Hogwarts Professor

I am buried in final preparations for my mini-tour of the Midwest this week and writing Harry Meets Hamlet and Scrooge, a book I say I am writing in this old post, so I won’t be writing any giant pieces on Epigraphs or Elizabeth Goudge until I get back. I found this post in my WordPress dashboard, however, that you might find amusing. It is the post I wrote on the original Hogwarts Professor web site (not a web log) after the Grossman and Spartz-Anelli interviews had been published in the summer we first read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It doesn’t have imbedded links but if you want to look back and have a good laugh at predictions made with confidence that didn’t turn out, this should make your day. Have fun!

CS Lewis as a Goth with Cleavage? C’mon

The Remarkable Joanne Rowling Interviews after Half Blood Prince‘s release

The fanfare surrounding the release of the penultimate Harry Potter adventure, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (HP6), on 16 July may have drowned out the explosive news released in the days following Midnight Madness Parties around the globe. The five interviews given by Joanne Rowling, however, one each to Time magazine and the NBC television morning show, The Today Show, and three others to children fans of the books, have much of fandom reeling and Harry Haters crowing. This isn’t the Joanne Rowling anyone thought they knew except perhaps for those who always knew she wasn’t a “goodie-goodie.” [Read more…]

130 college teams and 16 high schools but only 14 will be competing 26 October at Middlebury College for the World Cup. Read about the Emerson team here and the tournament at Middlebury here.

It’s out! I haven’t got a copy yet. I put up this thread for you to talk about it with other All-Pro’s.

Let me confess that when I read Ms. Rowling’s description of Tales of Beedle the Bard in the Sotheby’s Auction Catalogue that I didn’t think to enter a bid. I doubt those who had the money to enter that fray with a hope of winning jumped in because of what she said about the book, either, but there is an interesting question for us to discuss that is hidden away in her essentially unnecessary book description (what could she have written to make buyers more interested? less interested?). It’s near the end: [Read more…]