Books Blog: English Literature & Linguistics

Reading is Sexy

Posted in Book News by Elliott Back on June 5th, 2009.

I have to repost these three photos of Bar Refaeli–israeli model–nude and scribbled on in Esquire magazine:

This is a promo for Stephen King’s new novella Morality, which will appear in the July 2009 Esquire. It’s probably going to be well worth reading!

Harry Potter Sequels in the Works

Posted in Book News, Listmania by Elliott Back on July 23rd, 2007.

After selling 8.3 million copies in the US in just 24 hours, Harry Potter 7 is billed as the “the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling’s magical series.” We, however, having read the novel, could not agree less with J.K. Rowling and her publisher Scholastic’s publicity-drumming campaign of artificial supply restriction. For we believe that there will be more Harry Potter novels in the future.

Now, if you haven’t finished the series yet, go away because we might ruin the ending!

harry-potter-covers.jpg
A mashup of HP covers

There are two reasons that an author continues a series. One is the fun of writing the characters he’s dreamed into life. The other is money. For JK Rowling, Harry Potter offers her both opportunities, a temptation that we believe will be too hard to resist.

One of the Guardian Book blogs argues the financial point indirectly. They claim that over time the Harry Potter series will generate decreasingly exponential interest, and thus revenue. They hold out for a bright spot, but it’s true that Harry Potter is a series of big bangs and a short “long tail.”

The real indicator is that Harry Potter is still alive at the end of HP7. That last chapter, 19 years in the future, indicates that the world of Muggles and Magic still exists in basically the form it had before Voldemort emerged. The whole point of the Harry Potter series is a fight against evil, and once that evil is vanquished–as it is in HP7 without lasting consequence–the world returns to normal, fertile grounds for a sequel. After all, why introduce us to Harry and Ginny’s spawn unless you plan to develop them in the future?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows SPOILERS!!!

Posted in Book News by Elliott Back on June 21st, 2007.

Check this out, someone got a 0day copy of HP7 through some nefarious means and has released these spoilers:

  • Hagrid was killed by Snape in the attempt of ambush Hermione and Ron
  • Voldemort killed Hermione.
  • Harry came up, killed all the bad guys and Hogwarts against became a good place to stay and have fun.
  • Draco Malfoy started to create Horcrux

Interesting. He claims to have infiltrated Bloomsbury Publishing with an email exploit he used to snag the file. But, his predictions are extremely generic and could be ripped from any fanfic forum. Do you believe him?

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