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harry potter

Trilingual Harry Potter Reread

Announcing my next Trilingual Reread: Harry Potter!

Now that I’ve FINALLY finished off the Trilingual Hobbit Reread, I’m going to do another one–and this time I’ll be doing Harry Potter! This has been inspired in no small part by the Harry Potter reread they’ve been doing on Tor.com, and how I never did actually get around to reading book 7. But before I read book 7, I need to reread 1-6. (Oh DARN whatever shall I do.)

Thanks to the ease with which I can get multiple language editions of the stories off of Pottermore, I have the English, French, and German editions of Book 1 of the series all in ebook form now. (I think it’s pretty neat, actually, that Pottermore sells ebook copies of the series in so many languages–they’ve got several others besides French and German, and I gotta say I’d be tempted by the Japanese if I had the first clue about how to read the characters!)

(However, important note of interest–Pottermore did NOT let me buy the UK English editions of the ebooks, even though it did let me get the French and German. The site has some sort of geoIP checking in place that saw I was in the US, and one presumes that Rowling’s publishers have territory agreements in place to dictate where the English editions are sold. Which is weird given that the ebooks aren’t being sold with DRM on them, but territory restrictions are NOT the same thing as DRM. So.)

And in the interests of seeing if I can whip through the posts faster, I’m going to change the format of them a bit. I’m going to include a general commentary section for overall reactions to the action, as I did with most of the latter Hobbit posts. But I’m going to prune down the language commentary and will keep it to a few general sections:

* The longest bit I’m able to read in both French and German, and a breakdown of what that bit means
* Five vocabulary words that leap out at me in both languages
* Anything that leaps out at me as unique to either translation, particularly in regards to character names or interesting handling of story events, and particularly if one edition handles it differently than the other

I have books 1-4 of the UK editions of the stories in print and will be using those as my English edition for purposes of this story–though I will be comparing them against the US editions to see where they differ, and because I want to see what the French and German editions key off of, too.

This’ll be fun, and I hope y’all will enjoy this as much as I will!

Books

And now, a Harry Potter-ish book roundup

Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen

Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen

Bought in print from Barnes and Noble:

  • Skin Game, by Jim Butcher. Already read this in ebook form, but I’m grabbing the paperback for my hardcopy for my library.
  • Pocket Apocalypse, by Seanan McGuire. The latest installment of her Incryptid series!

Bought from Pottermore:

  • Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen and Harry Potter à l’École des Sorciers–which are, of course, the German and French editions of Book 1 of the Harry Potter series! I’ll be using these to launch the Trilingual Harry Potter Reread very soon! I do rather like how you can grab the Harry Potter books in multiple languages from Pottermore, which will make it rather easier for me to conduct a multi-lingual reread of the series! They have several more languages besides French and German, too, though this’ll do me for now!

Ten for the year so far.

Books

Multi-national and multi-lingual book roundup!

Picked up in print in Victoria this past weekend, when Dara and I kept having fun ducking into small used bookstores and going “So! Do you have any books in French?”:

  • La communauté de l’Anneau, Les deux tours, and Le retour du roi. J.R.R. Tolkien. These are, of course, the French translations of the three books of The Lord of the Rings.
  • Harry Potter à l’École des Sorciers, Harry Potter et La Chambre des Secrets, and Harry Potter et Le Prisonnier d’Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling. The French translations of the first three Harry Potter books.

Grabbed from Kobo:

  • Bitter Seeds, by Ian Tregillis. Alternate history of the “WWII but with magic” school. Noticed this a while back as potentially interesting, grabbed now because Kobo had the price down to 2.99.
  • Wide Open, by Deborah Coates. Contemporary fantasy, by which I mean, fantasy set in the real world, but in a more rural setting rather than an urban one. Sounded interesting, about a woman coming back from a stint in Iraq and having to deal with her sister’s ghost.
  • Cold Magic, by Kate Elliott. Steampunk. Saw this one come out a while back, thought it sounded interesting, finally buying a copy.

And grabbed from Angry Robot directly, because they decided they wanted to celebrate SF written by women after the recent flaps over the Hugos and the Clarkes this year, to wit, go Angry Robot!:

  • vN, by Madeline Ashby. SF. Liked the concept of a heroine who’s an intelligent, self-replicating robot–a synthetic humanoid.
  • The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, by Cassandra Rose Clarke. SF, and again, oddly enough, about intelligent humanoid robots! In this case, a love story involving one.
  • Walking the Tree, by Kaaron Warren. Fantasy. This sounded like it had an interesting worldbuilding concept, about an island civilization dominated by a giant tree and a woman who’s charged to walk the circumference of the island.

75 for the year.

