The JKR 60th Birthday Party Kanreki Celebration Index: Links and Blurb summaries of the 31 Lake and Shed Conversations of Rowling’s Life and Work in July 2025

August 5, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Last month, Nick Jeffery and I logged a marathon of Kanreki ‘Lake and Shed’ posts at our Substack site in celebration of Rowling’s life and work at her 60th birthday. Nick has been re-posting links to that work here at the weblog and now I have assembled below an easy-to-access-and-reference single place for readers to find any part of this fun series. Enjoy!

Introduction to the Kanreki Project

On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, celebrated her 60th birthday. This specific celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, 還暦, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, read through Rowling’s more than twenty published works and reviewed them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ she said in 2019 and 2024 is the source of her inspiration and the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age.

Join us after the jump for the complete compendium of the Harry Potter, Cormoran Strike, Fantastic Beast, ‘Stand Alone’ stories, and Golden Thread posts! [Read more…]

Filed Under: C. S. Lewis, Casual Vacancy, Christmas Pig, Cormoran Strike, Cursed Child, Fourth Generation, Golden Threads, Literary Alchemy, Narrative Misdirection, Plot Points, Pregnancy Trap, Psychomachia, Ring Composition, Substack Post, The Ickabog

Why the Harry Potter Books are Better

May 26, 2017 by 22 Comments

 

“Professor Strand, which is your favorite Harry Potter movie?” a student asked recently as class began.

“I’m sorry,” I replied, “did you ask, ‘which is my favorite Harry Potter BOOK?’”

“Oh, yeah, right. Which book,” she said, unfazed. A few students murmured their understanding of her error, but most simply waited to see how much class time the question would chew up (a favorite pastime of my students: baiting instructor into digressive pop culture conversation).

I wasn’t altogether surprised by her phrasing, as I had encountered the same movies-as-primary attitude in a college-aged Potter fan just a few weeks before, as I attended a collegiate Muggle Quidditch tournament. Seeking an understanding of the viability of Quidditch on its own terms, I had asked one of the players if everyone on her Quidditch team was a Harry Potter fan, or if some players simply played for love of the sport. She informed me most were indeed big Potter fans, but there were one or two players who, she said, despairing of their poor taste, “haven’t seen any of the movies!” (Their attention to the books: not mentioned.) [Read more…]

Filed Under: Deathly Hallows Discussion Points, Emily Strand, Movie Thoughts, MuggleNet Academia, Plot Points, Traditional Symbolism Tagged With: , , , , ,

Great Plotting Blunders #1: Regulus Black

August 12, 2009 by 19 Comments

One complaint I have heard about Hogwarts Professor is that I don’t post many items that are critical of Ms. Rowling’s writing. I think that’s fair criticism. My job for the last seven years has been to explain to folks who believe the writing is trash and the books “slop” how the books succeed, which is to say, how Ms. Rowling’s artistry and meaning are responsible for Potter Mania.

I find conversations like this one at The Hog’s Head about the lack of grieving time for Harry, in which readers discuss how this isn’t that much of a problem, more interesting than ones where folks look down their noses at “obvious failings” in plot and characterization.

But there are some problems worth discussing. And we should talk about them here. Because I’m not very good at this, though, I will hand the blog reins today to two Potter Experts from the Debt Coast, Wendy and the Red Hen. Their subject: the critical and failed plot points of Regulus Black’s sacrificial death and the Locket Horcrux. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Deathly Hallows Discussion Points, Plot Points

Guest Post: Mad-Eye Moody — Allegorical Figure?

October 20, 2008 by 2 Comments

Mail Bag Annex this week: I just received a great letter that I think deserves its own thread. First, the writer says s/he loved my book. Second, s/he pointed out an obvious error in an argument I made in such a way that I could walk away from it without feeling I’d lost a limb. Third, s/he advances an argument I think is flawed but serious enough to deserve your attention and discussion. Letters from and meeting serious readers are the best part of Potter punditry; I look forward to reading your responses to this reader’s suggestion that Mad-Eye Moody is an allegorical stand-in for… well, you’ll have to read the letter yourself. I’ll post my response(s) in a few days. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes, Plot Points

The House of Gaunt: Is it from ‘Vanity Fair’?

September 12, 2008 by 9 Comments

This morning I received a note from Mr. Jerry Bowyer, a long time correspondent on Harry Potter subjects. Mr. Bowyer is a remarkable man, who, at the height of the Witchcraft Controversy, said publicly and without hedge in his newspaper columns and television and radio shows that Ms. Rowling’s books were the gateway to English Literature rather than to the occult. This took no little prescience and courage when his readers and listeners were those least disposed at the time to hear that sort of thing.

He wrote today on another matter but mentioned in an aside that “Susan and I just had an interesting conversation about ‘the dark mark’ which is found in the Gaunt family in William Thackerey’s Vanity Fair.” I am not a Thackeray reader, alas, but thought HogPro readers might be as interested as I was in this potential hat-tip and key to the Gaunt family cryptonym as well as a pointer to the ‘Dark Mark’ of Voldemort. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Plot Points