Raising Boys

Harry Potter after the epilogue July 27, 2007

Major spoilers. Don’t read if you haven’t finished the book.

But if you have, then read on.

J.K. Rowling has given out details on events after the final epilogue in an interview with TODAY’s Meredith Vieira. She reveals, for example, that Harry and Ron work at the Auror Department for the Ministry of Magic but it’s a totally revolutionized place. And Hermione, with her brainpower, places high up in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

Luna Lovegood is still eccentric but now comes to realizes that her father might have been wrong about those Crumple-Horned Snorkacks and Umgubular Slashkilters. Still, she travels the world to look for all kinds of interesting creatures.

And JK Rowling acknowledges a “bit of a pull” between Luna and Neville Longbottom, whose grandmother had finally accepted as a gifted wizard.

There’s a new Hogwarts headmaster and Harry pops in at the school sometimes to give an “odd talk” about Defense against the Dark Arts.

Rowling even says she may reveal more in a Harry Potter encyclopedia; she’s not writing it anytime time soon, though.

More on JK Rowling’s revelations.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows July 22, 2007

We got our copy of the seventh Harry Potter book Saturday afternoon and I read well into the night and morning (of Sunday), too, by the way.

I finally finished it this morning, despite my 4-year-old son’s admonitions for me to “stop studying (which he equates with reading)”, and overall I think it is a fitting end to JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

The controversial spoilers that came out a day or two before the book’s simultaneous release, which I read by the way (I guess I’m not that of a fanatic), have it all wrong. The photo of the book cover and the titles of the chapters were correct but they couldn’t have been more wrong about the gist of the story.

Textbooks full of errors August 28, 2005

Education officials, in an Inq7 report, said they have found the textbooks submitted by local publishers for possible use in public schools in the country to be full of grammatical errors.

I’m glad they’re finally taking notice but alarmed that there is no mention of those textbooks already being used by schoolchildren in public elementary and high schools that are also full of mistakes.

I should know. My son goes to a public school.

‘Dumbledore is not dead’ August 12, 2005

For those of us who are grieving over the sad fate of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Wulfric Brian Dumbledore in The Half-Blood Prince, the sixth installment in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, let us take heart for there may still be hope.

Dumbledore is not dead. He could not be dead. Or so Dave Haber, managing editor of Wizard News, contends and in his website—aptly named Dumbledore is not Dead, he gives us his reasons for this belief.

Haber believes there is more to what happened to Dumbledore in HBP than meets the eye and lists the many clues in the book that tend to show why the Hogwarts headmaster’s death could be other than what it is.

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A book meme August 11, 2005

A tag from Sepik Mom

Total books owned

I haven’t counted but I figured a lot, counting those that I’ve bought or been given. Many, however, have been lost in the moving and the borrowing and some were destroyed by my son, who is in that phase when they like to rip out and eat pages of books.

Last book I bought

Harry Potter and the The Half-Blood Prince

Last book I read

The Professor and The Madman. Still reading it, though.

Books I like to read

1) Fantasy/science fiction
2) Parenting, marriage, homemaking books
3) Crime, legal stuff
4) Spy thrillers
5) Horror genre

Books that mean a lot to me

1) One Hundred Years of Solitude
2) House of the Spirits
3) Foucault’s Pendulum
4) The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Silmarillon
5) Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

I tag Ayeza, Mike, Agring, and anyone who wants to answer.

Errors in schoolbooks August 7, 2005

I remember Helmut Haas raising this problem when I was starting out as a reporter for Sun.Star Cebu right after graduating from college some 10 years ago.

It did not seem so important then because 1) I had no children and 2) I had just escaped from school and did not want to be reminded of anything remotely connected to it.

But while Dylan and I were reviewing for this week’s first periodical exams, I saw grammar and spelling errors in his books that were just too many to dismiss as typographical mistakes.

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