JK Rowling bid for three tickets to see Stella McCartney’s Paris show at a Gala Auction in London, in June, to raise funds for the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, and bought along two friends. “I’m working on something, but it’s not Harry Potter,” she said. “I need a Harry break.” A Stella McCartney fan, she said she loved the designer’s clothes because “they’re so wearable.”

Note: See JKR's Own Words about Stick-Skinny Models in This Rant on her Website

Picture Via Snitchseeker

( Schedule Under the Cut... )

"The big stuff is still to come," she told the BBC. "I like that because if it's all at the start it's a bit of an anti-climax, but they're keeping that bit until the end."

... Lewis: “I've done a few days which went fantastically,” he said. "You wouldn't be able to tell it was the last in the series because the atmosphere is electric –everybody is having such a great time.”

From Bluewater Productions:

Her name is forever associated with a certain boy wizard whom she created while waiting for a delayed train. Now, nearly half a billion books sold later, J.K. Rowling will be the subject on an upcoming issue of Bluewater Productions’ Female Force biography comic series.

Female Force: J.K. Rowling, scheduled for release in December, follows Rowling’s rags to riches story of a woman receiving government financial assistance through her ascendancy in becoming one of the world’s most recognizable writers.


( Read more... )

Robert Burns
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
J. K. Rowling
David Hume
Adam Smith
John Muir (Environmentalist who was actually Scottish American, but born in Dunbar)

"If the Nobel Prize came from Scotland they would give it to a writer of f****** detective fiction, or else some kind of child writer, or something that was not even new when Enid Blyton was writing The Faraway Tree, because she was writing about some upper middle-class young magician or some f****** crap," he said.

Contemporary literature, he said, was "derided and sneered at by the Scottish literary establishment" who were "Anglocentric" and bent on ignoring the edgier talent that is right under their noses - citing poet Tom Leonard as an example of one such cruelly marginalised Scot.

Scottish crime writer Denise Mina, however, was far from taking Kelman's side in the row. Writing today in the Sunday Herald, she says: "Kelman is a beautiful writer and I love his books, but this debate actually drives readers toward genre fiction. It's like the prefects looking down on the juniors ... People in the arts are more concerned than anyone about status. And that's what this is: a play for status."

Does Hogwarts have a drinking problem?

As Harry Potter fans crowd movie theaters to catch the latest installment in the blockbuster series, parents may be surprised by the starring role given to alcohol. In scene after scene, the young wizards and their adult professors are seen sipping, gulping and pouring various forms of alcohol to calm their nerves, fortify their courage or comfort their sorrows.

...In one scene, Harry, Ron and Hermione order butterbeers at the pub, and Hermione ends up with a frothy mustache. While it’s never been entirely clear whether butterbeer is alcoholic, it seems to have an effect on the normally uptight Hermione, who acts tipsy walking home as she throws her arms around the boys.

( Read more... )

Villaluz's book, published in November, did not go unnoticed by Rowling's team of lawyers, she said. The book is available through Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.

"I got a cease and desist order from her attorneys," Villaluz said. "They objected to the original title, 'Harry Potter and the Sleeping Dragon.' Once we changed it, they said they approved, and the fact that they've had the book since November and I haven't been sued, would indicate that they're OK with the content." Messages left with the New York lawyer's office for comment weren't returned Thursday.

aredwitch

I was reading the foreword to my old LotR where Tolkien is talking about conjecture that the Shadow of the Past chapter was about WWII. He says no and adds:

"...it has been supposed by some that 'The Scouring of the Shire' reflects the situation in England at the time when I was finishing my tale. It does not. It is an essential part of the plot, foreseen from the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever."

I was struck by the difference between Tolkien, who had a story planned out but was able to amend it as the characters evolved in the telling, and Rowling, who refused to amend her story even though the characters and the story clearly evolved differently from her original plan. This is why Tolkien was the better writer.

But Tolkien also said in the same foreword that he disliked allegory unlike Rowling. He wrote:

"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author".

Take that JKR. Is Tolkien correct? I think so but people can disagree.

This is an open post for the London Premiere as the pictures come "rolling" in. I will be updating this throughout the evening.


 

HP the Musical was written and produced in early 2009 by a bunch of college kids/recent grads through a non-profit student-run theatre company. It was a free show that ran for three nights (five performances) and will never be done again... but luckily we taped it so everyone can get a chance to enjoy its magical silliness. The songs were written by Darren Criss (who plays Harry Potter) and AJ Holmes (who plays piano in the band). The script was written by Matt Lang (who also directed the show), Nick Lang (who assistant directed and made the dragon puppet) and Brian Holden (who was busy working at a real job while the rest of us were making a goofy play).
HP the Musical was a completely non-for-profit unofficial parody show made by Potter-fans for Potter-fans. All of us involved love the books immensely (and strongly encourage everyone to read them if you haven't) and it is with the utmost admiration that we celebrate and poke fun at them with this musical inspired by our very favorite stories.

saiphgrl

"It's worth remembering, finally, that there is another way to protect Salinger: Boycott Colting. Colting may have a right to publish, but he has no right to be read. And while copyright suits always have an uneasy relationship to the First Amendment, well-informed boycotts (that is, ones that truly understand the works their members are boycotting) are perfectly consistent with it – and are themselves an expression of a First-Amendment-protected view."

