Rowling Revisits Cormoran Strike

J.K. Rowling's next Cormoran Strike book is called The Silkworm
and is due out in June.

Readers may recall that the first Strike novel The Cuckoo's Calling was released under the pen name Robert Galbraith but she was outed by a publisher. Apparently she is still using the pen name!

Via Snitchseeker

Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days--as he has done before--and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.
But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives--meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.

When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before...
A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, THE SILKWORM is the second in the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant, Robin Ellacott.

Harry Potter Stamps Come to America!

The U.S. Postal Service has issued five sheets of Harry Potter stamps, and to me these are long overdue. Many other countries have had HP stamps for years! And our Post Office has been complaining about low income for years, so maybe HP collectors will save the day.

See all the stamps on Snitchseeker

Order the HP stamps HERE

Which is my favorite? Snape of course! And he's on the same page with Dumbledore, McGonagall and Hagrid - teachers, not villains. I'm sure that will make some fans unhappy, LOL.
Description of the Teachers Page from USPS

At Hogwarts, the friends receive support and guidance from many of their professors, among them the four depicted on the third set of stamps-Rubeus Hagrid, Professor Minerva McGonagall, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and Professor Severus Snape.

The Snape stamp may not say "Always," but does say "Forever." (In the U.S. a "forever" stamp can be used even if rates are raised.)

The only child character missing from the set is Neville, unfortunately. I think they wanted to get in all the most popular Weasleys, so they had to leave out someone. It's too bad. Maybe they will issue a second set in a few years with Sirius, Lupin, the other teachers, etc.

May I just say, though, that I LOVE the hippogriff stamp! And Dobby!!!

Azkaban Chapters Now Complete on Pottermore

The final chapters of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban have been added to the interactive website Pottermore. Now readers can visit the Shrieking Shack, read backstory about Professor Lupin and the Marauders, and learn more about the magic of time turners and patronuses. And don't miss the new werewolf section!

In addition, Pottermore is sporting a new look with improved navigation through a series of menus at the bottom of each page. Now it's easier to jump from book to book and chapter to chapter. And if you go back through previous books, there are new potion ingredients and coins to find, and new sounds to go with each screen.

If you can't see the new material you might want to update flash player, clear your cache or cookies, try a different browser, or simply log out and log in again.

J.K. Rowling Admits Writing The Cuckoo's Calling

J.K. Rowling has pulled a fast one on the publishing world - having her crime novel The Cuckoo's Calling published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. I don't recall seeing this book on any of the Summer Lists in my previous post.

We know Rowling loves a good joke, and this one is worthy of the Weasley Twins. The cover reminds me of Dumbledore on Privet Drive turning out the street lights. The name of her detective, Cormoran Strike, sounds suspiciously like Severus Snape!

I guess you should order soon if you want Galbraith's name on the cover! The price has come down on Amazon from $20 to $16.90 just in the past 24 hours - if you want the real paper book that is. On Kindle it's $9.99.



NY Daily News

A detective novel secretly written by J.K. Rowling surged to the top of bestseller lists on Monday after the true identity of the author was revealed, embarrassing some publishers who had rejected the manuscript.
Rowling, whose Harry Potter series made her Britain's best-selling author, posed as a retired military policeman called Robert Galbraith to write "The Cuckoo's Calling", only to see her cover blown at the weekend by a Sunday newspaper.
The novel had only sold 1,500 hardback copies since being published in April. But by Monday it had raced to the top of Amazon.co.uk's best-selling list, leaving high street and online book merchants unable to slake demand.
"For a title that isn't even in our top 5,000 to shoot to number one so quickly is almost unheard of," Darren Hardy, books manager at Amazon.co.uk, told Reuters by email.
Hardy said this meteoric rise in sales meant "The Cuckoo's Calling" has established itself as a contender to become one of the biggest-selling books of the summer.

