Harry Potter déjà piraté

[Ronnie Hayek]

+ 1 J'ai la cruelle impression que plusieurs intervenants s'évertuent à entretenir ici un profond malentendu.

essaye bard

[Ronnie Hayek]

(les aventures post-Pistols de Rotten tiennent plus à la qualité de Keith Levene qu'à celle de Rotten, mais bon)

Tout à fait. Je me souviens d'ailleurs du moment indescriptible que fut pour moi l'écoute de l'album post-PIL de Lydon/Rotten: Psycho's Path.

[Rincevent]

Tu plaisantes ! J'avais acheté les deux premiers volumes pour mon mouflet (pour qu'il ne soit pas désociabilisé (© Ronnie) à l'école ; j'y avais jeté un oeil : c'est mal écrit, même pour de la littérature jeunesse. Et je ne suis pas peu fier de voir que mon gamin ait trouvé lui-même débile la production de Rowling.

Comme dit Yozz, c'est mal traduit, et qui plus est les premiers volumes en Français ont été largement amputés (jusqu'aux deux tiers pour le tout premier tome), ce qui nuit fortement à la "qualité littéraire" de la chose. Les éditeurs français ont, comme d'habitude, cru que les Français ne liraient pas un livre de plus de 200 pages.

[Ronnie Hayek]

Tout à fait. Comme lire le dernier SAS ou Arlequin.

Harlequin… inculque, va !

[phantom_opera]

Va t-on se moquer de moi si j'avoue avoir déjà lu du Harlequin?

Sérieusement j'en avais lu à une époque quand j'étais ado et quand je ne savais pas quoi faire. Il y en a plein chez moi. J'aimais bien, plein d'histoires qui se ressemblaient presque toutes, seuls les décors changaient (vie urbaine, savane en Afrique, etc.), mais ça occupait. Ils étaient assez courts, ça se lisait vite fait.

[Ronnie Hayek]

Ils étaient assez courts, ça se lisait vite fait.

Sans blague ?

[phantom_opera]

Sans blague ?

hihi

C'était à titre informatif, je ne sais pas si beaucoup de gens du forum (les plus jeunes en particulier) ont déjà lu du Harlequin. Pour les mecs, c'est encore moins courant. Je ne les aurais jamais lu si il n'y en avait pas chez moi

[pankkake]

hihi

C'était à titre informatif, je ne sais pas si beaucoup de gens du forum (les plus jeunes en particulier) ont déjà lu du Harlequin. Pour les mecs, c'est encore moins courant. Je ne les aurais jamais lu si il n'y en avait pas chez moi

Moi peut être mais je ne m'en souviens pas, quand j'étais petit je lisais tout ce qui me tombait sous la main.

[Rincevent]

C'était à titre informatif, je ne sais pas si beaucoup de gens du forum (les plus jeunes en particulier) ont déjà lu du Harlequin. Pour les mecs, c'est encore moins courant. Je ne les aurais jamais lu si il n'y en avait pas chez moi

Jamais lu, mais ma mère est une très grosse consommatrice, environ un par jour. Ca prend une place dingue, malgré les déstockages réguliers.

[Invité Arn0]

Moi les premiers Harry Potter je les ai lu en v.o. quand j'étais au lycée et cela m'a permis d'améliorer mon anglais (qui est passé ainsi de déplorable à médiocre). Donc merci J.K.R.

[ShoTo]

Avant même la sortie en librairie cette fois

C'était déja le cas pour les 2 derniers

Sinon, le grand mérite que je trouve a HP c'est la complexité relative du background pour une oeuvre aussi accessible

Apres, c'est sur que lire HP quand on a dépassé les 15 ans c'est ridicule.

Sinon les fans d'HP ne soyez pas de mauvaise foi, faut etre aveugle pour ne pas avoir que l'ultra majorité des HP fan boys le sont par manque de recul

[José]

Harlequin… inculque, va !

Pour le coup, je suis assez fier de mon erreur.

[José]

Israel row over Harry Potter sale

The worldwide launch of the latest Harry Potter is provoking religious controversy in Israel.

Bookstores will be opening on the Sabbath, the Jewish holy day, to sell the final instalment to eager fans.

Most shops are normally closed for trade on the Sabbath, which runs from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday.

Religious politicians are accusing the bookstores of putting profits ahead of religious sensitivities for agreeing to open their shops.

