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Dickeye posted:Quick question, why didn't the US get a cover as rad as this There are a lot of different covers for the various versions of each HP book and I'm convinced America got the worst ones. They don't even look good on the bookshelf when you just see the binding.
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Sep 13, 2010 04:48
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Slowpoke! posted:There are a lot of different covers for the various versions of each HP book and I'm convinced America got the worst ones. They don't even look good on the bookshelf when you just see the binding. I dunno, the Italian and French ones supposedly suck. The original Japanese ones are a mess, IMO. The new ones are a little more sleek, but they're ambiguous as gently caress.
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Sep 13, 2010 05:05
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Has there been any word on when Harry Potter ebooks would be available? Some searching tells me Rowling was against them, but is ok now and her agency is feeling it out.
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Sep 13, 2010 06:12
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Fooley posted:Has there been any word on when Harry Potter ebooks would be available? Some searching tells me Rowling was against them, but is ok now and her agency is feeling it out. I can't loving wait to be able to carry all 7 books around on my Kindle 
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Sep 13, 2010 06:24
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Hedrigall posted:I can't loving wait to be able to carry all 7 books around on my Kindle Exactly. Since I found this thread I've been wanting to read through the series, but a lot of my reading is done at work, and I managed to have the entire series except the first book in hardcover. Especially since I just realized I've only read 4-7 once each.
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Sep 13, 2010 06:29
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I also really want Jo to write more in the school books series. We could have Holidays With Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart, Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles by Wilhelm Wigworthy, Hogwarts, A History (new edition edited by Hermione Granger), Advanced Potion Making (annotated by the Half-Blood Prince) and so on. 
Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Sep 13, 2010 |
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Sep 13, 2010 06:33
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LooseChanj posted:That's the way The Magicians did it too. Word. I'm reading that right now and it's pretty great.
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Sep 13, 2010 14:00
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Nerdy question for anyone who has read both UK and US editions of the books. What are the non-textual differences between the editions? For instance, the US books have chapter artwork, which is totally awesome. Also I know that some of the things like notes from Hagrid, etc, are in different fonts to look hand-written. That sort of stuff is just awesome if you ask me Are there other changes like this, for instance, newspaper articles appearing in different fonts?I am considering buying the boxset of the US editions, because I'd like the books with different cover art and I also want to re-read them in the US text with all the changes, to see how much is altered.
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Sep 13, 2010 17:29
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Hedrigall posted:Nerdy question for anyone who has read both UK and US editions of the books. The Hagrid notes are awesome, in book 3 when they receive the letter from him about Buckbeak being taken away the paper is actually tear-stained and the ink is all smeared.
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Sep 13, 2010 17:50
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Hedrigall posted:Nerdy question for anyone who has read both UK and US editions of the books. Yes, articles/news stories are in a slightly smaller text than the regular text and I believe they are written in a different font. Really there isn't a huge difference besides text edits between the UK version and the US. The US is just a bit more well done overall (visually and textually). Hilts fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Sep 13, 2010 |
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Sep 13, 2010 18:48
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...of SCIENCE! posted:The Hagrid notes are awesome, in book 3 when they receive the letter from him about Buckbeak being taken away the paper is actually tear-stained and the ink is all smeared. It's like that in the US version too. Or at least, it is in my version, I could go to some bizarro book store or something. vv Ah, I misunderstood. vv Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Sep 13, 2010 |
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Sep 13, 2010 18:48
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Soy Sauce Beast posted:It's like that in the US version too. Or at least, it is in my version, I could go to some bizarro book store or something. Yeah it's not in the UK edition. The UK edition has literally no stylistic flairs. It's all one font, with letters/articles/etc italicized.
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Sep 13, 2010 18:52
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In addition to what others have said, the first one or two books also change some words. Bogeys is changed to boogers, for instance. I assume much like they thought Americans wouldn't know what a philosopher was  they also figured kids wouldn't get the slang.Later on nobody bothered.
