Q for Quidditch and Quills

Autumn darkness is upon us and I’m in movie mood. Over the last five days I’ve been (re)watching the first five films based on the Harry Potter books. Two more to review and then I hope to finally get the very last one (part 2 of The Deathly Hallows) on DVD next week when it is released. However, since I’ve ordered it from the same company that mixed up my last DVD order, I might just possibly end up with another copy of  The Condemned instead. (See recent post Trick or Treat.) Ah well. What is life without a bit of risk-taking! (I only placed the order with them again because of a discount they gave me to compensate for previous mistakes…)

Anyway, not too surprising that the first Q-word which swooshed through my mind for the ABC Q-challenge was - Quidditch.  However, I already wrote a post on that in the last ABC-round. Not on this blog but on my Harry Potter blog. (Follow the link if you want to read.) Just about the only sports game for which I know the rules… The main advantage from my point of view though is that since I can’t fly a broomstick, I can’t be expected to play!

 

Next to mind came Quills. As far as the use of those is concerned, I think I could have been accepted as a Hogwarts student. (Where no pens or pencils are used – only quills.)

In The Order of the Phoenix (which I watched yesterday), there is a nasty Quill in use (as punishment) which does not need dipping in ink because it uses your own blood instead…

… Somehow through the twists and turns of my thoughts, I was reminded that back in my childhood or teens (long before Harry Potter first popped up in J.K. Rowling’s mind), there was a bottle of red ink in a drawer in my grandfather’s old desk. I used to pick feathers outside (frequently scattered about by the crows fighting over the left-over potatoes that my grandmother used to put out for them to feast on), sharpen them into quill pens, dip them into that bottle of red ink, and practice my quill-writing…

Another famous quill from the Harry Potter books and films is the Quick Quotes Quill used by reporter Rita Skeeter in The Goblet of Fire. This is a magical quill that automatically twists whatever you say into sensational newspaper stuff. I’m not so sure those aren’t secretly used by Muggle reporters as well!

ABC Wednesday

 

Booking Through Thursday: Replay

  http://btt2.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/replay/

Have you ever finished a book and loved it so much you went right back and started re-reading it again?

Oh yes I have (and those who have been following this blog for a while will already know that!) ... The first that come to mind is each of the Harry Potter books. Mind you, the first four of these I first made acquaintance with as audio books in Swedish; so it was immediate re-listening in Swedish first; and later reading them in English, and listening to the English audio versions (there are two: read by Jim Dale vs Stephen Fry). With the last three, I read them as books first as soon as they were published (in English), and then listened to the audio versions pretty much immediately afterwards. I have re-listened to the whole series several times over during the decade that has passed since I first listened to The Philosopher's Stone. This is because they are so full of amusing details, and also because the story develops from one book to another; so that one may be struck by different things each time, and the understanding of whole actually grows with rereading.


There are other books or series too that I have reread and relistened to several times over - The Chronicles of Narnia for one. But with those and a few other favourites that I first read a long time ago, I can no longer remember excactly how soon afterwards I made the first re-read. Then there are of course some books that I've started right over with for study purposes (like writing an essay).


Out of all the novels in my bookshelves, there is one that I have probably read more times than any other, and that is Three Men in a Boat by J.K. Jerome, first published in 1889. Although it was written more than 120 years ago, I find his observations and wit and humour timeless. My old Swedish paperback copy of it is from 1967, and I'm pretty sure I read it first time before our family's first trip to England/London in 1969 (ie when I was 13 going on 14). This because one of the most famous episodes in the book involes the maze at Hampton Court; which we visitied on that trip.

Anyway, I'm not sure how many times I've reread (or in later years listened to) that book since then, but I would not be surprised if it was at least once a year, which would make it about 40 reads (or more). And it still makes me laugh!

Booking Through Thursday: Largest, Thickest, Heaviest

 http://btt2.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/heavy/

Deb asks: What’s the largest, thickest, heaviest book you ever read?
Was it because you had to? For pleasure? For school?

Counted in number of pages or words, it has to be the Bible. The thing with Bibles, though, is that they are usually in small print on very thin paper, which makes it possible for a book like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to compete in weight and thickness!

First time I read the Bible all through from the first page to the last, I was 14 years old. It was not forced upon me. I had already completed a year of confirmation classes in the Church of Sweden without any quite such heavy homework. In fact, judging by the inscription in my first Bible, it seems we were not presented with The Book until at the actual confirmation.

In spite of being 'confirmed', I was not yet at that age 'convinced'. But since I had the book, I decided to read it. I can't recall much from the confirmation classes, but what the vicar said when he gave us the Bibles made a lasting impression: He pointed out that the Bible was not meant to be a bookshelf ornament, but to be read and studied, and we should not hesitate to underline things or to make notes in it. 

I don't remember how long it took me, but I did read it, starting with Genesis and ending with Revelations. Then I lay it aside, still 'unconvinced'. It was not until a year or two later, at the age of 16, that I started calling myself a believer. But it's probably only a couple of more times that I have read the whole Bible through in that precise order, 'from start to finish'. I have it in a number of different translations though, both in Swedish and English.

Besides one Bible in each language, I picked out three other large, thick, heavy candidates.

From Jesus to Mother Teresa. 560 pages church history. Not only big and clumsy, it was not exactly 'light reading' either! That one was compulsory reading, but for volontary studies. Theology long distance at 1/4 speed for 4 years in the early 90s. (Four years of part time studies corresponding to one full time introduction year at a theological seminar. We had four weekends per year at the school and the rest of the work was done in my spare time at home; while working full time in the daytime.)

Vanity Fair by Thackeray. That's my thickest paperback novel, 950 pages. My copy was printed in 1992 which means it was not university reading. So I must have decided to buy it and read it of my own free will! (I do have a sort of standing project ever since my uni days, of continuing to read old classics that are frequently referred to, but were not included in my courses.) Originally this book was published, Dickens-style, "in one shilling numbers, beginning in January 1847, with illustrations by the author". (My copy lacks the illustrations, it's all pure text.)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The fifth book in that series, and the longest - 766 pages. For me it was the first in the series that I bought in English on the first day it was released, in the summer of 2003 (only having listened to the previous four as audio books in Swedish before that). I remember reading it more or less non-stop in two or three days. It is not J.K. Rowling's own favourite (according to interviews), but it remains mine, because I was so very much "in sync" with the feelings in it that first time I read it.

I do have other books on my shelves that are even bigger and heavier; but those I cannot claim to have read from the first page to the last. They are dictionaries, encyclopedias, history books or Illustrated Complete Works of... (Shakespeare, for example), which I have only used to look things up in and read parts of.