Book Praise

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

READING HARRY POTTER: Critical Essays
edited by Giselle Liza Anatol

So far, the first of the books I bought at Nimbus 2003 that I *don't*
think turned out to be a waste of money. Even tho' some of the essays
are quite irritating (e.g. Julia Park's essay consists of bashing
Rowling and Potter for the deep sin of being "middle-class"), enough
are quite interesting. 

My favorite essay therein is one by Susan Hall on the absence of the
rule of law in the British wizarding world, which is more of an
arbitrary dictatorship. Her talk at Nimbus 2003 connected this sorry
state of the wizarding world with the sorry state of the rule of law
in Muggle Britain at the time, 1692, of the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy.

There is one essay, "Harry Potter and the Acquisition of Knowledge" by
Lisa Hopkins, that I kept wanting to show to the listie,
lunalovegoodrules, who invented BIC PEN and ANOTHER HARRY ... the
academic noticed the same "ignorance becomes Harry's defining
condition" but develops a much more mundane explanation for it.