Editor Admits Rejecting Secret Novel

Kate Mills, fiction editor at Orion Publishing, came forward to admit that she had unwittingly turned down the new Rowling work, and suggested that colleagues at other publishers had done the same.
She told The Independent: “I thought it was well-written but quiet. It didn’t stand out for me and new crime novels are hard to launch right now.” Asked if she regretted revealing she had passed on the book, Ms Mills said: “No, it’s out there. You’ve got to love a book to take it on. It wasn’t for me.”
. . . The Cuckoo’s Calling follows private investigator Cormoran Strike, who is brought in to investigate when a model falls to her death from a Mayfair balcony. It received praise from crime writers including Ms McDermid, Mark Billingham and Alex Gray.
Ms McDermid said she was “gobsmacked” to find out the truth, bursting out laughing on Saturday when she was told. “It never crossed my mind at all. Nobody had any suspicion. The fake biog is very plausible.”
Ms McDermid had even asked for Robert Galbraith to join her Theakstons Crime New Blood panel, only to be told he would be away on holiday for the summer.

From Forbes

Once more, J.K. Rowling has a hit on her hands, as Robert Galbraith follows Richard Bachman with ‘cancer of the pseudonym’ and ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’ becomes a best-seller.
An interesting experiment has been unfortunately curtailed, and we’ll never know just how successful Galbraith’s detective series would have been. Now that the true author has been outed, the series is going to be a guaranteed hit. But it was already on course to do just that. As a debut novel the 1500 hardback copies shipped, with around 500 sales, was an impressive number given the circumstances of a saturated genre, a debut author, and little marketing spend behind the title. Rowling more than likely had another hit series on her head as Galbraith, and it would have been delightful to get to book three or four in the series, a potential movie deal in place, Patterson Joseph cast as Cormoran Strike, and then do the reveal.

Scholastic Unveils New Harry Potter Cover

Here is the new cover and I love the way Diagon Alley looks with the textured cobblestones, candles, and crooked buildings of ancient age, but I don't quite understand the two people with rabbit ears and faces. After quite a bit of discussion on Harry Potter Network, we decided that the rabbit people are supposed to be Goblins from Gringotts, even though it never says in the books or on Pottermore that they have pointy ears. Yet JKR made a drawing from HP and the Sorcerer's Stone that showed a goblin with pointed ears, and we know she was involved with the way they appear in the movies. In the books, it is actually House Elves that have pointed large "bat-like" ears, but maybe all these little people are connected in some way.

The new artist, Kazu Kibuishi, has done several interviews:

From Publisher's Weekly:

The new artwork is by Kazu Kibuishi ... creator of the bestselling graphic novel series Amulet (Scholastic/Graphix). “Initially I didn’t want to see it done,” Kibuishi told PW, “because I love the original covers so much. I’m a huge fan. But after thinking about it for a while, I figured if someone were going to do it, I should try it.”
. . . Kibuishi believes he may have it a bit easier than Mary GrandPré, the artist who created the original U.S. covers for the Harry Potter books. “I have the advantage of seeing the books in historical context,” Kibuishi says. However, he notes that he has put pressure on himself, wanting to live up to GrandPré’s example. “I’ve never worked so hard on single images in my life!” he says. “I’m an author as well and I know how much work I put into my own covers, so I thought ‘this [the Harry Potter project] won’t be bad.’ But when I came to do it, I realized how much more this project meant to me. I want to get it right.”

Via Snitchseeker

What was your inspiration for the new cover for ‘Sorcerer's Stone’?
Kibuishi: That one was the clearest cover for me to do. It probably best signifies the idea of Harry becoming a new perennial classic. I feel like over time [Harry Potter] is going to be looked at like we look at a Dickens novel or a Wells novel. I wanted to give the covers that classic look. It was like I was doing almost a kind of fan art of Harry Potter, but done in the style of classic literature. The initial cover was very Dickens. I was thinking of “Great Expectations” or “A Christmas Carol.” I have a film background and I’m a big fan of movie poster. It’s probably reflective of some of my favorite movie posters as well.

