More summer reading, and some Harry stuff

I've added a few more books to the sidebar since that last post, but it's true that my reading has slowed down a bit. We've had visitors to host, weddings to go to, kids to ferry...and then, I did re-read books I-VI of the Harry Potter series. Nick is within 100 pages of finishing his re-reading, too, which means it looks like he'll get the 7th book before Mariah. (I may have some trouble enforcing that...)

I've also been reading around some of the pre-Potter hype here and there (and contributing to it). This recent piece in Inside Higher Ed annoys me--why is it ok to write about Harry Potter without having read a single one of the books? I agree with McLemee that our job as educators is to introduce students to the world beyond "the familiar, the readily available, the comfortingly familiar"--one way to do that, as he surely knows, is to subject what seems familiar to close analysis, to study its pre-texts and sub-texts (as the students he's referring to quite obviously are doing), to read it against the grain. Teaching children's literature is one of the most rewarding teaching experiences I have, for precisely that reason: students learn to open their eyes and explore the strangeness in the world they've taken for granted.

I'm not staying up until midnight for the next book--I pre-ordered it months ago and will be happy to see it on my doorstep Saturday morning. (I am tempted by the party at BookPeople, though!) I haven't seen any of the films since the second one. I'm not dressing up as Luna Lovegood. But I'm not apologizing, either, for spending a chunk of my summer reading and re-reading Rowling, and I'll be taking a little break to speed through Book VII this weekend. How about you?