The Israeli Industry and Trade Minister, Eli Yishai, has threatened to fine any store that opens on Saturday.

Israeli law forbids businesses to force their employees to work on the Sabbath.

Advance orders

"I think it's a little chutzpah [audacious] of them to open the stores just to make money," Associated Press news agency quoted Israeli member of parliament Avraham Ravitz as saying.

But the booksellers remain unrepentant.

Steimatzky, part of Israel's biggest bookstore chain, is hosting a gala event in Tel Aviv to launch the book.

The chain says that it has received ten of thousands of advance orders for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and has no plans to cancel or postpone its event.

"We are required by the publishers to start selling the books at this time," said store buyer Nancy Ayalon.

The Harry Potter books have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide and have been translated into at least 64 languages, including Hebrew.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6906538.stm

[José]

Quand on vous disait que HP, c'était nul

Harry Potter: the economics

Successful magical worlds depend on basic economic principles, and that's where JK Rowling's Harry Potter falls short.

Why are books about magic so exciting? The lure is almost tautological: magic is compelling because it allows us to imagine doing the things we cannot ordinarily do. Sure, romance novels may let you envision a world full of hot, sensitive men who want to cosy up to your wounded inner child, and do the dishes afterwards. But only in magic books can you make them disappear and reappear at will.

But this actually presents a problem for authors. If magic is too powerful then the characters will be omnipotent gods, and there won't be a plot. Magic must have rules and limits in order to leave the author enough room to tell a story. In economic terms, there must be scarcity: magical power must be a finite resource.

JK Rowling is not, to put it mildly, known for her seamless plotting or the gripping realism of her characters, most of whom spend the latter books pointlessly withholding information from each other that, if shared, would end the installment somewhere around page ten. But for me, there is another problem with the books, one that has kept me from looking forward to the seventh volume as keenly as I might. I am an economics reporter, and the books are chock full of terrible economics.

There are two ways, I think, that one can present magic: as something that can be done, but only at a price; or as a mysterious force that is poorly understood. So in Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope, women who perform magic must pay the price in blood, their own or that of others.

Those prices provide the scarcity needed to drive the plot forward. In the Narnia books and the Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, magical power has no obvious cost. But we don't need to understand the costs of magic, because the main characters can't perform it. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with having a deus ex machina in a story; your average fiction writer does not need to explain the operation of the law of gravity, or provide a back story for running out of gas at an (in)convenient moment.

But there have to be generally accepted rules. Characters can't get out of the predicament the author is sick of by having the car suddenly start running on sand. Similarly, if your characters will be using magic, they must do so by some generally believable system.

Yet in the Potter books, the costs and limits are too often arbitrary.

A patronus charm, for example, is awfully difficult - until Rowling wants a stirring scene in which Harry pulls together an intrepid band of students to Fight the Power, whereupon it becomes simple enough to be taught by an inexperienced fifteen year old. Rowling can only do this because it's thoroughly unclear how magic power is acquired. It seems hard to credit academic labour, when spells are one or two words; and anyway, if that were the determinant, Hermione Granger would be a better wizard than Harry. But if it's something akin to athletic skill, why is it taught at rows of desks? And why aren't students worn out after practicing spells?

The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?

The answer, as with so much of JK Rowling's work, seems to be "she didn't think it through". The details are the great charm of Rowling's books, and the reason that I have pre-ordered my copy of the seventh novel: the owl grams, the talking portraits, the Weasley twins' magic tricks. But she seems to pay no attention at all to the big picture, so all the details clash madly with each other. It's the same reason she writes herself into plot holes that have to be resolved by making characters behave in inexplicable ways.

This matters. If the cost of magic isn't well defined, how do we know what resources, other than plucky determination, Harry needs to defeat Voldemort? We certainly can't rely on his mental acumen; he's spent the last two books acting like a brain-damaged refugee from The Dirty Dozen.

Perhaps, as some friends have argued, I am expecting too much from a children's book. But I don't think that is right. Children are great systemisers, which is why they watch the same shows and read the same books over and over again: they are trying to put all the details together into a coherent picture. "I could do things no one else could do!" is a great thrill; but so is "I know how this works". You can't say that about Harry Potter, because Rowling doesn't seem to know herself. To the extent that there is any system at all, it is the meanest sort of Victoriana, the fantasy world of a child Herbert Spencer. There is a hereditary aristocracy of talent, and I am secretly at its apex. There is an elite school almost nobody can go to, and I am one of the chosen. People fall quite neatly into the categories of good, bad, or clueless, we are the good ones who get to run things in the end. That's powerful fantasy stuff, which is why it's so common.

