Book retailer to set up a helpline for Harry Potter Fans

Arts & Sciences Arts & Entertainment
#1

[quote]LONDON (AFP) - Book retailer Waterstone’s is hoping to set up a helpline for distressed fans of the popular
Harry Potter series because two characters will be killed off in the final instalment, a newspaper reported.
ADVERTISEMENT

“This could be a similar moment to when (pop band) Take That split up – there could be a lot of upset teenagers out there,” said Debbie Williams, a buyer for the book chain, according to The Daily Telegraph.

“We are looking to set up a helpline for them.”[/quote]

Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez :unamused:
news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070202/wl … teroffbeat

#2

Take What?

#3

Retards. British people are fking idiots.

A decandant race of soft, mentally flabby Big Brother-watching, helpline-phoning, children’s book-reading uncuthianas. Decline and fall, indeed.

#4

Butercup Wrote: [quote]Retards. British people are fking idiots[/quote]

British folks are at the top of my list for good drinking company. Aussies second.

Agreed, but you were a great people two generations ago and before.

#5

I think Rowling should write some kind of impossible horror plot into the finale. Maybe something like that movie where all the demons travel through electronic gizmos from another dimension and attack people, making them so depressed they dissolve into ashes. Nobody wins, and that smarmy kid is on the run forever. In another dimension. Missing most of his soul or something. Hah!

Help line indeed. Kill them all, I say. That’ll teach them for calling flashlights “torches”.

<I’m joking>

Never really understood the fascination with Potter. Never made it through even one of the books or movies. Maybe I need a helpline.

#6

J.K. Rowling has already said long ago that the last word on the last page of the last book will be “scar”. If Rowling believed in poetic justice, this is how she will end the book:

Harry Potter realizes that all of Hogwarts, the whole popularity thing, his parents being martyrs against the forces of evil, his ability to fight with evil personified, his birth being prophesied, his escape from an abysmal existence with his abusive aunt and uncle and bullying cousin, his potential horrible education at a bad school, having a girlfriend (and several female…and male…admirers), and being surrounded by true friends who would risk their lives for him… all of it… was just a dream.

His parents really did die in a car wreck (probably from driving drunk to add salt to the wound so that it would be even more pathetic and preventable). He really is going to bad school and that he will not leave the home of his aunt and uncle until he becomes emancipated. That he has no friends and will never get a date. That he is just an ordinary kid that gets mediocre grades and has done nothing interesting, let alone noble. And the last sentence at the end of the chapter when he wakes up and begins to realize that he is at the beginning of his reality after 7 books’ worth of fantasizing, is “And Harry reached up and realized that there no longer was a ‘scar’.”

If J. K. Rowling were a true artist, that is how she would end the Harry Potter saga.

:smiling_imp:

#7

[quote=“Buttercup”]Retards. British people are fking idiots.

A decandant race of soft, mentally flabby Big Brother-watching, helpline-phoning, children’s book-reading uncuthianas. Decline and fall, indeed.[/quote]
Oh yeah? Oh YEAH??

Well, you ought to see what Americans are doing.

Here’s a pic from Wikipedia entry on “Muggle Quidditch” -

Seems college students have been taking literal matters into their own hands and playing Quidditch on campus. It supposedly started at Middlebury College, then spread out, and now there are Quidditch teams and leagues popping up all over the place. If you can find it, there’s a great article about it in the December 16, 2006 Wall Street Journal. Here’s the snippet you can get without a subscription:

[quote]What’s That Student Doing With a Broom? Intramural Quidditch
By John Hechinger
Word Count: 1,082
MIDDLEBURY, Vt. – Rainey Johnson, sporting a yellow shirt, yellow socks and yellow paint smeared on his face, darted across the freshman quad. Other students, in capes, ran after him clutching brooms between their legs and grasping in vain for a tennis ball stuffed in a sock hanging out of his yellow shorts. Mr. Johnson and the rest of the Middlebury College undergraduates are among the first J.K. Rowling fans trying to turn the magical, aerial game of her Harry Potter novels – Quidditch – into an earthbound sport.[/quote]
Students quoted in the article talked about how their generation grew up with Harry Potter. For those who will be 18 this year, Harry Potter has been around since they were 8.

#8

I don’t know many 8-year-olds who can read Harry Potter books without a good dictionary. Was Scholastic even printing the American English versions in 1997 when they first came out?

#9

When I suggested that Harry Potter has been around since they were 8, I meant, well, that it’s been around since they were 8 - not that they necessarily started reading it then. Hell, my daughter knows what Harry Potter is, she’s 5, and I know for certain she hasn’t read it, dictionary or no.

But let’s back it up. When today’s college students say they grew up with Harry Potter, I still think it makes sense. If your average college freshman is 18 this year, they would’ve been 8 when the first book came out, 9 for the second, 10 for the third, 11 for the fourth, 14 for the fifth, 16 for the fifth, and 18 this year for the last. For the movies, they would’ve been 12, 13, 15, and 16, with two more on the way. Tack on 4 years each for college seniors. Of course I can’t say what age they were when they started actually reading the books, seeing the films, hearing names, seeing Harry Halloween costumes, passing by gawdy Barnes & Noble window displays, ads infinitum, but I do think it’s safe to say that, well, it’s been around and that they’ve grown up with it.

For us old farts, 10 years may be a drop in the bucket, but not so for the young’ins. I know a few 8 year olds who would agree with that. :smiley: