Happy Kindle Harry Potter Day! What a Cornucopia of Choices!

March 28, 2012 by 5 Comments

I know it’s Hunger Games month here at HogwartsProfessor, but as the site name suggests, we’re serious readers of Harry Potter here first and last so there’s no way the big news of Kindle availability for all seven Hogwarts Saga titles is going unheralded. You can read here about the crush to buy that all but crashed Amazon’s Kindle store when the buy possibility for the first books went viral in fandom. The first three books in the series are selling for $7.99 and the four bigger novels at $9.99, Amazon’s ceiling for the highest percentage of sales being returned to publisher as profit (though it is very unlikely that Ms. Rowling isn’t taking home almost everything she makes there…).

In a remarkable case of serendipity, all three of Unlocking Press’ companion books that open up the world’s best selling novels in unexpected ways, to profound depth, with no little humor became available on Amazon Kindle on the same day as Ms. Rowling’s work! Check out Harry Potter Smart Talk ($4.99), God and Harry Potter at Yale ($6.99), and Harry Potter for Nerds ($8.99), all three of which, an Unlocking House-elf tells me, will be available on B&N Nook in the next few days.

So, if you’re an e-reader as well as a serious reader and you’ve been waiting for years to download Harry’s adventures and revisit them one by one on your preferred device, or if Grandmom with myopia has Kindle Fire and can now find out ‘what all the fuss is about,’ get ye to PotterMore or Amazon and have a great day. If you’ve been looking for the electronic versions of these commentaries from some of the best and brightest Potter Pundits in and out of Harry Potter fandom, today is your first chance to get them at e-low-prices!

And for Hunger Games friends who think Harry Potter is “so yesterday,” your older sibling’s or youngest child’s thang, then the Kindle store special has just what you need, too. All three of Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking Trilogy are $.99 each today, 28 March, and you want to read these books, believe me. Horror meets dystopia on a Sci Fi planet nightmare — with a boy, a girl, and his dog chased by men made mad by universal mind reading… Almost as much fun as a Reaping and Hunger Games!

Have a great Kindle day whatever you’re downloading and reading!

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Filed Under: Hog Pro Notes

Gamesmakers Hijack Story: Capitol Wins Hunger Games Again

March 27, 2012 by 65 Comments

Welcome to those new readers who are checking out this “bookish” site after reading about it in the LA Times this morning!

Taking a tally of those who love and those who loathe the film adaptation of the first novel in Suzanne Collins’ Panem Trilogy, the folks who are voting in the negative are a decided minority, and, frankly, rather apologetic to the Bolsheviks (Russian for “the majority”) who are as often as not enthusiastic, even evangelical, about their feelings. HogwartsProfessor, of course, is something of a contrarian site and much more about books than film. I know serious readers around the world check in here for the view-in-opposition to the critical mass and memes.

So I will oblige them today with two ideas I’m guessing they won’t read anywhere else, ideas many of you probably won’t like, especially if you’re as enthusiastic about the film as a fictional Capitol stylist discussing the real Hunger Games. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hunger Games

Lionsgate Hunger Games Film A Satisfactory Movie Experience; Cinema Treatment Leaves Serious Readers Hungry for More

March 24, 2012 by 8 Comments

Two years ago, I read The Hunger Games for the first time and decided I would start using the novel as part of my Expository Writing courses at Mayland Community College. On March 23, I had the great pleasure of seeing the film adaptation of the novel on opening day in the company of my students and colleagues at a special showing at the great old Yancey Theater in Burnsville, NC, just up the road from where large portions of the movie were filmed. Though I took notes the whole time, much to the amusement of my students (who laughed at the dandelions in my braid, too), I won’t share all of my many thoughts on the movie, though there will be spoilers for non-readers (Not many of those here, anyway, I imagine!). Join me after the jump to see what aspects of the film I (and my fellow MCC readers) found most satisfactory, and what left us feeling unsatisfied. [Read more…]

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

So You’ve Seen the Hunger Games Film: What Do You Think?

March 23, 2012 by 45 Comments

I’m just back from the theater and I want to open the discussion of the movie with an open forum, meaning I won’t pre-set the conversation with my own thoughts, and two sets of questions you can answer or disregard:

  • First Set:

Best Moment? Worst Moment?

  • Second Set:

Biggest Departure from the Sense or Detail of the Book that Upset You?

Most Delightful Capture of the Sense or Detail of the Novel that Made Your Day?

Have at it! You’re welcome, of course, to share all your thoughts about the LionsGate film. If you haven’t seen the movie, read on at your own risk!

Filed Under: Hunger Games

Around the Blogosphere: Three ‘Games’ Writers Worth Reading

March 22, 2012 by 2 Comments

I’m working on a longish post about the structures of The Hunger Games, their nine parts, their three books, and the series taken as a whole, so I apologize for the relative fluff I’ve been posting in our month of Panem Pandemonium here at Hogwarts Professor. The better stuff takes longer to write, as you’d guess.

In anticipation of that writing, though, and as something of an apology for my neglect, here are links to writers that are doing some heavier lifting or just fun writing about Hunger Games as literature and transformative experience: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Hunger Games