But the best children's fantasy does something else: it gives one the illusion that the magical world is as consistent and real as one's own world - that it exists, just barely out of reach. Even at eight, or 11, I could not have believed that of Harry Potter. The arbitrary ham fist of Ms Rowling is everywhere too evident - changing the rules, and then making the characters tap dance, like marionettes, to distract you from the enormous potholes in the plot.

I am prepared to be charmed by the seventh book. But oh, how I wish it were convincing enough to consume my imagination as Narnia and Middle Earth once did.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/megan_…_economics.html

[LaFéeC]

Les anti-Potter trouvent simplement que c'est mal écrit, ni plus ni moins.

Ohlala, les "anti-Potter"..

Tout ça pour un livre pour ados que certains adultes se plaisent à lire..

Vous croyez pas que vous y allez un peu fort ?

Et puis, y'a plein de gosses qui n'ouvraient jamais un livre et qui commencent à le faire, c'est ptêt mal écrit, mais lire permet de progresser en orthographe. N'est-ce pas là signe de réjouissance ?

Comme dirait Copeau, "cool cool" c'est les vacances quoi (enfin, l'été)

[A.B.]

Quand on vous disait que HP, c'était nul

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/megan_…_economics.html

Tout à fait d'accord… il y a aussi dans le genre

http://www.mises.org/story/2242

Ca m'empeche *vraiment* de profiter de l'histoire…

David Friedman écrit un bouquin dans un univers magique (école de magie d'ailleurs) mais il se soucit évidemment beaucoup d'économie:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf…743886a6a4d2c4/

[Ronnie Hayek]

Ohlala, les "anti-Potter"..

Tout ça pour un livre pour ados que certains adultes se plaisent à lire..

Vous croyez pas que vous y allez un peu fort ?

Et puis, y'a plein de gosses qui n'ouvraient jamais un livre et qui commencent à le faire, c'est ptêt mal écrit, mais lire permet de progresser en orthographe. N'est-ce pas là signe de réjouissance ?

Comme dirait Copeau, "cool cool" c'est les vacances quoi (enfin, l'été)

Où as-tu vu que je m'étais rangé dans le camp anti-Potter ?

Ensuite, sur le fond, bien entendu, lire permet de maîtriser son orthographe. Toutefois, l'alternative ne se pose pas entre lire tout et n'importe ou ne pas lire du tout. Il vaut mieux lire des ouvrages de qualité pour se former le goût.

Enfin, personne ici n'a opposé littérature noble et littérature de divertissement. Comme je l'ai encore dit dans un autre contexte, il y a de l'excellent divertissement et du très mauvais.

[Etienne]

Harry Potter and the mystery of an academic obsession

And you thought Harry Potter was kids' stuff ? Try telling that to the delegates who packed into a conference in Las Vegas last week discussing moral alignment and metanarrative in the works of JK Rowling. But one question: why were the mostly female delegates dressed up as witches and schoolgirls and talking feverishly about Potter porn?

Carole Cadwalladr

Sunday August 6, 2006

The Observer

The first lecture I go to is called 'Muggles and Mental Health: Rites of Transformation and A Psychoanalytical Perspective on the Inner World of Harry Potter'. It's nine o'clock in the morning. Outside the temperature is 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Inside, in a windowless conference room in the JW Marriott Hotel, Las Vegas, there are around 60 people, all with notebooks open, ready to begin.

In some ways, it could be any other academic conference: Dr Christopher Blazina, an associate professor of psychology at Tennessee State University, has a PowerPoint presentation prepared. The audience is studiously attentive. And a couple of people are typing directly into their laptops. It could be any other academic conference apart from the fact that there are at least three middle-aged women dressed as witches complete with hats, cloaks and wands. In front of me is a row of four twenty-something women in grey school skirts, knee-socks and black gowns. And, sitting next to me, assiduously writing notes with a feathered quill onto what looks like parchment, is a boyish-looking teenage girl with cropped brown hair, and, the tell-tale giveaway, a pair of little round glasses.

