BIG EXCITEMENT!

Today the guys over at Mugglenet.Com were in town giving a readng of their book (which I review below), but I couldn't go. I had to work. But, that's ok, see, I promised you big excitement and here it is:

Check out how I spent my afternoon:

That's my coworker and friend Becci on the left, me on the right. But, I have to say, that's a day of Harry Potter cruelty when you have to decide between the Knight Bus and a Mugglenet reading. It's a hard life I lead, I know.

Here's what the thing looks like on the outside:

This is the "front" side, which has the door and stuff.

This is the "back" side.

Here's the Harry Potter bookshelf, which is to the right when you walk in. Across the way from the bookshelf, is a big blowup of the Deathly Hallows cover art under glass.

Then, looking from the bookshelf down the bus, this is it.





Of course, in the gear up to the end of the series, there is lots of speculation about how it will end and how the big questions will be answered. Is Dumbledore really dead? Will Harry get his head out of the #$@ and take Ginny back? Will Ron and Hermione ever get their act together and snog already? Where are the the other horcruxes? Who is RAB? And, of course, the big one, just whose side is Severus Snape on?!

These books attempt to answer the questions...

Mugglenet.Com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Falls in Love and How Will the Adventure Finally End by Ben Schoen, Emerson Spartz, Andy Gordon, Gretchen Stull, and Jamie Lawrence

This is an excellent book written by some hard-core Potter fans. So, out of the two questions they give their predictions on that have already passed (when will the book come out and what will it be called) they were totally wrong, BUT! their evidence is solid and their arguements well thought out.

Such questions they debate are is Dumbledore really dead? Is Harry a Horcrux? What is Neville's Destiny? and the role of prophesies. The great thing about this book is that even though the authors clearly state a side in the debate, they do offer both sides of the arguement. The authors think that Dumbledore is really dead (which I agree with) but they also make the most convincing arguement I've ever seen that Dumbledore lives.

I don't agree with all of their predictions and I think they ignore some crucial evidence. I really respect the book for sticking to a very strict set of sources-- the books, and interviews with J. K. Rowling. Also, they never present their conclusions as given fact, they are always very explicit about what their opinions are and what we know for sure.

Sadly, that is not the case with The Great Snape Debate by Amy Berner, Orson Scott Card, and Joyce Millman. (This is only available at Border's stores until after Deathly Hallows comes out.)

The concept of the book is great. One side of the book is the case for Snape's innocence--flip it over and it's the case for Snape's guilt.

Be warned, despite what the cover says, Orson Scott Card is NOT an author this book-- he has a 30 page essage on Snape, but the rest of the book is by Berner and Millman.

They make a lot of assumptions without any textual evidence--I can understand why people would assume that Lucius Malfoy took a young Severus Snape under his wing at school, but there is nothing in the "cannon" about this, yet the author's take it as fact and base their arguements on it. They say that Dumbledore isn't entirely trustworthy because he's made bad decisions in the past, such as letting Tom Riddle attend Hogwarts-- completely misisng the fact that Dumbledore wasn't headmaster at the time, so it really wasn't his decision.

In addition to faulty assumptions for which we have no evidence, they also use such things as the movies as evidence for what might happen in Book 7. Despite the fact that J. K. Rowling approved the movie scripts doesn't mean they can be taken as evidence because it's not like she wrote the scripts. Plus, they use the film career of Alan Rickman as evidence. I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with anything.

There are lots of sidebars that are supposed to be humorous-- like what's on Snape's iPod, or the fact that Snape's secret vice is really Dancing With the Stars. Where I appreciated the inclusion of The Best of the Smiths, Vol. 1 on Snape's iPod, the rest of it was just lame.

I bought the book because Orson Scott Card's name was on it. His essay is really good, but the rest of the book is just a crappy thing quickly churned out to make a fast buck.