#WWBookClub - Week 1 - Magic in the Muggle World - Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone

Week 1 Topic: Magic in the Muggle World

The first book up on the #WWBookClub docket is, of course, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, because where else would they start with a Harry Potter book club? And the first topic of discussion was magic in the muggle world. This was discussed on Twitter this past Friday, June 30. It was a very busy chat! There were a lot of participants taking part and I found it really hard to engage because of how fast all the comments were flying. I also found it harder to participate because Twitter's character limit makes meaningful replies really hard sometimes. That second reason is the reason I am going to answer the questions asked in a blog post as well. Because I want to be able to give meatier answers and hopefully generate some more discussion with the people who read our blog.

The Questions

Is the wizarding world as secretive as it likes to believe?

Oh good god no, I really don't see how it can be. Yes there's the statute of secrecy and there are protections against muggles on places like Hogwarts and the Ministry of course, but that's not going stop everyone and everything. There are whole teams of obliviators and misinformation officers at the ministry but even then there's no way they could have complete control over the secret. You're never going to be able to obliviate everyone, and misinformation doesn't work on everyone either. 

Case in point - muggle parents and muggle siblings. As muggles, they can't be held accountable to the statute of secrecy because you can't throw a muggle into wizard prison. Any families of muggleborn witches and wizards are not only going to know about the wizarding world and Hogwarts specifically, they're going to get to be a part of it, an active part. Hermione's parents came into Diagon Alley to help with her school shopping, and if hers did you know others have. More than one muggle parent or sibling has let something slip before, it's just going to be a thing that happens.

Regarding the obliviators and the office of misinformation. These two things are going to create messes like to see in Men in Black - people whose memory wipes haven't taken completely or at all, people who don't buy into your misinformation. This is how conspiracy theories and urban legends are born. All it takes if for people to be willing to dig, because yeah the wizarding world is hidden within the muggle world, but not that deep.

Why do you think the Dursleys are so afraid of magic?

I think that you have to look at each of the Dursleys individually here, there's not just one full-stop answer as to why the whole family is so afraid of magic. With Vernon for example, I don't know so much if he's afraid of magic as he is pissed off by it and afraid of what being seen in the company of magic users could do to his reputation. Vernon is almost completely reputation focussed, anything that could damage his social standing is wrong and must be squashed. More than that even Vernon is a bigot and a bully who hates everyone and everything that don't fit into his very narrow-minded world view. I mean think about it, yes he was scared of having magic used on him, but it never stopped him getting into arguments with wizards whenever they showed up at his house.

Then there's Petunia, for her there is definitely a fear of magic, but in her case, I think it is completely justified. We have no way of knowing that at this early point in Philosopher's Stone but as we do find out as the series go on she was way more affected by her sister's murder than the early books show. She knows exactly what magic can do in the wrong hands - of course, she's scared of it. However, there's definitely more than just fear, there are bitterness and resentment which makes her seem as narrow-minded and bigoted as her husband at this point in the series. The thing about Petunia is it takes a long time for us to learn why she's so resentful and bitter but once we do it makes sense - of course that is never an excuse for how she herself treated, and how she allowed her husband and child to treat Harry. Of course Petunia also has a healthy dose of "nothing shall tarnish our social standing!" but in her case, I feel like that really is the least of it.

Dudley, of course, is the product of his horrible parents and their attitudes. His attitude towards magic and magic users is 100% shaped by his father's narrow-minded bigotry and his mother's fear and bitterness. Not only have his attitudes been influenced by theirs but they have also actively encouraged him his whole life to see his cousin as a weird, freaky other who he needs to be wary of. The final straw for Dudley of course that pushes his fear of magic over the edge is when Hagrid gives him a pig tail, and realistically, after that incident, I can hardly blame him for being scared of magic and magic users.

What makes Hagrid so trustworthy?

I'm going to be completely honest here, I really don't understand what this question has to do with the weekly topic. I do totally get how it's relevant to the point we're at in the narrative, obviously, Hagrid plays a big role in the early part of the book because he is Harry's first mentor in the wizarding world. And in writing that sentence I've now realised how this question relates. If Hagrid wasn't as trustworthy as he is, he would not have been selected by Dumbledore to be the magical liaison sent into the muggle world to collect Harry, so yes I can see now how his trustworthiness directly relates to the topic of magic in the muggle world.