Lumos 2006 is not just another conference, it's 'a Harry Potter symposium', and most of the audience aren't academics at all, they're common-or-garden fans, 1,200 of them in total, here for three days' worth of talks, presentations and panels. Dr Blazina's presentation is just one out of a possible six others being held in the same time slot, including 'Not Just Good and Evil: Moral Alignment in Harry Potter' and 'Bloody Hell! Why Am I So Wild About Harry?'

His main thesis seems to be that Harry is growing up. Or as he puts it, 'Hogwarts is a tangible liminal state where Harry learns to re-sort Bad Objects and decathect from them'.

The last time I paid attention, Harry Potter was a phenomenally successful series of children's books. But this, I discover, is the kind of hop elessly naive viewpoint that causes my fellow Lumos attendees to gasp and shake their heads. Children are banned from the conference. Over-14s are grudgingly allowed only if they're chaperoned at all times. I go to only one talk in which the speaker thinks of mentioning that it's a book for children. And even as he says it, I see the audience losing interest.

This is Harry Potter for adults. A concept that I'd always thought of as one of those minority tastes like quantum physics for children. Or Star Trek for girls. In fact, it's not such a bad comparison, because it transpires that Star Trek is to young men what Harry Potter is to middle-aged women. And young women, too, actually. It's overwhelmingly female. Eighty-five per cent of delegates are women, with an almost even split between the 16 to 24s and the 25s and older.

The first two women I meet, in the queue for check-in, are Linda and Susan. They're fairly typical, I come to realise, of a certain Lumos constituency. They're both in their thirties and both teachers. They're dressed in school uniform with matching gowns that they've run up themselves on their sewing machines, and they're both slightly giddy with excitement.

'So, you're a fan of the books?' asks Linda.

Well, not really, I say.

'But you've read the books, right?'

Well … I say, some of them.

'But you've seen the fi lms at least?'

A couple, I say.

'Oh my gosh!' says Linda. She's genuinely shocked even though I may have rather overstated my familiarity with the work. I read The Philosopher's Stone on the plane. And have spent the last seven years or so listening to my niece and nephew, aged nine and 12 respectively, endlessly recounting the plot, although 'listening' in this context might be another of my overstatements.

But, hell, I was an English student once so I've not-read Milton and not-read Spenser; not-reading Rowling in comparison is a walk in the park. Besides, I have put my niece, Bethan, on standby. If there's any really tricky questions, I've arranged to text her dad.

This, however, is before I've had the chance to really study the programme. A Berkeley professor called Frederick Crews did a rather gentle lampoon of literary criticism back in the Sixties called Pooh Perplex, a collection of essays purporting to be written by various academics on the subject of Winnie the Pooh. Then a few years ago he wrote a sequel, Postmodern Pooh, which included a paper on 'The Fissured Subtext: Historical Problematics, the Absolute Cause, Transcoded Contradictions, and Late-Capitalist Metanarrative (in Pooh) ' by a Marxist called Carla Gulag who compares Pooh to Chairman Mao.

But what's the point of parody when real life does it so much better? There are more than a hundred diff erent presentations listed including: 'Disney Does Derrida: Joanne Rowling as a Writer of Our Times', and 'Parallels in Tyranny: Voldemort, The Ministry of Magic, and Jewish Persecution' - and why invent Carla Gulag when there's somebody called Todd J Ide presenting a paper on 'Comrade Potter: A Marxist Reading of Harry Potter'?

I'm not entirely sure what Bethan is going to make of this. But then, I discover, there's quite a few things that I hope are beyond Bethan's comprehension. On the fi rst night, I stand waiting to go into the Great Hall for dinner. It's been billed as 'a chance to sample British food' and there's a rumour that it's 'something called shepherd's pie'. I'm hoping this isn't true.

So, I say to the two women next to me, why are you here? Although in truth I think I already know: such-wonderfulbooks, JK Rowling-a-genius etc.

'It's just great to be able to talk to other people about Harry Potter,' says the first one, Lisa. I nod my head earnestly. 'Particularly,' she says, 'Harry Potter porn.'

Harry Potter porn? I say.

'Harry Potter gay porn,' she corrects me. 'We write it. It's called slash fi ction. You take the characters and you imagine them in diff erent scenarios. There's het fiction too, where they think the characters are straight. Whereas we assume that everyone is bisexual until proven otherwise.'

