Note that the writer's disdain for Harry Potter tie-ins does not extend to his own publication running uninformative round-ups in an attempt to sell papers to Harry Potter fans.
LOL!
By the way, the Chinese teen with the hidden Harry Potter t-shirt was executed that afternoon.
So, the funny thing is that there seems to be a debate in the TNR comments section about whether I was stealing Frank Foer's idea ("How Soccer Explains the World"), with absolutely no comprehension that (1) I just might have been commissioned to write something under a parallel title for TNR, or (2) that the Potter volume might have been mostly written prior to the release of Frank's book.
From the InsideHigherEd piece:
"At least 17 doctoral dissertations and seven master’s theses had been devoted to the Harry Potter books, at least in part, as of last year."
That's fascinating! I also like this:
"I have never read any of the Harry Potter novels nor seen even one of the movies."
I haven't read the books, but I have watched a couple of the movies, what, with a couple of grade-school boys at home. Still, am I and "intellectual nebbish?"
All this reading has got to be good, in any event. I hope it rubs off on some of my students!
Well, I need to get back to "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I've got 155 or so years of literature to read before I can get to "Deathly Hallows"!
I have no idea what you mean by my "disdain for Harry Potter tie-ins." I express nothing of the sort. The need to feel deeply offended by anything less than wild enthusiasm is odd.
It would be good to think the books are improving reader comprehension, but I am definitely starting to wonder.
Scott, I think you're confusing my broader criticism of Resner with my allusion to you as someone who also criticizes the volume I edited based on a title, in your case, David Long's essay. Why don't you take a look at the post again and see if you think I need to clarify matters.
What if I were Ginny Weasley?
I was happy to walk around The Party That Shall Not Be Named with my recently acquired copy of HP and IR.
Note to Ms. Goff: While 5 patents might seem like a big number, the DVD was created, basically, by a consortium of essentially all the companies holding all the next generation recording device patents that got together and agreed not to fight about their patents, and whether or not something was protected or could be reverse-engineered, and just cut a royalty check based on their negotiated settlement. This is why you didn't see a VHS v. Beta or HD-DVD v BluRay-style war. Warner mentions it on their website because it sounds impressive, but it's not really an accomplishment and certainly isn't something worth mentioning more than once in passing. See, for example, the current DVD Forum member list, with about 220 companies on it.
There's an old adage, repeated to me long ago by one of my first philosophy professors, "I never read a book I review, it prejudices me too much."
So many blithely dismissive remarks about books, like the one you quote from USA Weekend, seem to be based on nothing more than merely noticing a title and then cynically speculating for no more than two seconds - aided by a lazy application of "the hermeneutics of suspicion" - on what must certainly be the likely contents. I would love to see more journalists, as people who write, holding themselves to higher standards concerning how they treat what others write.
But then I've been on lots of TV talk shows over the years where the people praising a book had clearly read only the back cover copy, and were scanning the flaps during the commercial break.
I suppose that those of us whose books have benefitted from good titles can suffer the slings and arrows of the uninformed with a touch of equanimity. As Hermione would counsel, "Just ignore them! Ignore them!"
Keep doing interesting things.
Tom Morris
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