Did you use artist Mary GrandPre’s work as a jumping off point?
Kibuishi: Her work stands alone in its own way. They are like icons….As I said, I came at it as more as an art historian. Taking a look at how we have sort of accepted Harry into our culture and trying to invent it for a new generation of readers. I tried to sever as many ties as I could and try to think about it from a completely fresh perspective while paying respect to the work that came before.
I made stylistic tributes to Mary’s work. There are little elements and flourishes that I probably wouldn’t have done myself, but they’re so subtle, in the technique that I’m not sure someone would notice.

~~~ More At Link . . .

First Chapters of Prisoner of Azkaban Now on Pottermore

The first chapters of the third Harry Potter book, Prisoner of Azkaban, are available on Pottermore, Rowling's interactive website.

Pottermore Insider reminds readers:

You will need to have collected the items from your second-year shopping list - which you can find in Chapter Four, Moment One of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - and to have completed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on Pottermore.com.

According to Snitchseeker:

Rowling herself added five new exclusive pieces of content for the seven chapters, including deeper back stories on Aunt Marge, Professor Kettleburn, Sir Cadogan, the Knight Bus, and boggarts.

Click Here to Enter Pottermore ~ registration is required in order to view the website.
Books and Merchandise are available at the Pottermore Shop

Rowling's New Middle-Class Characters are not Magical, but Monstrous

pic: happiness-in-a-box

J. K. Rowling is starting her publicity push as her new book The Casual Vacancy comes out on September 27, which is next Thursday.


The Casual Vacancy Hardcover from Amazon
The Casual Vacancy for Kindle on Amazon
The Casual Vacancy Audo Book on Amazon

Guardian UK has an in-depth article about Rowling's views on just about everything, including the book. I find it very interesting that a book about small-town politics is timed perfectly to coincide with the elections in the U.S. right now, where the vast majority of Rowling fans happen to live. No real surprise though, LOL.

Some excerpts:

Rowling: "Obviously I need to be in some form of vehicle to have a decent idea," she laughs. Having dreamed up Potter on a train, "This time I was on a plane. And I thought: local election! And I just knew. I had that totally physical response you get to an idea that you know will work. It's a rush of adrenaline, it's chemical. I had it with Harry Potter and I had it with this. So that's how I know."

. . . "I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society," Rowling says. "We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do, isn't it?" But it requires obliviousness to the horrors suffered by a family such as the Weedons, and the book satirises the ignorance of elites who assume to know what's best for everyone else."

. . . "We're a phenomenally snobby society," Rowling nods, "and it's such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny." The book is so funny I was halfway through before noticing that every character is, to a varying degree, monstrous.

. . . Whodunnits are her literary guilty pleasure – "I love a good Dorothy L Sayers" – but then again, she doesn't really feel guilty about that: "There's no shame in a Dorothy." She hasn't read Fifty Shades Of Grey, "because I promised my editor I wouldn't." She doesn't look as if she feels she's missing out. "Not wildly," she agrees drily.

~~~

Reporter Decca Aitkenhead: I am required to sign more legal documents than would typically be involved in buying a house before I am allowed to read The Casual Vacancy, under tight security in the London offices of Little, Brown. Even the publishers have been forbidden to read it, and they relinquish the manuscript gingerly, reverently, as though handling a priceless Ming vase. Afterwards, I am instructed never to disclose the address of Rowling's Edinburgh office where the interview will take place. The mere fact of the interview is deemed so newsworthy that Le Monde dispatches a reporter to investigate how it was secured. Its prospect begins to assume the mystique of an audience with Her Majesty – except, of course, that Rowling is famously much, much richer than the Queen.