What can I say? Lisa is 38; she's a paralegal and lives in New York. Her friend, Hally, is 26, and a student. They just seem like perfectly nice, educated, middle-class women. Who write homoerotic fiction about wizards. By Lisa's reckoning, at least half the delegates are engaged in writing fan fi ction, 'and there's fan fi ction with plot, and then there's fan fi ction which is just sex. But we sub-divide ourselves into who you ship.'

Ship?

'Who you put together. I do Remus-Sirius, but Hally here she does Harry-Draco .'

Draco, his arch enemy? I say. The little blond one?

Lisa nods her head.

I had no idea that Harry was a porn star, I say.

'Oh yes. You should see some of the things that Harry gets up to!'

I'm really not sure I want to, actually. And at dinner I sit next to a fresh-faced pair of sisters: Olivia, a nurse, and Abbi, a teacher, who've driven nine hours from New Mexico to be here. I try to judge if they, too, are into hardcore wizard-onwizard porn.

Do you do … 'slash'? I ask Olivia and Abbi.

'No!' they say. 'We're fans, but we're not freaky fans.'

Later, though, I fall into conversation with Krissie and Kat. Krissie is 20 and works in a toy store in California. And Kat, 18, is a student from Toronto. They're so puppyishly enthusiastic and so glowing with youthful innocence. And then they tell me their 'ships'.

Krissie writes Harry-Draco. And Kat 'does everyone with anyone'.

But why gay porn, I ask them. 'It's like how men like lesbian stuff,' says Kat. I give them my email address and when I get back to London, two of their stories are waiting for me. I can't bring myself to quote them, though, in case a stray child has got past the late-capitalist metanarrative paragraph.

The next day, Rachael Livermore, a 25-year-old from London, gives me one of the best explanations of the phenomenon that I hear. It started with Kirk in Star Trek, she says. Fan fiction writers needed a romantic partner for him, and since there wasn't a suitable female character, he got paired off with Spock. It's slash as in Kirk/Spock.

'I do Snape and Harry. And Snape/ Lockhart. There are female characters in Harry Potter but they're just not very interesting. Ginny 's like the popular girl at school who picked on us, and Hermione is just annoying.

'It's empowering. We are reversing the gender roles. We are saying we like porn: deal with it. A lot of men don't really know what to make of it.'

And what do you do for a living? I ask Rachael.

'I'm an accountant,' she says.

But then everyone needs an escape. It just amazes me that for 1,200 people this involves sitting in darkened rooms listening to presentations on 'Harry Potter and the Sanctity of Everyday Life: JK Rowling's Complex Treatment of the Trope of Normalcy' .

This last one is by Dr Gwen A Tarbox, a professor of English literature at Western Michigan University. She did another talk I went to called 'Bridging the Gap Between Scholars and Fans in a University-level Harry Potter Course' so if anybody is qualifi ed to talk on the subject of Harry Potter as an academic discipline, she is.

So is there such a thing as Harry Potter studies? I ask.

'I would say so. There's such a large body of criticism now and the level of scholarship is really excellent.'

But isn't it the type of thing that gives Eng Lit a bad name, I ask her. Aren't you just playing to the crowd?

'We need to recognise that just because something's popular doesn't mean it's bad. There's a great deal we can learn about things that are popular. And it's popular among such a diverse group of readers.'

And then we have a little spat in which I say, Yes, but she's not Nabokov, is she? and she comes back at me with 'major philosophical themes' and 'a satirist in the tradition of Swift who debunks the idea of arbitrary authority'.

The biggest problem, she says, in talking at a Harry Potter conference is 'understanding who the audience are'. You can see the plus side, though. I stumble across a queue in one of the corridors. There are a hundred or so people lining up to hear 'Snape's Eyes' by Dr Edmund Kern.

Snape, who's been the baddie through six books, is almost universally adored, something which puzzles me until Debbie McLain, a volunteer and 'stay-athome mum' who's the main organiser of Lumos, explains it to me by saying that 'a lot of women are drawn to the characters who they hope may experience redemption'. Oh yes, I think, JK Rowling and the Complex Trope of Female Delusion.

According to the programme notes, Dr Kern holds the chair in history at Lawrence University. His talk, however, is just a nice old-fashioned piece of lit crit based on a close reading of the text. It's the type of thing that English professors did before theory was invented. Which is all well and good - it just has nothing whatsoever to do with his academic speciality. Not that anyone notices.

