The World of Harry Potter

četvrtak, 21.07.2005.

Pročitala...

Sinoć sam negdje oko 22:30 završila čitati Half-Blood Princea. Dakle, nekih 12 sati čitanja, ne računajući prekide. I mogu zaista reći da je najmračnija, najrazrađenija i najtužnija knjiga serijala do sada. I jaaako sam se iznenadila. Neugodno, naravno...
No kritiku ću svoju dati kad još jednom pročitam, za par dana. Još uvijek sam u blagom šoku...
- 18:54 - Komentari (4) - Isprintaj - #

Warner Brothers otvorio službenu GoF stranicu

Kratko i jasno. Kliknite.
- 18:07 - Komentari (0) - Isprintaj - #

srijeda, 20.07.2005.

Ocjene HBP-a

Mugglenet je sastavio popis kritika HBP-a; možete ih pročitati ovdje, no savjetujem da ipak pričekate s tim dok ne pročitate knjigu. Da vam ne pokvari užitak čitanja. ;)
- 11:20 - Komentari (1) - Isprintaj - #

Napokon!

Eto, napokon sam se i ja dočepala knjige, stigla mi je jutros poštom. Mislim da nikad tako brzo nisam skočila iz kreveta, a to puno govori... :)
Završila sam 5 od ukupno 30 poglavlja. Već sam malčice šokirana. I par puta sam se dobro nasmijala. :D
I'll keep you posted. ;)
- 11:15 - Komentari (0) - Isprintaj - #

ponedjeljak, 18.07.2005.

BBC News - Rowling 'dreading' end of Potter

Author JK Rowling says she expects to begin writing the seventh and final Harry Potter book by the end of 2005.

Speaking to 14-year-old fan Owen Jones, Rowling said she was "dreading" the end, although there would be "a sense of achievement" in finishing the saga.

Owen, who is from Cardiff, was the only UK person to interview the author, after winning a competition.

He spoke to Rowling at Edinburgh Castle as she launched the sixth book - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The interview was broadcast on ITV on Sunday.

"Even though I have known it is coming for the past fifteen years, I have known that the series would end, I think it will still be a shock," said Rowling.

"Conversely, obviously there will be a sense of achievement... I suppose there will be some benefits to not writing Harry Potter books any more. So it is about fifty-fifty really."

Asked why she was so secretive about the Harry Potter plots she said it was not a marketing ploy to make money.

Rowling said: "I gain nothing but the satisfaction of knowing that all my hard work goes to the people for whom it is intended.


"In other words, people who really want to read the books, and I definitely believe that 99.9% of my readership would rather read the books and find out for themselves.

She added that she finds it hard that some people try to spoil the surprise of her books ahead of their release.

"I find it upsetting and disquieting that some elements are so keen on spoilers because it seems such a mean spirited thing to do.

"This is not about money or anything other than the pleasure of reading for people who want to read it."

Rowling, who reportedly wrote the first Harry Potter in a Glasgow cafe, said she also finds it difficult that she can no longer be anonymous.

"One of my regrets would be that I will never again have the pleasure of sneaking into a cafe, any cafe I like, sitting down and diving into my world and no one knowing what I am doing and no one bothering about me and being totally anonymous, that was fantastic," she said.

On the subject of what she will write about when the Harry Potter adventures draw to close, Rowling said she had no idea.

"I get asked a lot whether I would write another series, I don't know because the thing that interests me about Harry Potter was not the fact that it was a series, it was just the story and the subject matter, so I could do a one-off, could do a series, I don't know."

BBC News
- 12:04 - Komentari (1) - Isprintaj - #

Mirror - kritika

18 July 2005
A MUGGLE'S VIEW
By Henry Sutton Books Editor

EVEN before I opened the first page I had a sinking feeling about this, the sixth in the Harry Potter series.

The fifth, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was by general consensus the weakest and the darkest so far.

There were a number of highlights, but it was thin on plot with little sense of direction. And the latest instalment suffers similar traits. Except it's even darker and there's even less plot.

Or rather, what plot there is seems hell-bent on laying the foundations for the seventh and final volume. JK Rowling was never going to maintain the excitement that the first few books generated.