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Sep 14, 2010 03:25
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LividLiquid posted:In addition to what others have said, the first one or two books also change some words. Bogeys is changed to boogers, for instance. I assume much like they thought Americans wouldn't know what a philosopher was The 11 year old me was terribly confused when they dropped all the changes in the second book. I was able to figure out most of the poo poo by context by then, though.
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Sep 14, 2010 03:50
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LividLiquid posted:In addition to what others have said, the first one or two books also change some words. Bogeys is changed to boogers, for instance. I assume much like they thought Americans wouldn't know what a philosopher was No, they thought we wouldn't know what the mythical alchemical bullshit the philosopher's stone was. Apparently they were correct since you didn't get the reference. 
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Sep 14, 2010 03:56
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Why didn't Harry just use parseltongue to tell the Basilisk to stop? I'm assuming it's because he didn't think of it. It seems like it would have worked, though. What with Harry being A: the 7th horcrux and B: alive it seems like he'd have a superior command over it vs. the manifestation from the riddle diary. Has anyone ever asked Rowling about this?
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Sep 14, 2010 10:53
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Vim Fuego posted:Why didn't Harry just use parseltongue to tell the Basilisk to stop? I'm assuming it's because he didn't think of it. It seems like it would have worked, though. What with Harry being A: the 7th horcrux and B: alive it seems like he'd have a superior command over it vs. the manifestation from the riddle diary. Has anyone ever asked Rowling about this? I remember there being a 5-second bit in the film version where Harry started babbling in Parseltongue and Riddle told him that the Basilisk only listens to the heir, but I can't remember if it was in the book. But the whole horcrux vs. horcrux thing does bring up a good point - both Harry and the book harbour just the souls of Voldemort, not his flesh and blood, so they should have equal authority.
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Sep 14, 2010 13:29
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Dimentia posted:I remember there being a 5-second bit in the film version where Harry started babbling in Parseltongue and Riddle told him that the Basilisk only listens to the heir, but I can't remember if it was in the book.
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Sep 14, 2010 16:28
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Obligatory Toast posted:They should, but Harry didn't know that until way later and Voldemort is kind of a fuckwit and never found out about that. The piece of Voldemort wasn't speaking through Harry, Harry isn't the heir, Voldemort is. The only thing that Harry himself gained from Voldemort was parseltongue and a tenuous mental connection, he didn't suddenly become the heir of Slytherin. Gaining powers doesn't change his ancestry. The same thing would've happened with Quirrell, if he tried to control the snake nothing would've happened but if he had let the part of Voldemort that was attached to him speak then the snake would've been controlled.
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Sep 14, 2010 17:10
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For all those asking about Hufflepuffs, I present to you from the BBC radio show "That Mitchell and Webb Sound": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXF4JuA6tcg
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Sep 15, 2010 00:10
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Davros1 posted:For all those asking about Hufflepuffs, I present to you from the BBC radio show "That Mitchell and Webb Sound": Tonks was apparently in Hufflepuff, and she was fairly successful before she went and got herself killed. Also, her story would have been much cooler if it wasn't "falling in love."
