Second line of dialogue of Act 1 Scene 3:ROSE GRANGER-WEASLEY (spotting ALBUS POTTER's loving look at the Chocolate Frogs):
Al. We need to concentrate.
Though described as the canonical eighth Harry Potter story, the central character is his and Ginny's son Albus, who faces parental disappointment partly because of his friendship with Scorpius ( Read more... )

I don't think even diehard Harry Potter fans will find much to thrill at in this book, 100 pages of guff about monsters looked at from the perspective of the Ministry of Magic bureaucrats with hand-written annotations supposedly by Harry and Ron.

I had a record of acquiring this book years ago, but have been unable to locate it, and spotted another copy going cheap when in Ireland so filled the gap. Not really worth bothering with, as it turns out; Quidditch is a one-joke game, stretched here to over a hundred well-padded pages. I suppose that the detail of Quidditch history and ( Read more... )

I enjoyed this more than I remember doing first time round. I still think it has some pretty serious flaws. I find Harry's adolescent surliness for much of the book simply boring, and his reconciliation with Dumbledore at the end feels flat to me since we have always been pretty sure that it was going to happen. And the construction of the legal ( Read more... )

I have changed my mind; this is the best of the Harry Potter books (and of course also won the Hugo in 2001). I could forgive it a lot of flaws for the single chapter about the Yule Ball, which is full of nicely observed adolescent angst; but in fact the rest of it is pretty good as well; the testing of our hero in a series of mystical quests is an ( Read more... )

I first read this the year it was nominated for the Hugo, and don't have a lot to add to what I wrote then, except that for some reaon I didn't enjoy it as much the second time round. Perhaps it is because I now know how the Sirius Black storyline ends?

< Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | Harry ( Read more... )

I thought on first reading it that this was one of the less successful of the Harry Potter books, and my prejudices were confirmed re-reading it now. It's rather marking time between the scene-setting of volume 1 and the big reveals of volume 3. It's also marred by the poor world-building of the politics of wizardry - the nature of the power ( Read more... )

I first read this back in March 2000, on my way back from my first ever visit to Kosovo, on the recommendation of some American friends working there. It remains a good read; one of the effects of having seen the films, of course, is that it's now impossible to read Hagrid or Snape without hearing Robbie Coltrane or Alan Rickman in your head.. (Let ( Read more... )

A quick and not terribly profound read. Rowling presents this as Hermione's new translation of traditional wizardly tales, with notes by Dumbledore as annotated by Rowling. The stories are all rather straightforward moral lessons; the Dumbledore annotations don't add much (apart from some curiously misplaced jabs at another Potter, ie Beatrix). ( Read more... )

...at the Harvard graduation ceremony ("Commencement", in the local dialect).

An excellent speech. Transcript and video here, video only here.

( Hat-tip to
( Read more... )