But roll on what has to be the irresistible seventh because - love him or loathe him - everyone will want to know what happens to Harry in the end.


VERDICT: JK's lost the plot.
- 12:00 - Komentari (0) - Isprintaj - #

Intervju s J.K. Rowling

Transkript intervjua s autoricom serijala, emitiran na NBC-u, možete pročitati ovdje.
- 11:55 - Komentari (0) - Isprintaj - #

U 24 sata prodano 6,9 milijuna primjeraka!

Scholastic je objavio da je u samo 24 sata prodano 6,9 milijuna primjeraka knjige Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Samo za usporedbu, prethodni nastavak je prodan u 5 milijuna primjeraka za 24 sata.
- 11:52 - Komentari (0) - Isprintaj - #

J.K. Rowling Hogwarts and all

Članak iz Timea možete pročitati ovdje.
- 11:47 - Komentari (1) - Isprintaj - #

nedjelja, 17.07.2005.

The New York Times o HBP-u

Ako se niste još dočepali knjige, a ne želite si pokvariti čitanje, nemojte pročitati ovaj članak.

Harry Potter Works His Magic Again in a Far Darker Tale
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

In an earlier Harry Potter novel, Sibyll Trelawney, divination teacher, looks at Harry and declares that her inner eye sees past his "brave face to the troubled soul within."

"I regret to say that your worries are not baseless," she adds. "I see difficult times ahead for you, alas ... most difficult ... I fear the thing you dread will indeed come to pass ... and perhaps sooner than you think."

In "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," that frightening prophecy does in fact come true - in a thoroughly harrowing denouement that sees the death of yet another important person in Harry's life, and that renders this, the sixth volume of the series, the darkest and most unsettling installment yet.

It is a novel that pulls together dozens of plot strands from previous volumes, underscoring how cleverly and carefully J. K. Rowling has assembled this giant jigsaw puzzle of an epic. It is also a novel that depicts Harry Potter, now 16, as more alone than ever - all too well aware of loss and death, and increasingly isolated by his growing reputation as "the Chosen One," picked from among all others to do battle with the Dark Lord, Voldemort.

As the novel opens, the wizarding world is at war: Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters have grown so powerful that their evil deeds have spilled over into the Muggle world of nonmagic folks. The Muggles' prime minister has been alerted by the Ministry of Magic about the rise of Voldemort. And the terrible things that Ms. Rowling describes as being abroad in the green and pleasant land of England read like a grim echo of events in our own post-9/11, post-7/7 world and an uncanny reminder that the Hogwarts Express, which Harry and his friends all take to school, leaves from King's Cross station - the very station where the suspected London bombers gathered minutes before the explosions that rocked the city nine days ago.

Harry, who as an infant miraculously survived a Voldemort attack that killed his mother and father, is regarded as "a symbol of hope" by many in the wizarding world, and as he learns more about the Dark Lord's obsession with his family, he realizes that he has a destiny he cannot escape. Like Luke Skywalker, he is eager to play the role of hero. But like Spider-Man, he is also aware of the burden that that role imposes: although he has developed romantic yearnings for a certain girl, he is wary of involvement, given his recognition of the dangers he will have to face.

"It's been like ... like something out of someone else's life, these last few weeks with you," he tells her. "But I can't ... we can't ... I've got things to do alone now."

Indeed, the perilous task Professor Dumbledore sets Harry in this volume will leave him with less and less time for Quidditch and hanging out with his pals Ron and Hermione: he is to help his beloved teacher find four missing Horcruxes - super-secret, magical objects in which Voldemort has secreted parts of his soul as a means of ensuring his immortality. Only when all of these items have been found and destroyed, Harry is told, can the Dark Lord finally be vanquished.

There are a host of other unsettling developments in this novel, too: the Dementors, those fearsome creatures in charge of guarding Azkaban Prison, have joined forces with Voldemort; Draco Malfoy, Harry's sneering classmate who boasts of moving on to "bigger and better things," appears to vanish regularly from the school grounds; the sinister Severus Snape has been named the new teacher of defense against the dark arts; two Hogwarts students are nearly killed in mysterious attacks; and Dumbledore suddenly turns up with a badly injured hand, which he declines to explain. One of the few bright spots in Harry's school life appears to be an old textbook annotated by its enigmatic former owner, who goes by the name the Half-Blood Prince - a book that initially supplies Harry with some helpful tips for making potions.