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Sep 15, 2010 08:15
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I really really really like Half-Blood Prince so far. Every 'Voldemort Backstory' chapter is awesome, and I really liked how Harry doesn't even show up till chapter 3. It's not that I don't like Harry, I just don't like the Hogwarts boilerplate chapters and the quiddich. The loving quiddich. Last year Harry was being ridiculed and called a liar and a murderer, and this year he just has to put up with being the Captain and he still loving whines about it. I just don't care about the tough homework and oh no double potions and FIFTY POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR OH NO when she hasn't even told us who won for the past 3 years. Why not just shout "Hey I've taken on Voldemort and won like thirty times so why don't you just stfu and let me do my business. K?" I guess my point is that the insertion of adolescent typicality is beyond improbable, and I'm saying this about a book series about loving magic. I like the meat, the Wizarding World backstory meat. And Half Blood Prince is full of it. Also lots of Dumbledore. and yes I know what happens
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Sep 15, 2010 08:44
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FrensaGeran posted:The loving quiddich. Last year Harry was being ridiculed and called a liar and a murderer, and this year he just has to put up with being the Captain and he still loving whines about it. I just don't care about the tough homework and oh no double potions and FIFTY POINTS FROM GRYFFINDOR OH NO when she hasn't even told us who won for the past 3 years. Why not just shout "Hey I've taken on Voldemort and won like thirty times so why don't you just stfu and let me do my business. K?" I'm pretty sure the President whines about his favourite TV show being cancelled, his favourite Basketball team losing or having to pick up his socks too. Meaning, simply because you have important things to care about doesn't mean the trivial ones disappear between saving the world and saving it again. However, this book features the last Quidditch game of the series anyway, with the best commentary to boot. Decius fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Sep 15, 2010 |
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Sep 15, 2010 10:09
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I'll give you a clear example to explain how it's different. I just read a chapter where Harry is about to go out on the pitch to play, and he sees Draco and two girls walking into the castle, and he thinks for a moment "If only I could just say 'gently caress the game' and follow Malfoy, who I know for a fact is trying to murder someone, I could figure it out and probably end this book a couple hundred pages early. Oh well, better catch the snitch! Weeee!" No. gently caress the game. You've just found out you have to battle the most powerful wizard ever ever ever. Why are you even playing at all? You should be training like loving Rocky, hexing large chunks of meat in the Room of Requirement and climbing the Astronomy Tower, raising your fists as you reach the top.
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Sep 15, 2010 10:43
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FrensaGeran posted:I'll give you a clear example to explain how it's different. I just read a chapter where Harry is about to go out on the pitch to play, and he sees Draco and two girls walking into the castle, and he thinks for a moment "If only I could just say 'gently caress the game' and follow Malfoy, who I know for a fact is trying to murder someone, I could figure it out and probably end this book a couple hundred pages early. Oh well, better catch the snitch! Weeee!" Training like a maniac and defeating Voldey: Pretty satisfying. Beating the gently caress out of your school rival at the sport he thinks he's the bomb at in front of a shitload of magical honeys: Way more satisfying. Seriously, though...Why give a poo poo about stuff like this?
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Sep 15, 2010 11:18
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I always look back on the books and say "Why the gently caress doesn't Harry do this instead of this, in this situation?!" But think about your own life, can't you look back on your adolescent self and see all the mistakes you made? The point is, adolescent kids are dumb and inexperienced and their own lives seem a lot bigger and more significant than they are.
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Sep 15, 2010 14:55
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I wasn't bugged by it after three or so books, but the repetition and my incredulity started getting out of hand after book 4. But book 6 is just jam packed with thick exposition and story progression and at this point I wish the books had been called "Albus Dumbledore" and chronicled the discovery and fall of Voldemort and Dumbledore's eventual redemption through the boy who lived. Everything else just gets in the way. Streebs posted:kids are dumb and inexperienced and their own lives seem a lot bigger and more significant than they are. But nope, Sirius gets forgotten by the time he gets to the Burrow and then uh oh quiddich captain! e: I want to amend this with the very emphatic caveat of "I really love these books" and I'm just venting Endless Trash fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Sep 15, 2010 |
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Sep 15, 2010 19:29
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FrensaGeran posted:
But doesn't Harry tell Dumbledore in the beginning of HBP that he's learning to cope with the death of Sirius? Yet still the mere mention of Sirius unsettles Harry. JKR probably should've spent more time on Harry mourning the death, rather than quidditch and whatnot, but I think the happy-fun-time breaks in between the chapters of Voldemort are needed.
