Reading by JK Rowling at Radio City - Spoilers Within

[annemflynn]

No: HPFGUIDX 156366

Coming out of lurkerdom to post (and it's a really long one, too)...I 
attended a reading last night at Radio City Music Hall (in NYC for 
those that have actually never heard of it). It was a benefit for 
Doctors Without Borders and The Haven Foundation.  They had huge t.v. 
monitors set up, so the people in the cheap seats (i.e. me, who was 
literally in the last row) could see. The authors there were Stephen 
King, JK Rowling, and John Irving. It was a real treat. The place was 
sold out, 6,000 people were there. People were dressed up and the 
whole bit, there were Gryffindors all over the place, except poor 
Luna Lovegood, lion on her head and all. 

Jo read the chapter out of HBP where DD first goes to meet Tom at the 
orphanage (sorry, don't have the book handy while posting). My 
sister, who works for Scholastic, was convinced she was going to read 
something new that was non-commital to the plot or something, but I 
thought she's read something out of HBP. A perfect selection, IMO. 

Well, she took questions at the end. A father and his daughter got up 
and the father thanked Jo profusely (and incredibly eloquently, I 
might add) for getting kids excited about reading again and creating 
a character like Hermione who was such an excellent role model for 
girls, etc. When the cameras came back to Jo, she was crying at that. 
How sweet!

And now, the OTHER questions that were asked. I'll put in the spoiler 
space, just in case (and just in case you can actually consider them 
spoilers)...
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One girl got up and asked if Herimone looked in the Mirror of Erised, 
what would she see? Which very much impressed Jo because she had 
never had that question before.  Jo said that Hermione would see them 
all safe and unscathed and see herself happily entwined in an affair 
of her own. (No big surprise there, I suppose).

Another asked about whether or not she felt her characters had any 
redeemable qualities, i.e. Draco Malfoy (to which, Jo had to shake 
her head over why girls were so infatuated with Draco). The question 
was worded really well, too, the girl had made reference to Snape 
being on the side of good in it, to which, Jo's expression didn't 
change (Dammit!). Well, Jo said that while she believed everybody had 
redeemable qualities in them, for the sake of the story, Draco was 
not one of them. And she reminded us what the terms of his assignment 
were and what the consequences would be, should he not be able to 
carry it out. And then told us to draw our own conclusions from that.

She said that she has the last chapter to book 7 already written 
(which I believe she has said before) and that the series is ending 
not because she's tired of writing Harry, but because she's afraid of 
running out of story. How can one run out of stories in a mythical 
world? I certainly have no idea!

So, that's what she said. I don't know whether she has eluded to any 
of that yet outside of the books, but thought I'd pass it along and 
how great she was and how fun she was to watch. 

Oh, and they did a close up of her bitchin's shoes. High heels, with 
gold SNAKES twined through them. They were great!

Anne Marie
(And for anyone interested, Stephen King and John Irving were 
obviously awesome, as well, but this list isn't about them)