Before I do that, though, I wanted to share a wonderful letter I received this week on the subject of names from Miriam Greenwald (great name!). She’s reading Harry Potter’s Bookshelf and wrote to share what I think is a key insight about the humor and satirical quality of Mrs. Rowling’s names most Americans almost certainly don’t ‘get.’ [Read more…]

Live-Stream Video PodCast Tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern time! Travis Prinzi, author of Harry Potter and Imagination, James Thomas, author of Re-Potting Harry Potter, and John Granger — that would be me — author of The Deathly Hallows Lectures, will be discussing the meaning of names in Harry Potter.

What is with all that alliteration and reduplication after all?

Tune in tonight to find out!

James Thomas, Travis Prinzi, and I talked earlier this year about the central place of imagination in Harry Potter. As Travis explains in his introduction, we recorded this show very soon after our Luna Lovegood segment — just about the time PotterCast decided to go with live, video Potter Pundits discussions for their show. That format will start this Thursday night when the Pundits talk about “Names in Harry Potter.” but the move to live video meant this audio-only segment ‘On Imagination’ was lost.

Almost lost. Travis has just posted it at TheHogsHead.org and it’s a keeper. Folks at TheHogsHead are saying that the Pundits don’t get more profound than this. Let me know what you think!

There are pockets of resistance to Harry Potter to this day, if, post Deathly Hallows, the equivalent of a surrender at Appomattox seems to have been signed and sealed — despite the absence of, say, Richard Abanes or Michael O’Brien at the ceremony. Here is Mark Shea’s critique of the latest Catholic Harry Hater, a Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, a Catholic priest and author who asserts that reading Harry Potter has helped “educate younger children in the language and symbolism of the occult,” an education that will “inundate” exorcists with work in the coming decades. [Read more…]

Linda McCabe was one of the first Harry Potter mavens at ‘Harry Potter for Grown-Ups’ to read Hidden Key to Harry Potter after its publication back in 2003. She wrote me to let me know where she thought I was right and brilliant, where she thought I was wrong and way off-base, and to make me aware of the many detail mistakes I had made. Linda was a founder of the League of Obsessive Nit-Pickers (L.O.O.N.) and Hidden Key must have been painful reading for her in regard to spelling and Capitalization errors — unless, of course, numerous nits to picks make reading such a book a delight. We have corresponded since that time about ‘shipping, alchemy, Renaissance epic (especially Orlando Furioso), and many other fandom and literary subjects. A writer herself, Ms. McCabe has never failed to stretch my thinking on whatever subject we’re discussing. I’m as grateful to her for this quality of our correspondence as I am for the several times she has prevented my making (another) public gaffe on a Potter subject and for those times she has ‘taken my back’ when fandom critics have said bizarre things about my books.

My high regard for Ms. McCabe’s opinion makes her positive review of Spotlight, posted Sunday at her ‘Musings of a L.O.O.N.’ website, only that much more meaningful to me. As I work to put together my Bree Tanner thoughts for a longish post here, this was a much needed boost!