To answer the question though - Hagrid is possessed of several traits that make him trustworthy. First and foremost is that he is totally and completely guileless. There are times of course where that lack of guile comes back to bite him, those times being anytime he utters the words "I should not have said that!" But for the most part, it's a positive trait that makes him trustworthy. There's also his earnestness, sincerity, total and complete loyalty and devotion to Dumbledore and his ability to follow orders. He also has the added benefit of his size making him intimidating/unapproachable to people who don't know him. He's also underestimated, nobody expects Hagrid to be the one running important errands or holding the important information. Certainly, Voldemort never would. We know how little he thinks of Hagrid given what he did to him when they were both at school.

Wizarding World Book Club - Week 0 - a Pottermore event & Book Bub's Summer Reading Challenge

A very Harry Book Club

I am so stupidly excited about Pottermore's latest offering that it's not even funny. I really am a rabid, rabid Potterhead. So far everything Pottermore has done has not failed to excite me and they haven't let me down. They've created a Harry Potter book club! It started today and the book club will eventually read and discuss all 7 books. Both Angie and I are very excited about participating in this.

There will be Twitter chats for the club - the first one being this coming Friday. I am simultaneously excited and anxious about this. I run a bi-weekly Twitter chat (#LISprochat) - I KNOW how hectic and hard it can be to follow the streams of conversations in a session and our chats usually have fewer than 25 attendees. A Twitter chat made of HP fans talking about HP? It will be an AWESOME vibe, and I am sure there will be GREAT convos. I am terrified that it will become completely unwieldy and impossible to follow. But that's not going to stop me from trying.

These chats will be themed, and I already am planning to write a blog post to publish here on each theme. There's no theme this week - those start next Monday. Time to crack out Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone again. Haven't decided yet if I'm going physical re-read or if I'll listen to the audiobook again. We'll see how long it takes me to finish the audiobook I am currently listening to on my tablet and whether or not Audible discovers the fix for the problem I am having with their app on my mobile.

BookBub's Summer 2017 Reading Challenge

My student assistant, Sophia, suggested that she, me and my co-worker, Mel, try and do Bookbub's Summer reading challenge. Little did she know I have been dying for an adult summer reading list/challenge to try because I never got to do a summer reading program as a kid. It wasn't something my schools did and as far as I am aware it wasn't something the Toronto Publis Library did in the 90s either. So when she offered I was all over it, especially once I saw that some of the categories overlap with some of the other challenges I am doing this year. Even more so when we agreed to our challenge start date as being from June 6th on, which means that I can already check 4 items off the challenge list. I've been on a bit of a reading streak lately. Since coming back from England I have read 7 novels, 4 graphic novels and a novella.

Needless to say, I, of course, have decided I'm going to be ambitious (masochistic?) about this challenge and aim for the level 3 goal of 36 books. Sophia is going to aim for the same, but realistically both of us will probably be more likely to hit the level 2 goal of 24 books.

I'm sure now you want to know what the challenge categories are. Well, I've included the image, along with my current progress, below a jump cut because it's a VERY large image.

Calendar Girls - May 2017 - best sequel - #CalendarGirlsBooks

Calendar Girls is hosted by bloggers, Flavia the Bibliophile and Melanie Noell Bernard – both have amazing blogs full of fun, bookish posts. Calendar Girls is a brand new monthly blog event inspired by Neil Sedaka’s 1961 song Calendar Girl. Just like in the song, we decided to use a specific theme for each month and choose a book based on these themes! The event is meant to incite discussions with other bloggers about books we’ve read and loved, is meant to help bloggers meet other bloggers, and also for bloggers and readers to find out about blogs which they normally may not have come across! Want to know more? Click on the links above! And it’s not too late to jump on the Calendar Girl train! Join now!