The audience is rapt. He receives thunderous applause. He's treated less as a history prof, more as an international rock god. And he's not theonly one. There's a group of teenage boys from the website, Mugglenet, who appear to think that they're in a boy band. And, at a talk by Steve Vander Ark, the creator of another website, the quite scarily encyclopaedic Harry Potter Lexicon, there are whoops and cheers and screams when he puts up a map of Britain and sighs when he points out that as we wait for book seven, the final book, 'We're at a unique moment in history. We don't know how it will end. We are living through this amazing time which no one, no one will ever experience again.'

I particularly like the way he calls JK 'Jo' with a quasi-religious type of awe. She supports fan fiction, apparently, of the non-sexual variety. But I can't even begin to think what she would make of it all. There's something of early Beatlemania to it. And, even in Vegas, one of the oddest places on earth, the barmen in the hotel casino shake their heads at me when they see my name tag. 'You're with the convention?'

I am, I say. They give me a long, hard look. You've heard of Star Trek conventions, I say. It's not so different.

'Nuh-huh,' says one. 'There it's all about the merchandising and maybe, you know, you get to meet William Shatner. It's not about wearing a cape and going to lectures.'

But then, there's something so very female about this. It's the first time that women have ever dominated fandom in this way, and so of course it's all about doing extra homework and making sure your uniform is nicely pressed. It's really not a coincidence that one of the most popular characters to dress as is Hermione Granger, Harry's over-achieving little-miss-perfectionist friend.

Everybody conscientiously troops in and out of the lecture rooms regardless of the fact that some of it is, quite frankly, rubbish. There's something slightly unseemly about watching a whole load of academics leaping on a bandwagon. I make a point of going to 'Lies, Damn Lies and the Daily Prophet: A Look at Journalism and Ethics in Harry Potter' since although most people swoon when they hear my adorable accent, one female Harry Potter refuses to answer my questions on the grounds that 'the British press lack ethics and principles'.

Hmm, I think, and march into the seminar ready to do battle. But from what I can figure out, and I don't think I was missing anything major, the main point is a comparison between Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, and Joseph Stalin.

I listen to a sub-GCSE level Lacanian critique and then 'Comrade Potter: A Marxist Reading' in which the speaker claims that a Nimbus 2000 broomstick is 'coveted not because of its usefulness but because of the value assigned to it by society'. Even I know that this isn't true. It's actually pretty useful for Quidditch too. And then 'Disney does Derrida', which is subtitled 'Joanne Rowling as a Writer of Our Times' when it could equally be 'When in Doubt Chuck in the Word "Deconstruction" and See the Suckers Lap it Up'.

Frederick Crews's sequel, Postmodern Pooh, is infinitely more ridiculous than his Sixties original because in the past 40 years, the literary theory establishment has almost collapsed under the weight of its own jargon. I think that if I hear the word 'discourse' again, I'll scream, although it's when I go to 'Out of Bounds: Transgressive Fiction' that I get really annoyed. It's a seminar analysing Hermione Granger-Professor Snape fan fiction. That is to say, a relationship between a teenage girl and a fortysomething man, which often, it transpires, takes the form of a rape narrative. There are 200 women in the room. And a whole lot of talk about female empowerment and gender reversals, but, frankly, if it was 200 men talking about rape narratives involving underage schoolchildren, it would be a matter for the police, and I don't think this is empowering anybody.

But then, when it comes to fan fiction, there really are no limits. In 'Written in the Dark of Nox: Fan Fiction and the Social Taboo', the speaker does a quick poll to see who present writes narratives involving bestiality. Hands shoot up. There's just one man in the room who spends the entire session staring at the carpet.

I corner him on the way out. 'I came with my girlfriend!' he says, quickly.

I thought it was just about liking nice cuddly wizards, I say.

'So did I!' he says. 'Jeez! I mean.'

I head out into the sunlight. I need to get away from the windowless rooms and the sex-with-animals. There's a game of water Quidditch going on in the swimming pool and I bump into Olivia and Abbi, my non-freaky friends from New Mexico, and Lisa and Maria, another set of sisters who are a GP and a TV producer from Sydney, and Megan and Mallory, two shiny-eyed, shiny-haired 21-year-old twins from Washington.

There are so many mother-daughter pairs, so many sisters and female friends all cutting loose from their families, their children, their parents. Over three days, I start to realise why so many of them need Harry Potter. The oncology nurses, and the social workers, and the ones like Abbi, a single mother of two young children, whose eyes shine when she talks about JK's own personal history.

