I’m not entirely sure JK Rowling really wanted to kick off the global thunderstorm that accompanied her recent comments about poor Harry’s future – or lack thereof. Maybe she thought everyone would be distracted by the World Cup (she should have waited until the semi-finals, but perhaps wasn’t sure if England would scrape through). But she ought to know by now how hysterical the media will get over any mention of what happens next. But, love, did you really think you could get away with an off-the-cuff comment like: “A price has to be paid, we are dealing with pure evil here”?
I feel pretty sure that most readers – of all ages – are well prepared for anything that might happen in book 7. The good folk at The Leaky Cauldron took it all in their stride. They’re even running a poll on which characters are most likely to die. I imagine you can place bets on it in London by now. (My money’s on Hagrid and Ron, and I think Snape has to go too. Voldemort doesn’t count. But I’ll just pretend to be a grown-up and act like I can deal with the suspense.)
But all hell’s broken loose in the papers and the(adult) blogosphere.
Chasing Ray makes an impassioned plea for Harry to live on:

When did the good guys winning become something that a young adult author needed to avoid?

The Guardian thinks a bit of grief is good for youngsters:

The rumours alone of Potter’s demise, whether or not exaggerated, will be enough to bring the issue of mortality firmly on to the breakfast table where it will further loom over many a school run in the coming weeks and hype-filled months.

Those of us who still haven’t recovered from Beth’s demise in Little Women might not agree, although our therapists may.
But they’re not pulling any punches over at Bookninja:

I hope he dies while listening to bad prose, or better, by eating his creator’s words.

Bitch-slapped by Bookninja. Nasty.
No wonder she’s a recluse.
Anyway, the most interesting thing, besides the frenzy, is that in the same interview Rowling admitted she’d boxed herself in on a couple of issues early in the series and now has to write her way out of them. The most astounding thing for me, when I read Rowling now, is how incredibly foresightful she has been, and how she lays the groundwork for characters and events early on – even minor things – and how complex the plotting is. Now I know what it’s like to write a series I am awe-struck at the prescience. It’s remarkable, if you ask me, that she’s only boxed herself in a couple of times.
There must be literally hundreds of characters and dozens of strands by now, including red herrings and insignificant details, and I can’t imagine how she keeps it all in her head. She can’t go back and change anything. She’s stuck with words she imagined last decade, when she was a different person and had no idea who her readership would be. Remarkable.

I am now the proud possessor of the sexy new hardcover edition of War and Peace , a translation hot off the press by Anthony Briggs, with nobody called Andrew in it, you’ll be pleased to hear.
It features the usual headless woman image on the front cover, so you know it’s historical fiction (which it is, even when first published) and a gold sticker on the front that screams: “A life changing NOVEL a must read NEW translation”. Will people really only buy it if it has gold sticker that promises life changes, like Oprah?
Best of all, there are blurbs by Flaubert, Woolf, Updike, AN Wilson, John Bayley (of course) and Simon Schama.
This cracks me up.
“Love and battle, terror and desire, life and death. It’s a book that you don’t just read, you live.” Thank you Mr Schama.
If it wasn’t my favourite book I’d never read it in a million years with that wrap. Normally I’d believe Simon Says, but that makes it sound like Bernard Cornwell’s latest.
She was a timid princess, trapped in her own home by a tyrant father – he was a reckless but penniless hussar … etc
Which reminds me, I have long believed people can be classified according to which plotline in War and Peace they consider most romantic:
– Natasha and Andrei
– Natasha and Pierre
– Marya and Nikolai.
[drum roll] Your votes please.
I don’t know what it means, but it’s a theory I hold dear and will one day form the basis of a doctoral thesis.
I’m a timid princess/reckless hussar person myself, and the only one I know. Hence the theory, half-baked though it may be.
I wish they’d asked me for a blurb. Imagine being so famous you can blurb Tolstoy. Even if you’re dead.
Anyway, silence will now descend upon us as I have completely screwed up my schedule and now have to do a month’s homework in a week.

