The HogPro Kanreki Project – Lake and Shed Readings Cuckoo to Career

July 25, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr John Granger and I continue with our Lake and Shed reviews of the twenty-one stories written at least in part by J. K. Rowling. Join us for our celebration of Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday, and her Kanreki, 還暦, or calendar re-birth.

The ‘Lake’ point that Nick explores is the identity of the real Deeby Mac, namely, Di Brooks, Rowling’s former security director and currently her office manager, a veteran with years of experience in the SIB. John’s ‘Shed’ point is his pushback against the idea that Calling wasn’t really the first book in the series because Rowling has said she had the idea for it after Silkworm and only chose it because the case would make her detective famous.

The ‘Lake’ point that Nick reveals is the probable identity of ‘Jenkins,’ the mystery person to whom Strike 2 is dedicated, a revelation consequent to no little detective work (and a very close reading of Louisa May Alcott!). He also discusses some real-life literary infighting in contemporary London that might have been lifted from the pages of Silkworm. John argues that this ur-novel of the series, its point of conception, is Rowling’s not especially opaque guide to how to understand a novelist’s life and to appreciate their work, in short, her first ‘Lake and Shed’ discussion (albeit one embedded in story).

The ‘Lake’ point that Nick explores is Rowling’s personal experience of violence against women and her determination to push back against the misogynist age she believes we have been living in for decades. John details the litany of crimes committed against women in the third Strike novel and suggests that in time, when we have the series as a whole, appreciation of the artistry involved will counter-balance the shock first-time readers feel on entering this boucherie.

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Cuckoo's Calling, Fourth Generation, Nick Jeffery, Substack Post

The HogPro Kanreki Project – Lake and Shed Readings Prince to Vacancy

July 24, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr John Granger and I continue with our Lake and Shed reviews of the twenty-one stories written at least in part by J. K. Rowling. Join us for our celebration of Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday, and her Kanreki, 還暦, or calendar re-birth.

Nick reveals the real life model for Severus Snape, Rowling’s Chemistry teacher at Wydean Comprehensive, and his remarkable story and melancholy end. John reviews Rowling’s version of the so-called ‘Hero’s Journey,’ how she re-makes it into a life-after-death ‘Harry’s Journey’ ten step dance we see in every book — except for Half-Blood Prince with its two chapters before we begin at Privet Drive and its ending without a Dumbledore Denouement or trip to King’s Cross.

John and Nick discuss the ‘Deathly Hallows’ symbol, a triangulated and vertically bisected circle, from both its biographical point of inspiration to its anagogical or sublime depths. Nick reveals Rowling’s story about how she was watching the 1975 John Huston film ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ the night her mother died and that believes the “Masonic tag” of the story-line was her sub-conscious source for the Deathly Hallows ‘“triangular eye.” John thinks Rowling is really reaching here, akin to her claim that the name ‘Hogwarts’ came from a trip to a public garden rather than the Molesworth books. He reviews the five eyes of Deathly Hallows and explains how Rowling embeds both a key to the four-level interpretation of symbols in how characters respond to that image and a model of how we are to interpret and understand her ‘transformed vision’ mission as a writer.

Nick explains all the projects we now know she was working on between 2007 and 2012, the dates of Deathly Hallows and Casual Vacancy’s respective publication dates, as well as the degree to which readers can assume that the novel’s Simon Price is a fictional portrait of her father, Peter Rowling. John describes the three Gospel parables embedded in Casual Vacancy and why he thinks the book was a project the author was working on before the Hogwarts Saga as well as why it reflects a religious crisis akin to Harry’s ‘struggle to believe’ in Deathly Hallows.

Filed Under: Casual Vacancy, Fourth Generation, Nick Jeffery, Substack Post

The HogPro Kanreki Project – Lake and Shed Readings Prisoner to Phoenix

July 23, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr John Granger and I continue with our Lake and Shed reviews of the twenty-one stories written at least in part by J. K. Rowling. Join us for our celebration of Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday, and her Kanreki, 還暦, or calendar re-birth.

Nick shares the London institution of the (k)night bus. Part drunk carriage, part dormitory for the homeless in foul weather, zig-zaging across London between midnight and five in the morning. John shares the Parallel Series Idea (PSI) and compare Prisoner of Azkaban with Robert Galbraith’s Career of Evil.

Nick talks about the trip Rowling made as a teenager to Cornwall as a young woman in which some Quidditch World Cup camping may have been involved and about her core beliefs about bigotry and prejudice. John reviews Rowling’s tagging Goblet as a “crucial” and “pivotal” part of the seven book series and introduces how the ‘story turn’ in a ring composition reflects the beginning and end of the story.

Nick talks about the darkest period in Jo Rowling’s life, namely, her return to the UK from Portugal as a single mother in Edinburgh. With Order of the Phoenix in full nigredo mode John talks literary alchemy.

Filed Under: Fourth Generation, Nick Jeffery, Substack Post

The HogPro Kanreki Project – Lake and Shed Readings of the Entire J. K. Rowling Canon

July 22, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr John Granger and I will begin our Lake and Shed reviews of the twenty-one stories written at least in part by J. K. Rowling. In this introduction to our month long project to celebrate Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday, we explain the Japanese concept of Kanreki, 還暦, or calendar re-birth.

Join John, in his shed in Oklahoma, and me, by my lake in Wales as we kick off this exciting new series.

On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This 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, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling’s twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ 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. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and this birthday project at the first entry in this series of post:

Nick discusses Hogsmeade Comprehensive School, as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry should be properly called, and John explains the ten different genres that Rowling uses in Philosopher’s Stone:

John explores the Freudian parallels that Rowling paints into Chamber of Secrets, and Nick talks about her oldest, and probably best friend Sean Harris, the inspiration for Ron Weasley.

Filed Under: Nick Jeffery, Substack Post

  Double Vision in Sunrise on the Reaping

July 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment

In a recent post about casting announcements for the upcoming film adaption of Sunrise on the Reaping, we focused on characters who are doubles—younger versions of characters from the other books or other pairs. That Hunger Games Novel ...theme–twins, doppelgangers, substitutes, imposters, and pairs—is one that resonates throughout the entire novel and which merits a closer look. So let’s peer into this important feature and spend time with some of the many pairs that Collins includes in her powerful examination of the Games through the eyes of Haymitch Abernathy. Spoilers abound, so if you have not finished reading the novel, you have been warned!

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Filed Under: Elizabeth Baird Hardy, Hunger Games Tagged With: ,