I’ve been waiting more than seven years for what happened last night. Before putting my son to bed, I opened up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (the new illustrated edition) and read him the first chapter about The Boy Who Lived. It was the fulfillment of dreams. Way back when I was a “young […]
j.k. rowling
What’s Your Patronus?
Last spring, I wrote a post called The Lesson of the Boggart. It was one of the most popular posts from my Blogger days (I switched to self-hosting on WordPress shortly thereafter) and one of my personal favorite book-centric posts. In the post (which I hope you’ll read) I wrote about the genius of J.K. […]
The Lesson of the Boggart
This morning I was listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and I had one of those (all too frequent) moments when I thought, “J.K. Rowling is a genius.” The scene I was listening to was the first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson taught by Professor Lupin, where he introduces Harry and […]
Rowling Update & Recent Reads
I thought the NY Times reviewed The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling very well here: NY Times Review- The Casual Vacancy The reviewer saw more of the “societal ills” aspect to the book than I did, and after seeing Rowling do a few interviews on the subject, it was clear that for her, addressing those themes […]
The Casual Vacancy
It took me a few nights of steady reading, but I finally finished J.K. Rowling’s new book, The Casual Vacancy. I want to preface this review with a few disclaimers. 1. I did not read any other reviews, either before or after reading this book, because I didn’t want them clouding my own opinion. (I did accidentally […]
Saluting Literature at the Olympics
How many of you watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics? If you did, can you guess what my favorite segment was? I loved the salute to children’s literature. I think it’s wonderful that Britain values its literary history so highly as to devote part of their worldwide stage to it. Before tonight, I hadn’t […]