They all dress the same as each other in the way that teenagers do. But then, fitting in, I think, is a very female thing; it's about being interested in and understanding relationships. And this, it seems to me, is why fans enjoy the books. The fact the characters can do spells is really neither here nor there.

Megan and Mallory, it turns out, are making a documentary about 'Wizard Rock', bands that base themselves on characters from Harry Potter. 'Isn't it so amazing that the books have inspired so much creativity?' they say.

And, well, actually, it is. It's all amazing. And seeing anybody, let alone 1,200 people enthused with joy about anything is really quite uplifting. And not just anything. Books! It makes my girlish, swotty heart swell with pride. The fact is that I agree with Gwen Tarbox. 'There's a great deal we can learn about our culture from studying this,' she told me. I think she's right, I'm just not sure exactly what, although I'm willing to place a bet on it having 'discourse' in the title. Or possibly 'trope'.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/stor…1837941,00.html

[Lexington]

En plus, HP a des tons vaguement libéraux qui sont très amusants à relever.

Ce qui est confirmé avec le dernier soit dit en passant: Que la recherche du "greater good" débouche dans le bouquin sur l'équivalent du nazisme, c'est intéressant à noter

[0100011]

Bon je viens de finir le truc. Le dernier tome n'est pas génial avec quelques grosses ficelles et du délayage (le premier tiers du bouquin qui n'avance pas à grand chose). Une décéption tout de même car le 6 était le mieux du lot et je me disais que le meilleur était à venir. En repensant à la globalité j'en arrive même à croire que le 6 a été écrit par quelqu'un d'autre tellement l'écart est grand.

J'avais fait des critiques de Harry Potter et le prince de Sang mêlé et de l'Ordre du Phénix

[ShoTo]

tous les poncifs Potteriens

a quoi fais tu référence ?

[0100011]

a quoi fais tu référence ?

Ben à tout l'univers répétitif qui revient de tome en tome chez harry potter :

1- Harry chez ses beaux-parents, il risque de ne pas pouvoir

aller à Poudlard (trop dure la vie).

2- Harry se retrouve chez les Weasley (cools les Weasley).

3- Harry finit quand même par se retrouver à Poudlard (ouf

on a eu peur).

4- Harry commence mal son année (salauds de

serpentards !).

5- Harry est persécuté à tort par des professeurs vraiment

trop injustes (ils comprennent rien ces adultes).

6- Harry est menacé de mort, le reste de l'humanité aussi

du coup (logique).

7- Harry s'en sort et Griffondor est au top (et tout le monde

applaudit le tout dans une mélodie en majeur).

[Legion]

Ben à tout l'univers répétitif qui revient de tome en tome chez harry potter :

1- Harry chez ses beaux-parents, il risque de ne pas pouvoir

aller à Poudlard (trop dure la vie).

2- Harry se retrouve chez les Weasley (cools les Weasley).

3- Harry finit quand même par se retrouver à Poudlard (ouf

on a eu peur).

4- Harry commence mal son année (salauds de

serpentards !).

5- Harry est persécuté à tort par des professeurs vraiment

trop injustes (ils comprennent rien ces adultes).

6- Harry est menacé de mort, le reste de l'humanité aussi

du coup (logique).

7- Harry s'en sort et Griffondor est au top (et tout le monde

applaudit le tout dans une mélodie en majeur).

Mince, encore le chiffre 7 ! Et évidemment [spoiler WARNING] ce schémas est rompu dans le tome 7, où Harry et ses amis trouvent 3 deathly hallows et détruisent 4 horcruxes (3 + 4 = 7), dans ce tome Peter Pettigrew et Lupin meurent, la bande des 4 est au complet, et rejointe par 3 autres personnages important du passé : Dumbledore (tome 6), Snape et Voldemort, (3 + 4 = 7, encore une fois), et bien sûr, il y avait 7 Horcruxes, et 7 ans à Hogwarts.

[Rincevent]

Mince, encore le chiffre 7 ! Et évidemment [spoiler WARNING] ce schémas est rompu dans le tome 7, où Harry et ses amis trouvent 3 deathly hallows et détruisent 4 horcruxes (3 + 4 = 7), dans ce tome Peter Pettigrew et Lupin meurent, la bande des 4 est au complet, et rejointe par 3 autres personnages important du passé : Dumbledore (tome 6), Snape et Voldemort, (3 + 4 = 7, encore une fois), et bien sûr, il y avait 7 Horcruxes, et 7 ans à Hogwarts.