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Sep 16, 2010 01:05
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I always enjoyed the quidditch bits, but I suspect that's because I'm a massive sports nerd. Who cares if the scoring system makes no sense: I'm a cricket fan, I'm used to things not making sense. I dunno, I quite enjoyed reading about Harry trying to live a (relatively) normal 16-year-old's life for a bit while he still had the chance. The guy deserved a bit of slack. e: For all the talk of "Why don't wizards have [X piece of muggle equipment]?", for some reason the thing that bugs me most is the lack of ball-point pens and A4 lined paper. Quills and ink pots and rolls of parchment: WHY. e2: well, and Alohamora. Why would a wizard ever use a lock that could be beat by a first-year spell? But yeah, nitpicking. Good books, they've got their flaws but the characterisation's excellent (I think Arthur Weasley's probably my favourite character. Now there's a guy who'd appreciate ball-point pens). Paul.Power fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Sep 16, 2010 |
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Sep 16, 2010 18:17
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Thanks to this thread and the upcoming movie, I started rereading the books... only to be stymied by my girlfriend stealing the second book away from me, because I inspired her to reread them, too.  It's fun to see some stuff in the early books that doesn't come back til near the end - like Harry ducking into a familiar black cabinet in Borgin and Burkes in book 2.
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Sep 16, 2010 19:06
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Paul.Power posted:I always enjoyed the quidditch bits, but I suspect that's because I'm a massive sports nerd. Who cares if the scoring system makes no sense: I'm a cricket fan, I'm used to things not making sense. Anyway, the kind of irrational use of outdated items has been theorized before, Wizards have little to no respect for muggle things. Some of the other inconsistencies people have mentioned in this thread and other discussions deal with objects that had not yet been invented or weren't common place at the time. They forget that the books take place in between the 60s and 90s (60s being when Harry's parents were at Hogwarts and the 90s being when the Voldemort rose again and when Harry was in school. (I realize ballpoint pens were invented long before this time period which may hint towards the want to keep with tradition rather than logic in the series which would explain why they tend to use very outdated methods for certain things.) Hilts fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Sep 17, 2010 |
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Sep 17, 2010 01:25
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Hilts posted:Anyway, the kind of irrational use of outdated items has been theorized before, Wizards have little to no respect for muggle things. This whole phenomenon is just catering to the mistrust of science by claiming that the wisdom gotten from the burning bush is superior because it took those smarty-pants scientists this long to figure out what normal folk have known for ages.
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Sep 17, 2010 14:19
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Paul.Power posted:e: For all the talk of "Why don't wizards have [X piece of muggle equipment]?", for some reason the thing that bugs me most is the lack of ball-point pens and A4 lined paper. Quills and ink pots and rolls of parchment: WHY. If not ballpoint pens how about even just fountain pens? A point of annoyance for me is how Rowling slavishly tries to replicate the British educational system with GSCE/A-levels and OWLS/NEWTS. Which sort of ties into my main frustration at how big the Ministry seems to be. Is it just me or are there only really only three career options for a wizard? Ministry, teach at Hogwarts, or the service industry? I know Rowling is probably trying to make a point about government bureaucracy but it just fits into the problem she seems to have with scale as the books progress.
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Sep 17, 2010 15:52
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Paragon8 posted:Which sort of ties into my main frustration at how big the Ministry seems to be. Is it just me or are there only really only three career options for a wizard? Ministry, teach at Hogwarts, or the service industry? You forgot Quidditch player 
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Sep 17, 2010 16:13
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It's kind of an interesting thing to think about - is if the magical skills of the wizarding community were generally declining. There certainly seems to be a gap between the upper tier wizards and what is learnt in Hogwarts. You also have lines like how most ministry wizards weren't capable of performing a shield charm. Which begs the question where do you go to learn more after Hogwarts? It's bizarre to have a culture where 17 year olds go into adult jobs straight after high school especially when the average lifetime hovers around the century mark. That might be Rowling's statement on higher education maybe? You'd certainly expect someone like Percy to do some kind of advanced learning but he goes straight into the ministry. You can even compare Hermoine who is this generation's smartest student at Hogwarts with someone like Snape at Hogwarts. All Hermione does is rote learning, but Snape as a student was intensely curious and developed his own spells and improved old potions recipes. Paragon8 fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Sep 17, 2010 |
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Sep 17, 2010 19:22
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Paragon8 posted:It's bizarre to have a culture where 17 year olds go into adult jobs straight after high school especially when the average lifetime hovers around the century mark Being an auror is another 3 years of study and testing. And i'm sure there are magical research projects and other junk for post-hogwarts magicians, they just weren't important to the story of a drop-out.