~~Willy at fourteen was a caring child, an absent-minded dreamer. That’s how it all began because he had been given the Book of Secrets with directions as to his initiation into Wizardry.

~~The great hall of Napoleon’s Castle revealed a dramatic scene. There were wizards everywhere. Willy gulped. There right across the hall just above their cone hats was a large white banner printed in giant letters, ‘IT IS FORBIDDEN TO CAST SPELLS WHILE YOU VISIT THIS CASTLE. THE PENALTY FOR THE THOUGHT...’
There were wizards of all races. Chinese, with massive Mandarin hats beautifully hand painted with peasant scenes. Black and brown wizards from the Ivory Coast and Delhi. Willy wondered. Until now he’d never realised the immensity of the Wizard brotherhood. He was frightened at the power it could muster.

~~Willy had been on Cloud 84 which was for Wizard Chess Players.
These were pullman-like trains made of see-through platinum, and inside the trains were chess rooms. Willie was handicapped 18. There were Wizard Chess Masters who were virtually unbeatable. Willie had made a daring move. He didn’t want to watch his opponent’s response and his mind wandered at the moment that Angel Sandy had tapped violently on the train window....

( More Quotes and Pictures Under the Cut... )

The allegations of plagiarism made today, Monday 15 June 2009, by the Estate of Adrian Jacobs are unfounded, unsubstantiated and untrue,"

"Both Willy and Harry are required to work out the exact nature of the main task of the contest which they both achieve in a bathroom assisted by clues from helpers, in order to discover how to rescue human hostages imprisoned by a community of half-human, half-animal fantasy creatures," the estate statement said.

"It is alleged that all of these are concepts first created by Adrian Jacobs in Willy the Wizard, some 10 years before J.K. Rowling first published any of the Harry Potter novels and 13 years before Goblet of Fire was published."

According to the statement, Jacobs had sought the services of literary agent Christopher Little who later became Rowling's agent. Jacobs died "penniless" in a London hospice in 1997, it said.

He allegedly sent the manuscript to Christopher Little, the literary agent at Bloomsbury Publishing who went on to represent Miss Rowling, but it was rejected.
Instead his book was published by a smaller company under the title The Adventures Of Willy The Wizard No 1: Livid Land.

Mr Jacobs, who lost all his money in a stock market crash in 1991, died in 1997, so did not live to see the Harry Potter books' success.

But his estate - which includes his son and grandson - now claims Miss Rowling's fourth book, Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, was plagiarised.

In both books, the boy wizard competes in a magic contest. The lawsuit also notes both have the boys trying to rescue human hostages held by half-human creatures from a bathroom. Shared references to a wizard train and a wizard prison are also part of the allegations.
Legal proceedings have been issued at the High Court against Bloomsbury, and the Jacobs estate also says it will file a lawsuit against Miss Rowling.

The estate is also seeking an injunction to prevent further sales of Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, and damages or a share in the book's profits.

What if everything you knew about copyright was wrong?
Well, it isn’t. And I’m not here to tell you it is. But I do want to break you out of the spell you’ve been under since Larry Lessig became your secular god.
There really is a way to look at copyright that is not a form of apologia for dying “content” industries, like the music business and Hollywood studios. This new way also has very little to do with “free culture,” Creative Commons, and the teachings of gurus like Lessig and Michael Geist.
Where do either of those extremes leave the individual creator? The lone writer, the lone musician, the lone photographer, the lone designer? So far, the answer has been “forgotten and shunned.”

President Obama may be the world's most famous man but he became positively star struck in the presence of the Harry Potter author J K Rowling.

The President made a beeline for Miss Rowling, at the end of the Downing Street G20 dinner, and told her that he had read all her books himself and to his children Sasha and Malia.

Miss Rowling then received a second presidential seal of approval for the boy wizard from Russia's President Medvedev and his wife Svetlana, who not only admitted to having read the Harry Potter books but also asked for her autograph.

. . . As talk of a $1 trillion bail-out dominated Thursday's G20 conference, Mrs Brown took the wives to the Royal Opera House for a morning of high culture. J K Rowling, who wore a pale pink shift dress, read extracts from her latest book, The Tales Of Beedle The Bard which was a best-seller last year.

Los Angeles,03/04/2009 00:09:41

FIRST LADY: We just love your Harry Potter books.
JK ROWLINGINNIT: Well, thank you.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Yes, and could the USA have a few million sub? To see us to Friday?