Best sequel

When the found out that this month's category was the best sequel I got a little overwhelmed. Most of what I read is series - which means I read A LOT of sequels and sequels to sequels. Which means a lot of choices. I'm never sure how to choose when I have such an abundance of choices. My contrariness always makes me want to pick something that I don't think anyone else is going to pick. So I thought to myself, okay let's try and find a way to narrow down the options. What is the actual definition of a sequel? Can it be ANY book in a series or does it have to be the second book specifically? After crapping out with a dictionary of literary terms - which I had been sure would have a definition of sequel, but didn't - I turned to dictionary.com to see what it would tell me. Here's the definition that pertained most directly to literature:

A narrative or dramatic work complete in itself but designed to follow an earlier one. Through the Looking-Glass is a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. -- via The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition

That is a great definition, but it doesn't at all help narrow down my choices. Although it does make it clear that It's more correct to say, for example, Specials is the direct sequel to Pretties and a subsequent sequel to Uglies rather than just Specials is a sequel to Uglies. Sure, they're part of the same series, and Specials does follow the story of Uglies, but it was designed to follow directly the storyline that takes place in Pretties.

Now, after all that let's see which sequel I chose:

#Unboxing - Wizarding World of Harry Potter Loot Crate #3 - Mar 2017

I didn't do an unboxing for the January box - oops! It was a pretty good box! There was a t-shirt with Snape on it, a Funko Pop that I already had (Yule Ball Ron) which is getting taken to Angie when I go to visit her, a prophecy pin, a really neat pair of Platform 9 3/4 socks, a time turner necklace, and a Deathly Hallows pocket watch. The pocket watch is my favourite thing from the box. I am obsessed with pocket watches! I resolved to do better and NOT forget to do a post for March's box when it arrives and it arrived last week. So without further ado, let's see what was in the March box:

'If people want to know who I am, it is all in the work' - Alan Rickman Remembered

A man who seemed to gain a reputation for playing villains that we all love to hate, there was much more to Alan Rickman than being good at being bad.  It has been one year to the day since the passing of this great British actor who died 14th January 2016 at the age of 69 following a short battle with cancer.  I remember being at work when one of my colleagues emailed me to say he had died and I remember reading it with a kind of disbelief because how could someone I had admired as an actor for many years suddenly no longer be around to make any more films.

Alan Rickman was a very accomplished stage actor but as this is my personal tribute, it is how I remember him as a film actor that I will be talking about.  Film fans of many different genres will remember him as he covered a wide range of roles, some villains, but others were good guys.  His first big film role came as the delightful Hans Gruber in Die Hard.  I mean, who even wants Bruce Willis to win when you have Alan taunting him? Not me! I don’t even like Bruce Willis.  However, the first film I saw him in was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as the deliciously evil Sheriff of Nottingham and I loved him in it.  

Putting aside the dodgy accents from the other cast members (yes Kevin Costner I mean you), the Sheriff was perfectly British, his quips about calling off Christmas, cutting hearts out with a spoon and just his general flamboyant flouncing around was perfectly played by Rickman, so much so that most of the deleted scenes on the DVD Special Edition were his. Rumour has it Costner felt Rickman acted him off the screen (and he did).

My signature from when I roleplayed Snape

Despite being so good at bad guy roles, Rickman also took on other types of roles such as Sci-Fi (Galaxy Quest), romantic (Sense and Sensibility), comedy (Love Actually) and musical (Sweeney Todd).  He did voice work as well such as the lesser known Help I’m A Fish and the more well-known Alice in Wonderland and the sequel Alice Through The Looking Glass as the Blue Caterpillar Absolem, his final role.  He had a voice that you could recognise without even being told who it was and he also had this wonderful talent to able to make one sentence last for half an hour. It was a delight to watch and hear.

It was in his best-loved role for me that this talent showed itself best.  He delighted and terrorised in equal measure children and adults alike as the mean yet misunderstood Potions Master Professor Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series of films.   He was one of only thirteen actors or actresses that appeared in all eight of the film adaptations.  So pivotal was his role that he was let into a much-guarded secret by JK Rowling herself (that Snape had loved Lily, Harry’s mother, since childhood) as she trusted him with the information to enhance his performance.  It is in this role that I will remember him most fondly and I will always be grateful that all eight films were released before his sad death as I could never imagine anyone else playing that role to such perfection. Snape will forever be Alan Rickman and Alan Rickman will be forever Snape.

I lament the fact that I will never see him in anything new but rejoice in his legacy of the wonderful films that remain with us.  

Always.

