Midnight is the witching hour. But midnight on July 16th is the wizarding hour, when the next Harry Potter novel is officially released amidst magic and media fury. So is this a literary event? A celebrity circus? A serious landmark in the chronicles of 2005? For answer, I turned to the blogosphere, to see what's the buzz on the boy wizard.
This is truly a world-wide phenomenon, folks. There are Harry Potter blogs in Spanish, German, and French, of course—but bloggers also focus on the young wizard from Thailand and in Persian.
J.K. Rowling, the series' author, is the world's only billionaire author, and the second-richest woman in Britain (after the Queen), according to the Mirror online. The linked story looks at several other celebrities who've grown from the Potter phenomenon, Daniel Radcliff, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint; and it tracks the actors' growth as the movie versions of Harry Potter novels progress.
Diana Sprinkles uses Harry and his friends as inspiration for her original art. Her images are sometimes reminiscent of animé, sometimes of old drawings in Edgar Rice Burroughs' paperbacks. (You'll know I have permission to use an image from her catalog if it appears in this post.) And dua also borrows creative power to breathe life into Rowling's wand-vendor, Ollivander, with an original story at her Lumos blog.
Ron and Hermoine seem to be linked more and more strongly as the books progress, so it's no surprise there is a blog devoted to them as a couple. These bloggers seem to have Emma confused with her movie role as Hermoine, and likewise with Rupert Grint and Ron. The Magical Three website concentrates on Emma and Rupert as well. A trademarked image shows Emma sporting braces, which leads one blogger to gasp, "Is Hermoine changing her looks?"
Article comments
1 - DrPat
My spouse, alas, turns out to be "Sirus Black" in the Pirate Monkey's quiz: ENTP.
2 - Natalie Davis
[POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT: Stop reading here if you have yet to read HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban!]
I love Sirius Black! His death was a terrible tragedy...
Interesting twist on the Meyers-Briggs quiz; previous results have shown me to be a 50/50 split between INFP and INTP. This time the score showed INFP -- Professor Lupin.
Guess that explains my affinity for full moons.
3 - Victor Plenty
He died?!? NOOOOOOOO!!!!
4 - Natalie Davis
Oh, shit. I am so sorry. I should've put a spoiler alert before that sentence too. Please, please accept my apology.
5 - Victor Plenty
No worries on my account. I just thought it was funny how you put the big spoiler warning before the full moon quip, when you'd just blithely dropping a much bigger spoiler (IMHO) right at the opening of your comment.
6 - DrPat
The funny thing was how many (how very many) blogs I uncovered pledging undying love for the greasy Professor Snape. I was a little taken aback when I discovered that I was he! [he he]
I suppose it is holdover from the dangerous character Rickman played in Die Hard (or perhaps the lovable snot-satire of Spock he portrayed in Galaxy Quest).
Or maybe they know something about his snake we haven't heard...
7 - Victor Plenty
While the extra effort put into the spoiler warning on this thread is appreciated, it's sort of a lost cause when people are blurting out huge spoilers everywhere else across the web, including every other topic on Blogcritics.
I had hoped to avoid the major spoilers by staying out of the Half-Blood Prince threads. Sadly it turned out to be futile, since everybody's so eager to talk about who's been killed off, they do it right in the first sentence and it gets paraded down the right-hand margin of every page on the entire site.
The big surprise in Order of the Phoenix got ruined for me because some clueless twit just had to put a dedication, "in loving memory of" the character who died in that one, into their email signature, of all things.
Nowadays the only way to avoid major spoilers from a Harry Potter book is moving to a cave in Afghanistan until it becomes available in paperback. And I suspect even that wouldn't be enough, as Osama bin Laden would take evil delight in telling you all about who died.
8 - DrPat
"Moving to a cave in Afghanistan" to avoid HP6 spoilers is overkill, Victor. You could always just move to the Vatican!
9 - Victor Plenty
Not so sure about that, DrPat. I suspect the Pope secretly is a fan of Harry Potter, and allowed the "leaks" of his alleged disapproval to occur as a subtly brilliant bit of marketing and publicity.
10 - DrPat
Fans hunting for Potter-forums should check here in the BlogScan - the pro-Potter blogs are linked to all kinds of Potter-focused sites.