. . . When I tell her I loved the book, her arms shoot up in celebration. "Oh my God! I'm so happy! That's so amazing to hear. Thank you so much! You've made me incredibly happy. Oh my God!" Anyone listening would take her for a debut author, meeting her first ever fan.

~~~

J.K.Rowling on her personal life:

Rowling grew up near the Forest of Dean in a community not unlike Pagford. "And this was very much me vividly remembering what it was like to be a teenager, and it wasn't a particularly happy time in my life. In fact, you couldn't give me anything to make me go back to being a teenager. Never. No, I hated it."
Her mother, a school lab technician, was diagnosed with MS when Rowling was 15. "But it wasn't just that – although that did colour it a lot. I just don't think I was very good at being young."

. . . fame has had its upsides; meeting Barack Obama and the legendary Democrat speechwriter Bob Shrum were the two greatest starstruck moments of her life.

. . . Having always longed to be a writer, she now found herself in charge of a business empire stretching all the way to Hollywood, as the Harry Potter films began smashing box office records. "And it's a real bore. Should I be more diplomatic? Oh, I don't care. No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing. That sounds hideously ungrateful because it's made me an awful lot of money, and I'm very grateful for that. But it's not something that interests me, and there have been lots of opportunities to do things that make more money, and I've said no."

Hmmm . . . I'll be glad to take some money and power off her hands so she can have more time to write. LOL

But what about the book? If you don't wish to see SPOILERS then skip the following excerpt from Decca Aitkenhead's synopsis:

The pompous chairman assumes the seat will go to his son, a solicitor. Pitted against him are a bitterly cold GP and a deputy headmaster crippled by irreconcilable ambivalence towards his son, an unnervingly self-possessed adolescent whose subversion takes the unusual but highly effective form of telling the truth. His preoccupation with "authenticity" develops into a fascination with the Fields and its most notorious family, the Weedons.

Terri Weedon is a prostitute, junkie and lifelong casualty of chilling abuse, struggling to stay clean to stop social services taking her three-year-old son, Robbie, into care. But methadone is a precarious substitute for heroin, and most of what passes for mothering falls to her teenage daughter, Krystal. Spirited and volatile, Krystal has known only one adult ally in her life – Barry – and his sudden death casts her dangerously adrift. When anonymous messages begin appearing on the parish council website, exposing villagers' secrets, Pagford unravels into a panic of paranoia, rage and tragedy.

Pagford will be appallingly recognisable to anyone who has ever lived in a West Country village, but its clever comedy can also be read as a parable about national politics.

Rowling in New York at Lincoln Center in October

J.K. Rowling will be center-stage at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City on October 16.

For those who purchase tickets, which will be available beginning September 10, Little, Brown and Company announced, they will get a free copy of Rowling's first post-Harry Potter book, that the author will also sign. Jo will be joined by author Ann Patchett during the conversation, and will also be answering audience questions.

Please note that this will be her ONLY public appearance in the U.S. to promote the book.

Tickets: $43 if purchased online, $44 if purchased via phone, $37 if purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office
Ticket Information Here

The Casual Vacancy Hardcover from Amazon
The Casual Vacancy for Kindle on Amazon
The Casual Vacancy Audo Book on Amazon

London Olympics Honors Children's Literature

A segment of the London Olympics Opening Ceremony was opened with J. K. Rowling reading a passage from the J. M. Barrie novel Peter Pan. Several characters were included in the Tribute to both books and the National Health Service, including Voldemort, Captain Hook, the Child-Catcher from Ian Fleming's Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, and Mary Poppins.






Via gifsfln.tumblr.com

Pottermore Opens the Chamber of Secrets

The Chamber of Secrets is Now Open to Everyone!
On Pottermore, that is.
In the books you have to know how to speak Parseltongue, of course.

If you need help knowing what to do, this page has tips:
A Finders Guide to Pottermore Chamber of Secrets
For a clue about the Weasley Letters at the Burrow, go here:
Tweeting.com



TIP: On my computer, I had better luck slinging the gnomes in Internet Explorer because everything was slower. They were spinning faster in Firefox so it was trickier to release them at the right moment, and they also popped up faster so they're harder to click. The only trick I can tell you is to release the gnome as they are facing the stump so the trajectory makes them fly away.