En fait, la soi-disant "magie" du chiffre 7, c'est surtout une prophétie auto-réalisatrice.

[Legion]

En fait, la soi-disant "magie" du chiffre 7, c'est surtout une prophétie auto-réalisatrice.

Ah ouais ?

"prophétie auto-réalisatrice"

p = 16

r = 18

o = 15

h = 8

e = 5

t = 20

i = 9

a = 1

u = 21

l = 12

s = 19

c = 3

16 + 18 + 15 + 16 + 8 + 5 + 20 + 9 + 5 + 1 + 21 + 20 + 15 + 18 + 5 + 1 + 12 + 9 + 19 + 1 + 20 + 18 + 9 + 3 + 5

= 289

"prophétie auto-réalisatrice" > 25 lettres

289 x 25 = 7450

7 + 4 + 5 + 0 = 16

1 + 6 = 7

[Rincevent]

Tu as donc des dons divins de devin, que je suppose provenir probablement pour petite partie des parents.

Moi aussi, je sais pousser le hasard en ma faveur.

[WALDGANGER]

Il faut aider les libraires qui ne vendent pas Harry Potter:

Un statut à part pour les libraires indépendants

Les «librairies indépendantes de référence» , celles qui jouent un rôle d’aiguilleur en littérature, sciences humaines ou poésie, pourraient bénéficier demain d’un statut particulier avec avantages financiers à la clé, à l’instar des cinémas d’Art et essai. C’est en tout cas la toute première proposition faite par un rapport sur l’avenir du livre qui a été rendu au début de l’été à la ministre de la Culture, Christine Albanel.

Où va le livre, et dans quelle étagère ? L’automne et l’hiver derniers, dans le cadre de la mission «Livre 2010», Sophie Barluet a organisé onze tables rondes avec des représentants de l’édition, de la librairie et des autres professions de l’écrit. Objectif : réfléchir à une nouvelle politique du livre au moment où le numérique et les nouveaux modes de distribution secouent le navire. En a résulté un rapport du Centre national du livre (CNL), assorti de 50 propositions.

La plus saillante concerne les librairies indépendantes. Celles-ci voient leur rentabilité chuter en raison de la hausse des loyers en centre-ville et du développement du commerce sur Internet. Employant davantage de personnel qualifié que les grandes surfaces, ces établissements auraient en outre une masse salariale se situant aux alentours de 15 à 20 % de leur chiffre d’affaires (contre 6 à 10 % pour les grandes surfaces).

«Parce qu’ils défendent des livres plus novateurs et difficiles à vendre que les best-sellers, ils méritent une compensation à la fois comme prescripteurs et entrepreneurs», estime le rapport. Cette compensation pourrait consister en des aides renforcées du CNL et des allégements fiscaux spécifiques. Reste à définir précisément les critères d’attribution de ce label «librairie indépendante de référence». Dès réception du rapport, Christine Albanel a confié à Antoine Gallimard une «mission sur la librairie indépendante» pour approfondir ces pistes. Un plan d’action devrait être présenté avant la fin de l’année. L’auteure du rapport, Sophie Barluet, ancienne secrétaire générale des éditions du Seuil, est décédée le 13 juillet à l’âge de 48 ans.

[Invité jabial]

Quelle horreur.

[Coldstar]

Ah ouais ?

"prophétie auto-réalisatrice"

p = 16

r = 18

o = 15

h = 8

e = 5

t = 20

i = 9

a = 1

u = 21

l = 12

s = 19

c = 3

16 + 18 + 15 + 16 + 8 + 5 + 20 + 9 + 5 + 1 + 21 + 20 + 15 + 18 + 5 + 1 + 12 + 9 + 19 + 1 + 20 + 18 + 9 + 3 + 5

= 289

"prophétie auto-réalisatrice" > 25 lettres

289 x 25 = 7450 FAUX!

7 + 4 + 5 + 0 = 16

1 + 6 = 7

289 x 25 = 7450 289 x 25 = 7225

7 + 2 + 2 + 5 = 16

1 + 6 = 7

J'aime la précision.

[Legion]

289 x 25 = 7450 289 x 25 = 7225

7 + 2 + 2 + 5 = 16

1 + 6 = 7

J'aime la précision.

Ça c'est fort, j'avais fait l'opération à la calulette et j'avais reconté…