The early and middle sections of this novel meld the ordinary and the fantastic in the playful fashion Ms. Rowling has patented in her previous books, capturing adolescent angst about boy-girl and student-teacher relations with perfect pitch. Ron and Hermione, as well as Harry, all become involved in romantic flirtations with other students, even as they begin to realize that their O.W.L. (Ordinary Wizarding Level) grades may well determine the course of their post-Hogwarts future. As the story proceeds, however, it grows progressively more somber, eventually becoming positively Miltonian in its darkness. In fact, two of the novel's final scenes - like the violent showdown between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in the last "Star Wars" movie, "Revenge of the Sith" - may well be too alarming for the youngest readers.

Harry still has his wry sense of humor and a plucky boyish heart, but as in the last volume ("Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"), he is more Henry V than Prince Hal, more King Arthur than the young Wart. He has emerged, at school and on the Quidditch field, as an unquestioned leader: someone who must learn to make unpopular decisions and control his impetuous temper, someone who must keep certain secrets from his schoolmates and teachers.

He has become more aware than ever of what he and Voldemort have in common - from orphaned childhoods to an ability to talk Parseltongue (i.e., snake speech) to the possession of matching wands - and in one chilling scene, he is forced to choose between duty to his mission and his most heartfelt emotions. In discovering the true identity of the Half-Blood Prince, Harry will learn to re-evaluate the value of first impressions and the possibility that his elders' convictions can blind them to parlous truths. And in embracing his own identity, he will discover his place in history.

As in earlier volumes, Ms. Rowling moves Harry's story forward by chronicling his adventures at Hogwarts, while simultaneously moving backward in time through the use of flashbacks (via Dumbledore's remarkable Pensieve, a receptacle for people's memories). As a result, this is a coming-of-age story that chronicles the hero's evolution not only by showing his maturation through a series of grueling tests, but also by detailing the growing emotional wisdom he gains from understanding more and more about the past.

In addition to being a bildungsroman, of course, the Harry Potter books are also detective stories, quest narratives, moral fables, boarding school tales and action-adventure thrill rides, and Ms. Rowling uses her tireless gift for invention to thread these genres together, while at the same time taking myriad references and tropes (borrowed from such disparate sources as Shakespeare, Dickens, fairy tales, Greek myths and more recent works like "Star Wars") and making them her own.

Perhaps because of its position as the penultimate installment of a seven-book series, "The Half-Blood Prince" suffers, at moments, from an excess of exposition. Some of Dumbledore's speeches to Harry have a forced, summing-up quality, and the reader can occasionally feel Ms. Rowling methodically setting the stage for developments to come or fleshing out scenarios put in play by earlier volumes (most notably, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," with its revelations about the young Voldemort, a k a Tom Riddle).

Such passages, however, are easily forgotten, as the plot hurtles along, gaining a terrible momentum in this volume's closing pages. At the same time, the suspense generated by these books does not stem solely from the tension of wondering who will die next or how one or another mystery will be solved. It stems, as well, from Ms. Rowling's dexterity in creating a character-driven tale, a story in which a person's choices determine the map of his or her life - a story that creates a hunger to know more about these people who have become so palpably real.

We want to know more about Harry's parents - how they met and married and died - because that may tell us more about Harry's own yearnings and decisions. We want to know more about Dumbledore's desire to believe the best of everyone because that may shed light on whom he chooses to trust. We want to know more about the circumstances of Tom Riddle's birth because that may shed light on his decision to reinvent himself as Lord Voldemort.

Indeed, the achievement of the Potter books is the same as that of the great classics of children's literature, from the Oz novels to "The Lord of the Rings": the creation of a richly imagined and utterly singular world, as detailed, as improbable and as mortal as our own.
- 19:03 - Komentari (1) - Isprintaj - #

petak, 15.07.2005.