Interesting stuff about the Malfoy family - sounds as if they perhaps married with a few half-bloods through the centuries. There's also a little tidbit about what Lucius did to redeem himself after Deathly Hallows:

Fans Not Thrilled with Rowling's New Book Cover

The cover has been released for J. K. Rowling's new book The Casual Vacancy.

From Hypable ~ Book Copy from the Back Cover

I have to say I was a little puzzled and disappointed with the cover just because it seems too plain. I guess the voting check box hints at the political nature of the story, but it doesn't make me want to grab the book and read it. I guess we Rowling fans are spoiled by the rich covers of the Harry Potter series, but seriously . . . I was hoping for something more artistic. I've seen lots of self-published books with better covers.

Mashable has a poll and the top vote right now with 600 votes is "Are they serious?"

So I guess I'm not alone, and there's more . . .

From the Little, Brown and Company Facebook Page:

Andrés Feliciano
I'm sorry, but this cover is horrendous.
Tuesday at 8:13am

Emelia Presley Hawk
I think this cover is a huge "cop out" on the part of the art department at Little Brown. Essentially it might as well be a blank cover. They know all they have to do is put any cover on this book at all. As long as it has JK Rowling's name on it and a title the book is going to be a best seller. They went to no effort on this. It is one of the most unappealing covers I have ever seen, block colors and a tick mark... Really?
Tuesday at 7:06am · 10

Melissa Tortora
I don't like it either. It looks like it was taken from a box of old mass market paperbacks that a drugstore just couldn't sell in the 70s.
Tuesday at 8:51am · 1

Cormia Luce
This looks like fan art and a wonderful writer like JK Rowling deserves better. I can only hope that more effort was put into the editing of the actual novel.
Tuesday at 8:42am · 2

Ouch!

Twitter is even more scathing:

Now I've seen the synopsis & cover for JK Rowling's Casual Vacancy I'm convinced the whole thing is a Springtime for Hitler style tax dodge.

— Mark Stay (@markstay) July 5, 2012

What's in a name? Everything. Otherwise you couldn't charge $20 for an ebook w/ an ugly cover and unappealing synopsis. bit.ly/M6nX16

— Travis King/ときどきぜんぜん (@tokidokizenzen) July 4, 2012

Sorry, JKR. $20 eBook? I'm feeling neither the cover nor the book ► J.K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy' Cover Reveal bit.ly/LkrBbb

— WordNerdGuy (@WordNerdGuy) July 4, 2012

Nice of them to let one of JK Rowling's kids design her new cover on MS Paint.

— Scott Pack (@meandmybigmouth) July 3, 2012

Book Designer Jon Gray wrote this in The Telegraph:

It’s clear from the cover of The Casual Vacancy that the brief was: make it look as different from the Harry Potter series as possible. A bright coloured background to position it well away from the fantasy gothic genre and some jaunty hand-drawn typography to indicate a warm and accessible tale. There is a hint at politics in the imagery, but apart from that this cover tells you nothing and that, I think, is precisely the point. As a reader you are no closer to the story inside. There is nothing to prejudge or dismiss, it’s just type.
. . . I don’t love this cover, because like all cover designers, I think I could have done a better job. But I can see why they have designed it this way and I can appreciate the huge number of hurdles that it probably took to get to it.
As a designer I’m left non-plussed and envious and as a reader I’m left intrigued. That means another copy sold, so: job done.

Rowling Won't Publish Potter Encyclopedia

Yesterday, J. K. Rowling made a revised statement on her Official Site about the future of the Harry Potter Encyclopedia. This is the book over which the author sued fan Steve Vander Ark, founder of the Harry Potter Lexicon Website. Rowling won the 2008 suit in theory, but she was only awarded a pittance - around $3,000, which barely covered her air fare from Britain - and Vander Ark was forced to make changes to the cover. However, since American copyright law allows for the publishing of scholarly reference guides under the terms of Fair Use, eventually the HP Lexicon was published in 2009 (available on Amazon).

During the trial, JKR expressed hopes of eventually publishing her own encyclopedia,  known to fans as "The Scottish Book" because the author once quipped it was like the play Macbeth and no one should speak its name or bad luck would ensue. However it seems she has opted for now to release material on Pottermore only.

Via Leaky Cauldron