About Me, Movies, Television

Weekend of Turkey, Battlestar, and Potter

As is our custom at the Murkworks, we had our annual Homeless Waifs Thanksgiving Day Turkeyfest, and this time around we had a very respectable turnout of 16 people, including children. Much obliged to userinfomamishka, userinfotechnoshaman, userinfomaellenkleth, userinfodpawtows, userinfoepawtows, userinfoypawtows, userinfocflute, userinfosksouth, userinfofredpdx, and Mimi’s friend Chad who all showed up to make a wonderful evening. Callie brought her stepchildren with her as well and they were charming little tykes and very happy to play with the various toys we had around the living room.

userinfoflashfire has been spending the week with us as well, and we’ve been doing various low-key amusements since he’s had to be on call for work, which means he doesn’t have too much time free. We have, however, had quite a bit of fun attending both the Battlestar Galactica and Harry Potter exhibits downtown; last night, too, we saw the new Harry Potter movie.

Friday afternoon was exhibits day. We wandered downtown and had lunch at the Dick’s not far from Big Fish, as it turned out. It was really kind of weird actually getting that food in a sit-down restaurant. userinfosolarbird was amused by overhearing a nearby child asking another child, “Y’gonna drink that ketchup?”

From there we wandered over to the Seattle center to hit the exhibits. We tried Potter first, only to be told that we wouldn’t get in any earlier than 6:30. So we bought tickets for that time slot and hit the Battlestar exhibit instead.

The BSG exhibit was super-tiny, but what it had rocked. There were several excellent costumes from both the old and new series, an assortment of props, and interesting little snippets of videos spaced around the area. We were happy to see some of Starbuck’s stuff in particular, since Dara and I do miss our crazy TV girlfriend Kara, even now. 😉 The big draw for this exhibit though was hands down the two Vipers and the Cylon raider, full size! userinfosolarbird took oodles of pictures. They’ll be going up for viewing soon enough, as soon as she figures out where to put them, I expect (her Flickr account is full).

Since we had time to kill, and since we hadn’t actually explored the Experience Music Project part of the building, we wandered around through the rest of the place as well. That was kind of neat, especially the display about indie music history in Seattle. The huge exhibit on Jimi Hendrix didn’t mean as much to me just because I have no background with his music; plus, I think I was a bit nonplussed by the huge sculpture of instruments in the lobby. I couldn’t help thinking gosh look at all those instruments that aren’t getting played, although they did look cool, I must admit. And apparently, the sculpture is set to play at certain times, though we didn’t catch that part.

userinfosolarbird, userinfospazzkat, and userinfoflashfire also wandered through the Science Fiction Museum. I’d been in there before so opted not to look at that part; I wanted to check the swag shops and get me a Battlestar shirt, and also just see what else they had for sale. All in all a good way to kill time.

The Potter exhibit was doing mad crazy business, as you might expect on a holiday weekend, the first weekend following the opening of a Potter movie as well. It too was smallish, although bigger than the BSG exhibit. And unlike with the BSG exhibit, pictures were not allowed.

There were a whole lot of lovely costumes from the various movies: school uniforms and casual clothes for Harry, Hermione, and Ron; various teachers’ robes; Quidditch uniforms; and a lot of the Yule finery from Goblet of Fire. Those were neat, but I liked the set pieces better, such as the furniture from the Gryffindor dorms, Hagrid’s hut, and the big wardrobe and giant jack in the box from Prisoner of Azkaban. And there were props galore, including a Gryffindor notice board, a whole heck of a lot of Quidditch-themed props, and more. Big, big props though for the full-size figures of Buckbeak the hippogryph and a couple of the centaurs.

This of course leads nicely into talking about the movie. We did see Deathly Hallows last night, and since I never did get around to reading Book 7, now we’re getting into stretches of the story that are actually new to me (modulo the big best-known spoilers, which I am aware of at this point, yes). It was quite a bit different dealing with Harry, Hermione, and Ron outside the context of Hogwarts, and I rather liked that, even if the pacing of the movie could have used a bit of tweaking. Three words: too. Much. Camping.

(Paul in fact turned to us after the credits started rolling and said, “OH NO JOEL! CAMPING!”)

Dara noted and I agree with her that this is the first time that Voldemort and his followers really seem like a serious threat. The action scenes were certainly awesome, and I quite liked what we saw of the Malfoys and Bellatrix LeStrange. I must admit though that every time I see Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort I keep thinking “SAD MUPPET HAS NO NOSE!”

One more day of vacation tomorrow. We’re going to wander around Pike Place (and I am likely to do a fruit run with my marketboys), and then amble in the direction of I Heart for serious sushi goodness to send James home again on a tasty note.