What to read after...

[A.E.B.Bevan at open.ac.uk]

Other reading for those waiting for OOP.

This came up before 
 some thoughts

Firstly if the HP books have made someone keen on reading for the 
first time the question isn't really 

`what to read next' 

            but 

                `what worlds do you want to create today?' 

Its all out there to explore
 just open a book.

However some thoughts on next steps..

If you want to find a complex and well thought out world with masses 
of strange details suddenly illuminating your own, try Ursula Le 
Guin's  `Always Coming Home'. An utopia which is realistic because 
people still manage to make a mess of their lives in it yet carry on 
and build something out of this.  Incidentally, when JKR produced the 
short booklets on Quidditch and `Fantastic Beasts'  she provided 
something like Le Guins structure for Always Coming Home, information 
about the world of the main story that isn't part of the main story, 
things we can fit into our creation of that world


http://hem.passagen.se/peson42/lgw/b_always.html

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9243.html

For a magic world try Le Guin's   `Earthsea'  series
 some very 
different stories.

http://hem.passagen.se/peson42/lgw/b_wizard.html

Sticking to magical adventures and a band of children taking on 
threats and evil, backed by a Dumbledore figure, try  Susan Cooper's  
`Dark is Rising' series. 

http://missy.shef.ac.uk/~emp94ms/darkser2.html

( HP fan warning – you may have some plot parallel shakes 
For 
example  11 year old discovers on his birthday he is part of a 
magical world and has to undertake several traumatic tasks
)

Now the apparent HP thread that Harry is being led through a series 
of tasks to enable him to stand on his own eventually against the 
dark lord, without being able to rely on anyone else at all. 

A  similar theme runs through the Orson Scott Card book `Ender's 
Game'. Here it is training a boy to become commander of earth's 
armies against an alien invasion. The plot twist on this one, 
reflection on good and evil, is such s shocker Id ask it not to be 
spoilered in any discussion.  The successor volume `Speaker for the 
Dead' introduces one of the few really alien ideas in Sci or fantasy 
fiction.  Lots of reflection  on good and evil here too.

http://www.frescopictures.com/movies/ender/enderbook.html

Enough for now...

Edis