Prijevod naslova 2. dio

Upravo sam na Iskonu naišla na članak u kojem se spominje hrvatski prijevod naslova šeste knjige - Harry Potter i princ miješane krvi.
U svakom slučaju bolje nego Harry Potter i princ mutnjak.
- 19:31 - Komentari (1) - Isprintaj - #

CNN "Prince" Report

Fans prepare for 'Prince' release

LONDON, England (AP) -- It's time for Harry Potter to work his midnight magic on Muggles once again.

From Edinburgh's medieval castle to suburban shopping malls, fans were getting ready to dress up, line up and stay up late Friday to nab the first copies of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

It has become publishing's most lucrative ritual: hundreds of British bookstores planned to open just after midnight (2300 GMT), when copies of the schoolboy wizard's latest adventure go on sale.

Thousands of Muggles -- Potter language for humans -- were expected to queue amid heightened security in London, where last week's terrorist bombings cast a shadow over the event.

"We're very much of the message that it's business as usual -- London's open for business and we want to celebrate this book," said John Webb, children's buyer at bookseller Waterstone's, which expects 300,000 people to attend midnight openings at more than 100 stores across Britain.

British publisher Bloomsbury, which expects to sell hundreds of thousands of Potter books this weekend, was gathering 70 competition-winning children from around the world inside the thick stone walls of Edinburgh Castle for a midnight reading by author J.K. Rowling, who lives in the Scottish capital.

Elsewhere, bookshops promised jugglers, fire-eaters, magicians and face-painters to entertain waiting fans eager to solve the hinted-at plot mysteries: Will Harry's teenage friends Ron and Hermione find romance? Which major character will die? What more will Harry learn of his nemesis, the evil Lord Voldemort?

In London, events were muted by the July 7 subway and bus bombings, which killed more than 50 people. Book and magazine chain WH Smith announced it was scrapping a planned midnight launch at King's Cross Station, from whose fictional Platform 9 3/4 Harry catches the train to Hogwarts at the start of each term. At least 26 people died in a bomb blast on a subway near King's Cross on July 7, the deadliest of the day's four attacks.

WH Smith spokeswoman Sarah Hodson said it would be "insensitive and inappropriate" to hold the event at the station. She said the store at King's Cross -- now swarming with uniformed police and wary commuters -- would remain open into Saturday morning so fans could purchase the book.

London's Metropolitan Police said the force was liaising with organizers about policing events at bookstores in the city.

Since Rowling -- then a struggling single mother and aspiring writer -- introduced Harry and his fellow students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to the world in 1997, the books have become a global phenomenon, selling 270 million copies in 62 languages and spawning a series of Hollywood films. Rowling is now the richest woman in Britain, with a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at US$1 billion (euro825 million).

Each book's publication is preceded by months of carefully orchestrated publicity, hype and plot hints, and surrounded by intense security.

Amazon.co.uk has set up a secure 200,000 square foot (18,500 square meter) warehouse to pack the books. Canadian publisher Raincoast sought a court injunction after a store in Vancouver accidentally sold 14 copies of the book last week. A judge ordered the customers not to talk about the book, copy it, sell it or even read it before its official release.

Even the Pope has become an unwitting instrument of Pottermania. German writer Gabriele Kuby, author of "Harry Potter -- Good or Evil?" has claimed Pope Benedict XVI said the books "deeply distort Christianity in the soul." Kuby said the Pope's comments came in letters written in 2003, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The Vatican had no comment on the claim.

Launch events are planned from Manhattan -- where Barnes & Noble is holding a "Midnight Magic" party at its Union Square store -- to Mexico City, where the Libreria Gandhi book store scheduled a midnight sale and a daylong Potter festival on Saturday, even though the book will be available only in English.

Some have suggested the Potter spell may be fading. The gap between books -- the last, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," was published two years ago -- means many early Potter fans are now young adults whose interest may have waned.

However, sales remain robust. More than 1.4 million copies have been ordered through online retailer Amazon; WH Smith said it had received 500,000 advance orders, compared to 280,000 for "Order of the Phoenix." Publication has sparked a now-traditional price war, with many chain retailers selling the book for about half the 16.99 pounds (US$29.95, euro25) cover price.