Unboxing - Wizarding World of Harry Potter Loot Crate #1 - Nov 2016

That's right! I got in on the ground floor of Loot Crate's newest subscription box, the Wizarding World box. What is it? It's a bi-monthly subscription box filled to the brim with HP related goodies. It's on the more expensive end of subscription blocks in my experience, which is why I'd never tried Loot Crate before, but how could I not with an HP box? So I cancelled my Nerd Block, and I might stop the Marvel Collector Corps come the new year, that will definitely make up for the cost of this one. This month was the first of the WWHP blocks, and oh goodness it did not disappoint, I've honestly never been more pleased with the contents of one of my subscription boxes before. Let's get into looking at what I got then shall we, welcome to:

This is going to be a rather image heavy post so I thought I'd give a jump cut a go...

A Fantastic return to the Wizarding World (spoiler free review of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them)

The wait is over, the long long wait.  Finally we can be drawn back into the Wizarding World created by J.K Rowling as the cinema release of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them is finally here.   We’ve had trailers, we’ve had teasers, we’ve even had casting releases for the sequel before the first film is released, such is the confidence in the box office pull that Harry Potter and the Wizarding World has.

Of course Harry Potter isn’t anywhere near this film, he’s not even a twinkle, even his parents aren’t born yet.  Instead we follow the adventures of Newt Scamander, a delightfully charming Eddie Redmayne.  He is a Magizoologist, a person who studies magical creatures and as the film begins he has come to America with a suitcase full of, well Fantastic Beasts. He has been travelling all around the world in search of different species to study and has many specimens in his magically expanding case (just wait until you see inside it).

He has arrived at a time when wizards are forced to hide from the No-Maj (non magic folk, the American equivalent of muggles).  Something is terrorising the streets of New York and everyone in the American Ministry MACUSA, is convinced that one of Newt’s recently escaped creatures is to blame.  

Newt teams up with Porpentina Goldstein (no spoilers who she is but those who have the original book will know her), her sister Queenie and a No-Maj called Jakob Kowalski and the four of them set out to prove that it isn’t one of the creatures to blame but something else.

I enjoyed the film from the moment it started to the satisfying yet open end.  Despite being part of the children’s series this film had a much more adult feel to it given that the leading characters were adults this time rather than school children.   The characters were all engaging and well developed.  Newt himself was sweet and naive, genuinely caring and at ease with the creatures he had discovered and a little awkward around humans.  Other than the main four characters, they were at odds with the President Seraphna Picquery who seems likeable enough but she is determined to keep wizards in hiding. There is also head Auror Graves, a charming and smooth Colin Farrell, one can never be sure who’s side he is on.  We also meet some sinister No-Maj’s who are fighting to rid the world of wizards and witches.  The thoroughly wicked Mary Lou Barebone and her children Modesty, an eight year old girl who constantly sings about dead witches, her older sister Chastity although we know little of her,  and the son Credence who gave me the shivers, a very mysterious young man.

Then of course there are the Beasts themselves and what a wonderful array of creatures we meet in this first of five films.  I’m sure there are many more to come and I’m hoping we get more dragons, although they were featured quite prominently in the Potter movies so the other creatures may get to feature more this time. However they have always been my favourite mythical creatures.  But the new lineup is rich and diverse, just to name a few here.  We have Frank, a glorious Thunderbird, native to America and has a very important role to play in the movie.  The Niffler is adorable, he resembles a mole and is attracted to anything shiny (mainly coins and expensive jewellery). Newt has a pet Bowtruckle which is pretty much a moving green twig but it is pretty cute.  There were some beautiful serpent-like creatures called Occury’s.  They hatch from pure silver eggs and can grow or shrink in size to fit the available space, we see them very tiny in a teapot up to huge dragon size filling an attic in Macy’s department store.  My favourite had to be the Demiguise, Dougal the Demiguise.  They are said to resemble a silver gibbon or ape but to me, he reminded me of a sloth.  They can make themselves invisible so are very hard to find, but we did get a glimpse of him and I adored him.

All in all I enjoyed my journey back into J.K Rowling’s world and I eagerly await the next film with great anticipation given the revealings of this first film.  There is so much more to come before this film ties in with the films we already know and love, although we did have a couple of familiar names mentioned already.  I already love Newt as a character and I’m sure we’ve not seen the last of Jakob, despite what happens in the film to him.   I also can’t wait to see what other Beasts Newt has in store for us but I’m sure I won’t be disappointed.

I already have the film on my wish list for when it is released, no self respecting Potterhead can miss this film.  You won’t be disappointed.