I know I promised not to mention The Da Vinci Code again, but I just stumbled across a reference to this line from Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and can’t help myself:

The lunatic is easily recognised. Sooner or later he brings up the Knights Templar.

The Times reports that Enid Blyton’s biographer has accused publishers of bowing to political correctness by sanitising some of the children’s author’s best known books.

I have to admit it’s the cookies thing that annoys me the most. The Sun’s headline screeched “Five Go And Do Ironing”. Hilarious.
If this is true (Hodder denies it) then my feeling is that the greatest crime is in not crediting children with enough intelligence to know when they are reading stuff that is clearly from “the olden days” – which it was even when I were a lass.
On the other hand, over at the good old Guardian, Guy Dammon argues that:

I’m just not sure. I feel that young readers see the past as one reality (maybe not their own, but grounded) and still take flight into the Faraway Tree. I certainly don’t think the argument applies to the adventure stories like the Secret Seven books.
I hate arguments about so-called political correctness, but let’s put that to one side for the moment. The critical questions, really, as with any kind of cultural censorship, are “where does it end?” and also, “who decides?”.

I have a new hero: UK food writer Nigel Slater. I’m reading and reviewing his Kitchen Diaries, which are splendid (although the recipes are as yet not trialled in the Waiheke Island Test Kitchens, since we can’t eat ever again after the Slow Food weekend in Matakana). A sensible message – the right food at the right time – charmingly conveyed, and beautifully produced on lovely thick stock. I shall have to move straight on to his autobiography, Toast.
Over the weekend, I reignited my faith in the favourites of my childhood, after last week’s disappointments, with Cue For Treason by Geoffrey Trease. He was way ahead of his time in constructing equally interesting male and female lead characters, and very good at the dollops of history. And adventure. Not too much depth in the adults, but you can’t have everything.
Regular readers of this blog know better than to start me on the hilarious Da Vinci Code. Well. I don’t usually read mysteries, but I picked up one of Iain Pears’s art world crime novels for $2 somewhere because I read The Dream of Scipio last year and it is still dancing about in my head.
There’s no real similarity in style or intent between that and The Last Judgement, but I still vote we take away all Dan Brown’s money, and give it instead to Iain Pears, who actually knows how to write and wrote several books much more deserving of global domination than that pathetic drivel in Da Vinci Code, years before Dan Brown could even afford one of those infernal black turtlenecks.
Then Mr Pears can buy lots of beautiful paintings and write anything he wants; and nobody would ever sue him, except possibly Dan Brown – but who cares?
Now I’m onto Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches (on Holland’s Golden Age) for research purposes, but as it’s too heavy to lug into town on the ferry I will have to alternate it with a new kids’ swashbuckler, Secrets of the Fearless. (I hate people who get to thank “the staff of the National Maritime Museum … and the Musee National des Douanes in Bordeaux”. I’d just kill for a couple of hours in either.)

We wuz robbed.

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.
~ Rebecca West

I may have to rethink my staunch Republican stance, after the Queen threw a garden party at the Palace for a couple of thousand kids and invited everyone from Toad of Toad Hall to JK Rowling along for fairy bread.
You can do that kind of thing when you’re 80. And when you’re the Queen.
“British children’s literature has been for many years an extraordinary success story,” she told the crowd, which sang Happy Birthday to her.
The ABC reports that the biggest reception was given to JK Rowling, who was mobbed by children desperate for an autograph. The stars of the Potter movies were also in attendance.
“I think it is a wonderful idea to celebrate the Queen’s 80th birthday by celebrating children’s literature,” Rowling said. “I really do think it is a golden age at the moment.”

History begins in novel and ends in essay.
~ Macaulay

I’m off for a Slow Food weekend up around Matakana: log fires, long large meals, winter beaches, farmers’ market on Saturday morning, ploughing through the reading list, rummaging through shops crammed with old things, coffee and cake, hat and gloves and gum boots.
Although I may never eat again after salt and pepper squid and lamb shanks (with green pea cappuccino) last night at the sublime French Cafe.