U.S. publisher Scholastic is releasing more than 10 million copies. Waterstone's predicts 2 million copies will be sold in Britain and 10 million worldwide in the first 24 hours.

Al Greco, a publishing professor at Fordham University in New York, said sales remained strong in part because "the target audience runs from juveniles through adults, which didn't initially take place with the first couple of books."

Amazon reported that advance orders of the "adult" edition -- identical inside but bearing a more muted cover than the children's version -- were up 17 percent from the last book.

"I think the books just really spark children's imaginations -- and adults', too," said Waterstone's buyer Webb. "They're just really good stories at the core."
- 15:47 - Komentari (0) - Isprintaj - #

Harry Potter i Lord of The Rings - još jedna sličnost

Na Mugglenetu sam početkom mjeseca naišla na jednu zanimljivost, koja je jedna od mnogih sličnosti koje spajaju djela dvaju autora - J. K. Rowling i J. R. R. Tolkiena.

Naime, nakon što Harry Potter nije dobio prolaznu ocjenu mnogih engleskih izdavača, Christopher Little, autoričin agent, je poslao kopiju rukopisa Nigelu Newtonu (Bloomsbury Books). Umjesto da sam pročita knjigu, Newton je proslijedio prvo poglavlje svojoj osmogodišnjoj kćeri Alice. Tek nakon što ga je ona nagovorila da pročita cijelu knjigu, Newton je shvatio vrijednost tog djela. Cijelu priču možete pročitati ovdje.

Slično se desilo i s Tolkienovim Hobitom, odnosno Gospodarom prstenova. Tolkien je Hobita napisao za svoju djecu, da ih nečim razonodi za dugih jesenskih večeri, ali kad su ga djeca oko 1936. prerasla, ostao je u njegovoj radnoj sobi rukopis, otipkan ali nedovršen. Za njega je, između ostalih, znala i njegova bivša studentica Elaine Griffiths, pa ga je spomenula urednicima Allen & Unwina. Oni su zamolili Tolkiena da ga dovrši, i onda priču proslijedili Rayneru Unwinu, predsjednikovu desetogodišnjem sinu i vjerojatno najstrožem kritičaru. Dječak je javio da je priča uzbudljiva i da će se svidjeti "svoj djeci od pet do devet godina". Knjiga je objavljena 1937. godine, zajedno s osam Tolkienovih vlastitih ilustracija i dvjema kartama. Hobit je doživio munjevit uspjeh, i već dogodine dobio nagradu za dječju knjigu godine. (Sličnu sudbinu je imao i Harry Potter, osvojivši između ostalih i nagradu British Book Awards Chidren's Book of the Year.)
Alen & Unwin je Hobitov nastavak čekao punih 12 godina. Rayner Unwin (sad već student na Oxfordu) je još jednom upitan za mišljenje, pa je izjavio da je to "briljantna i napeta priča".

Interesantno...
- 14:16 - Komentari (0) - Isprintaj - #

Papa i Harry Potter

Yahoo! News prenosi Reutersovu vijest. (13.7.2005.)

Pope Benedict believes the Harry Potter books subtly seduce young readers and "distort Christianity in the soul" before it can develop properly, according to comments attributed to him by a German writer.

Gabriele Kuby, who has written a book called "Harry Potter - Good or Evil," which attacks J.K. Rowling's best selling series about the boy wizard, published extracts from two letters written to her by Benedict in 2003, when he was a cardinal.

Kuby, a devout Catholic, had sent him a copy of her Potter critique and he wrote to thank her, according to a passage from one of the letters published in German on her Web site.

"It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because these are subtle seductions which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly," Benedict wrote, according to the excerpt.

A Vatican official was not immediately able to comment on the remarks attributed to Benedict, who is currently on holiday in the Alps. Reuters was unable to reach Kuby by telephone.

The sixth book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," is due to be published on July 16, with millions of copies already shipped to stores around the world.

After Benedict was named Pope in April, his own writings shot to the top of the German book charts and dislodged the most recent book in the Potter series from number one.