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Sep 17, 2010 19:42
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Paragon8 posted:That might be Rowling's statement on higher education maybe? You really think Rowling was trying to make significant social commentary in these books and that the things you describe aren't just a result of poor world building by her? Again, not to slag on the books, since I enjoyed them, but I really don't think you can look too far into these things and come up with real answers. quote:You can even compare Hermoine who is this generation's smartest student at Hogwarts with someone like Snape at Hogwarts. All Hermione does is rote learning, but Snape as a student was intensely curious and developed his own spells and improved old potions recipes. I think this is just that Rowling didn't want to write these kids to be like super special and great at everything, but instead kind of have them struggle with this and that so it seems more "real". But when it's convenient to have these super awesome magicians in the past, she'll write that in. Again, I don't think she really had these complex social questions about the deterioration of magical learning ability, etc Maybe that's just me, though
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Sep 17, 2010 21:30
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Levitate posted:You really think Rowling was trying to make significant social commentary in these books and that the things you describe aren't just a result of poor world building by her? I agree - looking at pretty much any aspect of the Harry Potter world in depth for more than, like, five minutes, you're going to find something that doesn't make much sense. That's just kind of the way the series is, honestly, no point getting bothered about it. I always wondered how they chose the Minister of Magic, or what his actual role is - but there's no real way to make sense of questions like that, you just kind of have to ignore it (or create lengthy, involved fanon to make sense of it)
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Sep 18, 2010 04:43
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enuma elish posted:I agree - looking at pretty much any aspect of the Harry Potter world in depth for more than, like, five minutes, you're going to find something that doesn't make much sense. That's just kind of the way the series is, honestly, no point getting bothered about it. Such is the problem with writing magic into a modern setting. It has to be really mysterious and truly fantastic to come off as believable, but you can't really have a wizard school and do that. I'm sure someone could go on at length about how it's the line of transition between fantasy and sci-fi that results in suspension of disbelief becoming more difficult, but I'm really quite content to enjoy Harry Potter and explain away the dumb stuff with "a wizard did it."
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Sep 18, 2010 04:52
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So uh, Mark of MRHP's new review is... well...  Personally, I'm up to chapter 23 ("Horcruxes", I love this chapter) of Half-Blood Prince. One thing I've sort of realised on this, my 4th time through this book, is that the story constitutes the most normal, uninterrupted school year Harry has had since year 1. Granted, there is the complication of the cursing of Katie and the poisoning of Ron, but everything carries on like normal for Hogwarts despite that. Every other book, Hogwarts has been under some huge threat or disruption (the Chamber opening in CoS, the Dementors and the threat of Sirius in PoA, the Triwizard Tournament in GoF, and Umbridge's control in OotP). Maybe this relative normalcy of the school year is why a lot of people consider HBP to be quite a bland book. Personally I love it, even though it feels way shorter than the other "big" books of the series. And technically, it is. It's the shortest of the final 4 books. The word count for each book is as follows: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - 76,944 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - 85,141 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - 107,253 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - 190,637 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - 257,045 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - 168,923 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - 198,227 Despite 30k words different between book 6 and 7, the page count is identical for the UK editions. If you look at a random page in each book, you can see how big they made the font size for book 6 to artificially boost the page count. I wonder why they did this? God knows how many trees they would have saved by making the font smaller, thus each book shorter (fact: HBP sold 9 million copies in the first 24 hours, and another ~55 million since) Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Sep 18, 2010 |
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Sep 18, 2010 16:21
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