This thread is a focused discussion group. Please see the first post below for the current topic and upcoming book discussions. While natter will inevitably happen, we encourage you to treat this like a virtual book club and try to keep your posts in that spirit.
By consensus, this thread is reopened specifically to discuss Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It will be closed again once that discussion has run its course.
***SPOILER ALERT***
- **Spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows lie here. Read at your own risk***
Nilly, that was fascinating to read. I especially loved the parallel drawn between Voldemort's solitude and Harry's strong friendships. As a certain blond vampire once said, "A Slayer with family and friends. That sure as hell wasn't in the brochure."
I forget who mentioned this upthread, but I now really want one of the major showdowns in Book 7 to be Harry defending the Dursleys from attack by Voldemort or the Death Eaters. It would make sense to have one of the final conflicts be over Muggles, given the sharp good guys/bad guys split over how Muggles and halfblood wizards should be treated. (As a side note: am I being weirdly oversensitive in feeling that "halfblood" is a kind of derogatory term itself? Is there a more positive term in the Potterverse for a witch or wizard of mixed ancestry?)
Or she could have been talking about his Death Eater work during Voldemort's first uprising.
True.
With HP talk slowing down (well, a little), is there any consensus on how we're going to pick the next book?
I was interested in the possibility of Sun Tzu's
The Art of War.
....but, that doesn't really help with "how we're going to pick the next book" unless "how" means "Raq assigns the reading."
Nilly! That was very interesting to read.
Meanwhile, in Australia they've discovered a way to use HP to teach Mendelian Genetics!.
I was rereading Goblet of Fire last night, and I started wondering if maybe the Sorting Hat couldn't be a Horcrux. I just hadn't realized that it had been Gryffindor's before he enchanted it. Over the years, the hat has probably been guarded less strictly than Gryffindor's sword.
Yeah, I was wondering why the sorting hat didn't fall under the "don't trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain" rule.
An HBP A-Z in the style of Gorey. Or at least, the first 6 pictures of her WIP.
FABulous. Spoilery, obviously.
Honestly, it's kind of a bad rule. Half the scenery of the wizarding world thinks for itself without a visible brain. I mean, what about the Ministry of Magic phone booth, with its label-making technology?
I mean, what about the Ministry of Magic phone booth, with its label-making technology?
I don't see that as really thinking for itself. It's just recording information. The sorting hat actually makes decisions and gives advice.
It's just recording information.
If I'm recalling correctly, it makes some judgment calls. But I don't have OOtP with me, so I can't give evidence.
From the JKR interview linked somewhere above:
ES: Has the sorting hat ever been wrong?
JKR: No.
ES: Really?
JKR: Mm-mm. Do you have a theory?
ES: I have heard a lot of theories.
JKR: [laugh] I bet you have. No. [laugh] Sorry.
MA: That's interesting, because that would suggest that the voice comes more from a person's own head than the hat itself -
JKR: [makes mysterious noise]
MA: And that maybe when it talks on its own it comes from -
JKR: The founders themselves.
