Wednesday, July 18, 2007
So, It's Out
There are rumors, inevitably, that the 7th (and possibly final) Harry Potter novel has leaked and is available via a torrent file. Some people are saying the files are an elaborate hoax and others are saying it's the real deal.
Well, folks, I can tell you that it is the real deal or the most amazingly convincing hoax ever (and I'm convinced of the former). While I'm sure that the book's publisher may be wringing its hands and fretting over this, it's really not worth worrying about. The files are a collection of jpegs of the pages of the book taken with a digital camera as the book lies open on a table and someone turns the pages. The pages can't even be read without zooming in massively and are illegible near the spine of the book. No one is going to "read" the book in this fashion and fail to purchase a real book.
The main purpose of this leak isn't to allow people to not buy the book (after all, we're all going to buy it...my husband and I have our pre-order in place already). The point of this is to provide spoilers several days before the official release date. So, this means that spoilers are out there 3 days earlier than they normally would but otherwise means little else. Some people appear to have gone through the painstaking process of attempting to read these eye-straining pictures and plucked out all the most important details (like who dies) and posted them.
If you really care about not being spoiled, you may want to turn your computer off now and don't turn it back on until your pre-ordered copy shows up and you've spent all night reading it. For those of us (raises hand) who think that J.K. Rowling's "hints" lend an extreme irritation factor to reading the books because they make the reader think mainly about who is going to kick it, the spoilers are actually welcome since we can find out who buys the farm and just pay attention to the damn story this time around.
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11 comments:
I'm not much of a Harry Potter fan, I read part of the first book and couldn't finish it cause it was too much like Star Wars. But I saw all the movies on opening day and I've already seen the latest movie.
AND I know the ending of the last book and who gets killed. Shall I spoil it for all of you?!
It's my hope that I've already found a complete list of spoilers on another web site and spoiled myself.
I found a list on this site which appears to be credible (CAUTION: don't follow this link if you want to risk spoilage):
http://tinyurl.com/yqdq7h
Hmmm...seems there are many different spoilers floating around. Who knows which is the real one and who dies or doesn't die? Well, I don't really care...but the latest movie was pretty good. The kids are more grown up now and there was more wizardry combat scenes which was lots of fun.
I'm trying my best to avoid the spoilers but it's fun to watch all hub-bub happening about them.
And truth be told, I'm more excited about all the livejournal posts that are going to happen once everyone gets their hands on the book. Harry Potter fandom on the web is insane. Potterdamerung!
Incidentally, are the English versions being release in Japan at the same time as everywhere else? I can't remember what happened with the last book.
** SPOILER ALERT **
Harry Potter is really in the Matrix.
Seriously though, I have never been one who really cared about the spoilers that much. I think I am with Shari when she said something to the effect that if you knew what would happen you could focus on the actual story.
It makes me laugh to see people get all bent out of shape about it, and act like their life is going to end because they found out that Darth Vader was Luke's father or Soylent Green is people, or the Titanic sinks, or NOTHING HAPPENS IN THE SOPRANOS FINALE!
SOYLENT GREEN is PEOPLE???!
Nooooooo!!!
cmuwriter, now we know how old you must be.
lostinube: "Potterdameraung" is a really cool word. You should patent it. ;-)
To the best of my knowledge, the English versions are being released in Japan at the same time as the U.S. version. I guess we'll know this weekend if our copies arrive on Saturday!
cmuwriter: I actually feel a lot less respect for J.K. Rowling as a writer because of the way she seems compelled to lead information about people dying before her books are released. It seems to me that a writer with confidence in her work wouldn't need to do that sort of thing.
The funny thing about soylent green is that it's become so well-known that people know what it is but they don't know necessarily where the idea came from!
Roy: I am actually twenty five
Shari: I had a good laugh because I don't know if when you say "don't know where it comes from" if you mean the movie the quote came from or where Soylent Green comes from! As far as the whole potter business goes, I tried, I really did, to read the first book and i got about fifty pages into it and had to stop. It wasn't doing anything for me.
The movies seem entertaining, but I haven't seem them. It was like when LOTR came out. I had read the books, but i wasn't too geeked about them, it just didn't do it for me, and that shocked a lot of my friends who were into that stuff.
I think her main motivation is to make money from this stuff, and in that she has succeeded greatly.
Shari,
I wish I could say that I came up with Potterdameraung but unfortunately it was coined by someone related to the Harry Potter fandom. But it is cool, isn't it?
I just finished reading the bootleg. A few of the pages were somewhat blurred, but most of them were readable. It was an ok ending to the series, I guess.
Man, my eyes hurt.
I read the bootleg as well and I'm buying the book tomorrow because my brothers and friends who intend to borrow it from me refuse to read off their computer screens. Oh well.
She kills a lot of people but the book still ends the way she started the whole series--a fairy tale for adolescents with a happy ending. It's nice to see the characters really progressing (mostly puberty and hormonal changes) through seven years in their world because it adds a sense of reality to the plot. It's a good ending anyway. She tied up the major loose ends in the last two books.
My friend's officemate apparently has three copies of each book--one for display, another for personal reading, and the third for lending. Wow. @_@
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