>VERBOSE

I really don't have room for more books on my shelves, much less an entire second set of Harry Potter, but Jim Kay's illustrations are really proving tempting...

7 New Must-See "Harry Potter" Covers

In general, I vastly prefer this art style to the previous ones under the "slidy thing", as well as to the American covers, but I have to mostly agree with the commenter who said Harry looks like a 10-year-old girl on all of them - it's fine for him to appear so young on the first couple, but he hardly seems to get any older or taller.

The Hagrid and Dumbledore are quite good, though.

>> Sent: Friday, October 04, 2013 9:33 AM
>> To: RDA-L@LISTSERV.LAC-BAC.GC.CA
>> Subject: [RDA-L] Fictitious characters as authors
>>
>> I know that RDA now allows fictitious characters to serve as
>> authorized access points. The book "The tales of Beedle the Bard" was
>> originally entered under the author J.K. Rowling. The cover shows
>> Rowling's name alone. The title page, however, reads: "The tales of
>> Beedle the Bard / translated from the ancient runes by Hermione
>> Granger ; commentary by Albus Dumbledore ; introduction, notes and
>> illustrations by J.K. Rowling." Should the AAP now be under Granger
>> rather than Rowling, with additional access points for Dumbledore and
>> Rowling?
>
> App. E would suggest “Beedle|c(Bard) (Fictitious Character)”, as we don’t
> currently have colons available, in RDA syntax, to separate qualifiers in
> access points for personal names.

A translator is not a creator, so they would never be used in the authorized access point for the work, unless in addition to translating they adapted the work so much that it it becomes a new work (“translated and RETOLD by Hermione Granger”). Granger would get a 700 added entry. You can take statements of responsibility from anywhere in a book, so it doesn’t matter that Rowling’s name isn’t on the title page. She is asserted as the creator it seems, and so she is in the AAP.

I love that this kind of discussion goes on in all seriousness on cataloging listservs.

("Authorized access point" here means a controlled-vocabulary, standardized way of referring to names of people, titles of works, etc.; basically RDA's term for authority control.)

Brilliant humorous "posters" with a cartoon scene for each chapter of the first 6 HP books (7th is coming).

Some idle speculation on this semi-plot-hole, which I've seen wondered about at various times:

How did Lily's letter to Sirius, which would have been sent to him while he was living elsewhere than Grimmauld Place (presumably in that flat of his own that he got thanks to Uncle Alphard's money), wind up back in his bedroom for Severus to find, especially given that Sirius went to Azkaban for 12 years?

I was just brainstorming about this while lying in bed last night and wondered if any of the following solutions were plausible as ways for Sirius's stuff to get out of wherever he was living at the time.

1. At the time of PoA we're told that general rumour was Sirius was a Death Eater or other supporter of Voldemort and that was why "he" killed Peter and those Muggles. We know from Karkaroff that not all the DE's knew each other. Could one of the actual DE's somehow gained access to his dwelling and spirited his stuff back to Grimmauld Place (under the misapprehension that Mrs Black, who'd be the only one living there at that point since - canon tells us Regulus is dead; the extra-canonical tapestry drawing tells us Mr Black was too) would give a damn?

2. Scenario similar to the above might also work if it was someone else he knew who was not in the Order and didn't know about it (the Order would probably want to go through his things to make sure there was nothing exposing them, and I don't know if they'd have let this letter and picture go, although maybe the damage was done at that point), and preferred to see his goods returned rather than seized by the Ministry?

3. Could there have been some kind of protective enchantments on his dwelling, similar to those around 12 Grimmauld Place itself, which resulted in everything simply sitting there unfound for 12+ years, and Sirius himself (or someone on his behalf, like Remus) was able to go fetch it sometime after PoA?

I saw a comic today on dA where the artist's notes said they'd drawn it because in the Russian translation of Deathly Hallows, Neville was teaching not Herbology, but Potions (with predictable reaction from a now-dead Snape). (Actually the words were "Russian translators decide make Neville a Potion Master", and I can't be quite sure how they're using the word "master", whether it's in its correct context of "schoolmaster" or not, but still.) Anyone know if this is really true, and if so, where on earth they would get off randomly changing a detail like that? "Lost in Translation" (the title of the comic) doesn't quite seem to cover it!

Dammit! I waffled too long buying a copy of the fancy edition of Beedle and now Amazon's sold out. And of course, now the price has, like, doubled from the few people who were holding back copies.

Ah well, it wouldn't have fit on the bookcase anyway. We're already stacking 'em two deep and piling others on top in several places. And I hear JKR's handwriting is pretty illegible (re: the facsimile original) and the extra illustrations are a bit odd.

Mary GrandPre's alternate cover sketch would have been so much more awesome than the one we got, Y/Y?

http://media.the-leaky-cauldron.org/gallery/books/AlternativeMaryGrandPre/books_bookart_alternativemgp_deathlyhallows_01.jpg