The Vatican had previously appeared to approve of the books, saying they helped children to understand the difference between good and evil.

Kuby maintains the opposite, listing among 10 arguments against Harry Potter: "The ability of the reader to distinguish between good and evil is overridden by emotional manipulation and intellectual obfuscation."

In one of the letters, Benedict gives Kuby permission to publicise his opinion.

"Somehow your letter got buried in the large pile of name-day, birthday and Easter mail," he writes.

"Finally this pile is taken care of, so that I can gladly allow you to refer to my judgment about Harry Potter."

Vatican officials earlier this year condemned Dan Brown's Catholic conspiracy bestseller "The Da Vinci Code."

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone in March blasted the book as an absurd distortion of history, saying it was full of cheap lies and Catholic bookstores should take it off their shelves.


Prijevod stiže uskoro...
- 13:30 - Komentari (1) - Isprintaj - #

srijeda, 06.07.2005.

SMRT I HBP, prema predviđanjima Mugglenet.com-a

Mugglenet.com

Već smo navikli na smrt u HP knjigama. Što nam donosi šesti nastavak, predviđaju dopisnici Mugglenet.com-a. Naravno, ovo su samo razmišljanja, ništa se još ne zna... :-)






Rachael, Editorials

Any deaths?: Ya.

If yes, how many and who?: Two, though I'm not sure who. Hagrid and McGonagall seem likely, though.


Sheri, Info Section

Any deaths?: Absolutely.

If yes, how many and who?: I don’t like making death predictions -- I’m rarely right. But here is a small list of who I think is at “high risk” -- Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin, Albus Dumbledore, Bellatrix Lestrange, Ludo Bagman, Cornelius Fudge, Sybill Trelawney, Percy Weasley, Lucius Malfoy, Winky, and Petunia Dursley. I think the trio will survive intact at least until book 7, and most likely until the end of the series.


Tom, General Content

Any deaths?: What would a war be without any deaths?

If yes, how many and who?: Well, once again, this is a war, so there will surely be more deaths than any of the other books. I'm sure there will be hundreds as Voldemort and his supporters once again try to scare the wizard world into submission, but those mostly will be faceless deaths -- at the most, friends or family of those at Hogwarts that aren't one of the main characters. Now rumors of Dumbledore dying have been persistent, but I think that if Dumbledore dies in this book, he will have certainly left a pensieve of some sort to let Harry know of his great plans and anything else Harry would want to know. I'm about 75/25 in favor of Dumbledore surviving this book though. I can also see Hagrid dying trying to protect Harry, but that's just a suspicion, too. To tell the truth, I can't think of anything more than just suspicions to lead me to who will die.


Rach, Info Section

Any deaths?: I'm afraid so...

If yes, how many and who?: I seriously have no idea who might just die in this book. I do have a feeling that it might just be someone very important -- either Dumbledore or Lupin, I'm afraid. Death is more than likely to occur between the bad and the good, I believe.


K’lyssa, General Content

Any deaths?: Unfortunately, yes.

If yes, how many and who?: I don’t think there will be quite as many deaths in HBP as there will be in book 7, however I do think one of the last remaining Marauders (Peter or Remus) may kick the bucket. I don’t see more than two or three characters dying in HBP, though.


Andrew, General Content and News

Any deaths?: Without a doubt.

If yes, how many and who?: I wouldn't be surprised that this time we saw more than one person kicking the can. What looks to be a more intense book than any other, I can only imagine what's going to happen throughout the story. There's gotta be one, and based on news articles I'm going to have to go with Seamus getting the cut as choice one. As for other people, I could see Dumbledore dying after a fight between him and Voldemort. Ron is a possibility because he's very vulnerable to anything. I could also see Neville dying because, let's face it, the kid is weak and even more vulnerable than Ron.


Ciaran, General Content and News

Any deaths?: Probably.

If yes, how many and who?: I think Hagrid might die. I think so because Jo hasn't talked about how the death in HBP (if there is any) as much as she did before the release of OotP, which could possibly mean that it's not as important. And, in my opinion, Hagrid isn't quite as important to the plot as Sirius is. I think he might die trying to recruit more giants.


Andy, Info Section

Any deaths?: Again, yes.

If yes, how many and who?: The darkness of the series is building and I think it's significant that Voldemort is attacking and destroying anyone who Harry has regarded as family. First his parents, then Sirius. I think it's all designed to add to his hate and anger enough to make him strong enough to kill the Dark Lord off when the time comes (assuming of course that this is his job rather than Neville's). This places anyone who Harry sees as family under threat. Now Sirius is gone, this is really the Weasleys. Sad to say, but Molly and Arthur are looking shaky for me. Ron is almost family too, but he'll survive right to the end in my opinion. I'd be surprised if his whole family makes it. Despite whatever rumours we've heard, it makes no sense to me for Dumbledore to die in book 6. Given his views on sacrifice and death, it seems likely that he will meet his doom in book 7, giving his own life in order for Harry to defeat the Dark Lord, and doing so quite happily at that. For him to die before the grand finale seems pointless so I'm not going with that one.


Sara, Editorials

Any deaths?: Sadly, yes.

If yes, how many and who?: I don’t believe there will be as many deaths in HBP as there will be in book 7, however, the death to come in HBP will feel as bad as the deaths of many. Sadly, I believe this will be Dumbledore’s last appearance, at least physically, in the series. He will spend this installment preparing Harry for the battle that he knows he will not be present for. Dumbledore knows more than he divulges, and rightly so, as he never misses a trick.


Laura, General Content

Any deaths?: Ah, the ugliness the power-hungry cause when unjustified war is called upon. You can count on it.

If yes, how many and who?: I can't be sure, but I know I'll die if Remus does!
- 13:49 - Komentari (0) - Isprintaj - #

nedjelja, 03.07.2005.

Severus Snape - Half-Blood Prince?

Petnaestogodišnja Amerikanka Natalie Jacobsen je provela godinu dana pišući svoju verziju šestog nastavka Harryja Pottera. Knjiga ima impresivnih 804 stranica, a Natalie ovog tjedna putuje u Škotsku u nadi da će JK Rowling pročitati njezinu verziju priče, u kojoj je half-blood prince - Severus Snape.
Malobrojni sretnici u ovom trenutku znaju tko je HBP, pa nam ostaje samo da nagađamo i dalje, dok se ne dočepamo sredinom ovog mjeseca te knjige koju svi fanovi HP-a toliko željno iščekuju, ili pak njezinog prijevoda sredinom listopada.
No, ajmo u međuvremenu malo promotriti mogućnost da je Severus Snape HBP. Neću previše o osnovnim karakternim crtama profesora Snapea; znamo da je omražen od strane svih učenika u Hogwartsu osim Slytherina, da ima brilijantan um, da predaje Napitke iako mu je želja predavati nešto više, da se blago rečeno nije slagao s Harryjevim ocem, i tako dalje... No ono što je bitno naglasiti jest da je njegova obitelj "pure-blood". Otac mu je bio vrlo emotivno hladan i nasilan, s čime se ni mladi Severus ni njegova majka nisu mogli nositi. Kada je primljen u Hogwarts već je znao mnoge čarolije koje čak učenicima na sedmoj godini predstavljaju problem, što svjedoči o njegovom geniju.
Još uvijek nije potpuno jasno (bar ne meni) da li Half-Blood Prince znači "princ mutnjak" (meni se, kao što sam već spominjala taj ternim "mutnjak" kao prijevod pojma "half-blood" uopće ne sviđa, no u nedostatku boljeg termina moram rabiti ovaj) ili "princ mutnjaka" ili pak nešto treće, no to nećemo znati bez konteksta. Naravno, mogao bi biti i jedno i drugo, ali nećemo ulaziti u to...
Dakle, Snape je odrastao u "čistokrvnoj" obitelji, te postoji samo jedna mogućnost a da on doista bude HBP - da je posvojen. Možda mlada autorica na to cilja, no to ne možemo saznati jer ne namjerava objaviti svoju knjigu. Za sada.
Do 16. 7. nam samo ostaje nagađati...
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