The Squeee

A Swedish friend shared this with me on Facebook, saying she had a sudden urge to come visit me in the UK next spring. This is why:

JK Rowling has finally made her Pottermore announcement: What is Pottermore? Pottermore is a free website that builds an exciting online experience around the reading of the Harry Potter books. Come back on 31st July to find out how you can get the chance to enter Pottermore early. So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight: The official launch is in October this year, but on 31 July, a lucky few can help with starting to populate the site. And beta test it, presumably. It sounds like it’s part social network (seriously? Yawn!), part encyclopaedia (hooray!) and part fanficion site (err, okay?). If I understand it correctly, we the fans of Harry Potter help shape the future of the characters and the world by submitting stories to the site. JK Rowling herself will be adding things as well, such as all those facts she’s been hoarding over the years.

Fans of Harry Potter are falling over themselves - correction: OURselves - recently because of a mysterious happening. I saw "MORE POTTER" trending on Twitter last Wednesday and wondered what it was about. Apparently, there was some sort of treasure-hunt going on to find various letters, spelling out a word. As it turned out, the word wasn't "more Potter", it was "Pottermore". This led to Pottermore.com and the @Pottermore Twitter account . On Thursday, this tweet came out: Looks like the owls are getting ready to deliver some exciting news: www.youtube.com/JKRowlingAnnounces #pottermore It links to a YouTube video page, where it counts down to an announcement by J.K. Rowling - set to be delivered on June 23. Question is, what the hell is Pottermore?

Was going through Marvin (the desktop computer) to find some files, and came across this, which I believe was posted on Facebook a couple of years ago or so. So not necessarily very up-to-date, but anyway. Here goes: 1) What author do you own the most books by? Technically, Carolyn Keene, but on the other hand, they’re not all mine and besides, they’re all at my parents’. Seriously though, we’ve got probably 100+ Nancy Drew books! Sheer number of books aside from that … Bengt Linder. My collection of books about Dante and Tvärsan is almost complete. :D 2) What book do you own the most copies of? Hmm. I’ve got a few doubles of Jane Austen books now, as I decided to get a new batch from the same series (Wordsworth Classics) to make it look nice and consistent. 3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions? Prepo-what-a? :P

The Squeee does Heat magazine or something but without stalker-y paparazzi photos. Erm, maybe with the exception of the one below, which I borrowed from the Mirror . Geraldine Granger and Harry Kennedy would of course live happily ever after, but in real life, news recently broke that Dawn French and her squeeze, comedian Lenny Henry, have split up after 25 years of marriage. Amicable split, apparently, which is nice. None of that mud-slinging à la Katie Price and Peter Andre in the tabloids then, one hopes. Read more: Comedians Lenny Henry and Dawn French separate (BBC) Speaking of Peter Andre, he seems like a pretty decent bloke, actually. The little I've seen him actually say something on TV. He has come across as a friendly, caring sort of person. His ex wife... ugh. Less said on that subject the better. Geriatric Geordie cat attacks three postmen and gets owner's mail suspended because of it. Aww, bless him. Tiger makes an appearance on BBC's morning show, and...

Time to put a new date in the calendar: Saturday, 31 July 2010! Not just the birthday of Harry Potter and his creator, JK Rowling, but also the date of the first International Magic Day! The aim is to dress up as witches and wizards (or witches/wizards trying to blend into muggle society) for the day, and celebrate everything magic! You are hereby cordially invited to participate (and invite other muggles and magic folk alike).

And the second person to be praised in this series is JK Rowling, seeing as it's her birthday today. Happy birthday, Jo! :) Who is this person? She's the author of the Harry Potter books. If you don't know who Harry Potter is yet, you have probably lived as a hermit under ground the past decade or so. How did I find this person? We got to read a thing with some text excerpts in Swedish class in school, as we were having a big test and were to write something about one of the texts in that brochure or whatever you want to call it. I had heard of HP before, but never read any, and there was an excerpt from the first book, HP at King's Cross. I was instantly taken in by the story and wanted to read more, so I asked a school friend (who had the books) if I could borrow them... and I could, so I quickly devoured the first three and absolutely loved them. How long ago was this? Spring of 2001. So what's the deal? The stories are perfectly bubbly and full of ...

Finished at around 1:30pm. Now I'm just waiting for others to finish so I have someone to discuss it with. ..., *waiting* I know she said she'd leave some loose ends for fans to speculate about, but... it felt like too many. Like, why not say what people are working with? What happened to some people (are they dead or alive)? And so on. There were also some pacing issues. Super-mega-action-packed start, then it drags on a bit and not a lot happens for like 200 pages before it picks up again. I think I'll have a bit of a ponder about it.