Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Halfway through! Although not really since the books grow crazily in size. I think page-wise I'm only a third through the series by now. Kinda crazy.


( Goblet of Musings )

( Goblet of Fire Recap )

Interlude - Quidditch Through The Ages and Fantastic Beast and Where To Find Them

I mean, they're part of the series too, so I had to read them. :p Plus I needed a break from OotP.

I actually got the books when they came out - I even remember where I got them, in a children's bookstore in Utrecht. Sadly, I lost them a few years back. I'm fairly sure I lend them to someone, I just can't remember to WHO. Boo. So I had to buy them again. I mean, I still have the Dutch version (with the reference to guldens in the foreword, that's how old they are!), but that's just not the same, even though the translation is really very good. I didn't want to wait for shipping and I was too lazy to go to a local bookstore, so I got the ebooks online and send them to my ereader directly using wifi. One of those things I wouldn't have even dreamed of back when the books first came out, back when I barely knew how to put things on a floppy-disk. :p 

Sadly, it turned out the Fantastic Beasts one was now a tie-in with the new movies. :( Which was ok on the one hand (although I'm not a huge fan of them) but they had done away with Harry's comments in the margins, and that was half the fun! On the other hand, Quidditch was as fun as I remembered. I got SERIOUSLY nostalgic reading them, because these were usualy the books I grabbed when I wanted a quick visit to the wizarding world. They were also often my bathtub reading choice because they're so light and fast to read through. So I ended up really missing my parents' bathtub, haha. 
I also really enjoyed how lighthearted they are compared to GoF and OotP, even though the wizarding world is seriously psycho sometimes....

Anyway, recap, such as it is: 

Quidditch Through the Ages

Library card in the front! Heh, Ron checked out the book but didn’t return it in time. Hermione finished it in a day, of course (and Draco checked it out after her).

Reviews by other people! One Brutus Scrimgeour wrote The Beater’s Bible. Wonder if they’re related. And Lockhart’s review is insufferable of course! “Shows a lot of promise!” Rita has “read worse”.

Dumbledore’s intro is genius. I am ambivalent towards the man in the series but, to speak with Phineas Nigellus, you have to admit he has style!

Buy the book or you will be the object of a Thieves Curse. Good thing I didn’t illegally download it then. :p

“It is of course an entirely fictional sport and nobody really plays it. May I also take this opportunity to wish Puddlemere United the best of luck next season.”

“By the twelfth century, wizards had learned to barter services.” And they call Muggles primitive!

All those other broomstick games sound dangerous but kind of hilarious.

Gertie Keddle kept a diary in the eleventh century about some game in Queerditch Marsh. She was ahead of Margery Kempe ánd Samuel Pepys!

They had a female head of the Wizard Council in the 14^th century! Elfrida Clagg. And the inventor of the Golden Snitch lived in Godric’s Hollow of course.

I love the excerpts from the Daily Prophet. “I want baskets to score in instead of hoops because it’s so much fun to set fire to them!” And some six-year old doesn’t want to go to Quidditch anymore because it’s no longer allowed to beat up the Keepers. Wizards are psycho.

700 fouls in the first World Cup in 1473. How?! Also there’s a Cup every 4 years. (Yet in GoF Ludo Bagman welcomes them to the 422th World Cup? That would make it the year 3161 if it really was every 4 years. If it was yearly, GoF would be 1895. It should be the 131th World Cup, honestly. Besides, 1994-1473 is 521 years which is indivisible by four, so unless they skipped a year somewhere it can't even have been every four years. Jo and math...) 

Aw of course Ron’s favourite team is the loser one.

Fastest Snitch capture: 3.5 SECONDS in 1921 (the Seeker in question maintains that it wasn’t an accident).

Norse poet Ingolfr the Iambic! Whose poem is of course in iambic pentameter. And the French wizard playwrite Malecrit.

The Bulgarian Vratsa Vultures are always willing to give new players a chance to make a name for themselves! Yes, we’ve seen that.

 

 

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Published by Obscurus Books! At 18A Diagon Alley.

Aw man, a foreword by Newt. Wait, he’s still alive? It ties in with the movie now, bummer.

“Albus Dumbledore was something more than a schoolteacher to me”??? Wait whaaaaaaaat? My brain is going all sorts of places now. Mostly to Jude Law. Yum.


(I am low-key OBSESSED with The Young Pope. It's the most bizarre show I've seen since Hannibal. It was part of the reason why I squealed when I found out Jude had been cast as young Dumbledore. Now if only they'd recast Johnny Depp...)

What is a beast? A great hairy thing with too many legs, according to Harry. (I miss his doodles. L )

Elfrida Clagg pops up again. And I love how it’s always Goblins messing things up.

Werewolf Support Services at the Being Division and Werewolf Registry and Capture Unit at the Beast Division. That seems... unwieldy.

Owners of a Hippogriff have to perform a Disillusionment Charm on them. Did Sirius ever do that or did Buckbeak spent a year locked up in Sirius’s mum’s room? Poor thing.

Hey, according to the author's description Newt was the one who formed the Werewolf Registry? Kind of wondering whether that's going to pop up in the movies somehow. Anyway, I do like the new illustrations. But I miss the commentary!