Why was Snape such a Bad Teacher?!

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

WARNING: HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE Spoilers A friend of mine picked up the new Harry Potter movie on DVD and I plan to watch it this week.   I was thinking back to how much I enjoyed the book, but remembered something that nagged the hell out of me when the identity of the […]

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What Harry Potter Didn’t Study

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Does it bother anyone else that essentially all of Harry Potter’s education at Hogwarts was about rote memorization of spell casting and totally divorced from “muggle” education? I mean, the wizarding world need not worry about all the same things that the muggle world worries about, but come on.   You’ve still got money, so math, […]

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The End of Books?

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

I’m not exactly talking about ebooks or transitions of technology.   I’m talking about Larry McMurtry’s contention that we may be living in the twilight of the novel.   (Note that he happens to be giving his talk on this topic, ironically perhaps, at Rice University where I literally read hundreds of novels as an undergraduate in […]

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