Ultimate Unofficial Guide

[GulPlum <plumeski@yahoo.com>]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, m.bockermann at t... wrote:
> Hi everybody!
> 
> I was wondering if anybody has read the Ultimate Unofficial Guide 
to the Mysteries of Harry Potter by Galadriel Waters and Astre 
Mithrandir (those have to be pseudonyms or they are born to be 
Fantasy authors). Is it good? Or is it just a collection of theories 
we have discussed here in HPFGU in detail?

I've not read the book, and have no intention of buying it. 

"Galdriel Waters" participated in a few discussions on alt.fan.harry-
potter last autumn (or "fall" for you Americans) :-) and revealed 
some of her ideas and theories. She first turned up asking for beta-
readers for her manuscript, and I know that one of the afh-p regulars 
whose opinion I've grown to respect read it and wasn't all that 
impressed. Even so, he did admit that despite having participated on 
online HP fandom for over two years, some of her ideas were 
completely novel, and a few were really worth thinking about 
(although he didn't go into detail).

Apart from her style which I found exceptionally off-putting (I got 
into a bit of an exchange of unpleasantries about it with her at one 
stage; a minor irritant was her refusal to use any upper-case letters 
in anything she wrote), I think all of the original theories she 
presented in afh-p were pretty much dismissed by the majority of 
people. 

Apparently, a lot of the book's contents are theories which have been 
doing the rounds online, but it seems as if she came up with them all 
independently. Regrettably, some of her theories also appear to 
depend on her having been unaware of some of the things JKR has said 
in interviews etc.

I'm not sure if my lack of interest in this book is because of the 
mutual personal animosity we developed from the start, or whether I 
felt the few theories she presented didn't hold water and so I'm not 
interested in hearing the rest, so do bear in mind that is an 
extremely *personal* opinion of her efforts and not based on first-
hand knowledge of the book.

To give you a flavour, "Harry is the Heir of Gryffindor" is one of 
the cornerstones of her thesis, and one of her far-out theories is 
that James Potter and Lupin performed a Switching Spell on themselves 
before the Halloween attack, and thus Lupin is in fact James.

You can get a taste of her ideas in the Google usenet archive:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-
1&q=Galadriel+Waters&meta=

(the "switching" idea was discussed just recently in her absence, 
following publication of the book, starting with this post:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-
8&threadm=3E4FFB55.4B669C3C%40ThisIsFake.dk&rnum=31&prev=/&frame=on)

-- 
GulPlum AKA Richard, who remains curious about other peop;es' views 
on the book in question