In an update on J. K. Rowling's website, the author makes quite clear that plans to publish a physical copy of a Harry Potter Encyclopaedia are not on the horizon. The entry, updated May 2012, reads:

What about the Harry Potter Encyclopaedia?
Updated May 2012
I have been enjoying sharing information about Harry’s world on Pottermore for free, and don’t have any firm plans to publish it in book form.

This statement replaces the April update on her website where she said "For a long time I have been promising an encyclopaedia of Harry’s world, and I have started work on this now – some of it forms the new content in Pottermore. It is likely to be a time-consuming job, but when finished I shall donate all royalties to charity.

Today Bloomsbury announced a three-book set called The Hogwarts Library that will include the three "schoolbooks" from Hogwarts including Quidditch Through the Ages, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Beedle the Bard. Digital Spy reports: "The set will reportedly be released sometime in the autumn, though a precise date has not yet been established."

For larger view of the books, click Here

Pottermore Update: Chamber of Secrets

Pottermore is the new interactive website from the J. K. Rowling empire, and through it readers can explore the world of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or Philosopher's Stone, for those in the UK). Now the CEO of Pottermore, Charlie Redmayne, has announced that soon fans will be able to access new screens and information about Book Two: Chamber of Secrets:
From Bookseller, Via Snitchseeker

Redmayne added that the release of book two, The Chamber of Secrets, was still "weeks away", but that the site would be adding new interactive elements and community tools over the next few weeks. "It's a fantastic experience, but not yet as good as its going to be. We are working on book two now, I'm very pleased with some of the pages I've seen, and it will be coming as soon as possible." Remayne said Pottermore would ratchet up its marketing activities around the launch of book two.

The CEO also gave a detailed update about ebook sales so far:

Charlie Redmayne said sales at the online shop, which went live on 27th March, had been driven first by pent-up demand, with the sales value high because of the number of Harry Potter fans buying the e-book bundle, priced at £38.64, a discount of 14% on the cost of buying the seven titles individually.
Redmayne said the sales had been above budget, and continued to outpace expectations. He had earlier revealed that more than £1m of Potter e-books had been sold in the first three days.
"Over the past two weeks we've seen sales settle down, but they remain very significant, and way beyond what we originally budgeted for." He added that sales of the physical copies of the seven titles had also increased, and that because of the site's light-touch Digital Rights Management, piracy had diminished.

Read more updates from Pottermore Insider Blog

J. K. Rowling and the Casual Vacancy

J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults will be called The Casual Vacancy and will be released by Little, Brown, and Company on September 27, 2012. It can be pre-ordered as an ebook or hardcover.

This is quite a week for Rowling because her website Pottermore is also finally open to the public, along with her Pottermore Shop for ebooks and audio books.

The author had been saying for several years that she was working something quite different for adults, and a fellow Edinburgh writer, Ian Rankin had hinted that the book might be a mystery set in Edinburgh. But it appears that Rowling has not written an urban mystery, but something more conventionally British - think Agatha Christie - and set in a small country village.
From the blurb on Amazon:

When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the town’s council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.

I was instantly reminded of the book Paradise, Postponed by John Mortimer, which also included local political intrigue around the character of the unforgettable Leslie Titmuss ("through the chair").

On my Harry Potter blog The Illuminated Dungeon I wrote that the choice of the name "Pagford" was possibly a corruption of "Pigford" and another Rowlingesque boar-related name like Hogwarts or Hogsmeade. But then a friend on Facebook pointed out to me that in the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane novel Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers, the house where the Wimsey's are living is in Paggleham, and the story goes that Harriet Vane grew up in the nearby town of Great Pagford. The "borrowing" so to speak of the place name is not too surprising because on Rowling's official site for years she had a picture of a bookshelf with several Sayers novels. She also has a character called "Romilda Vane" who has a bad crush on Harry in Half-Blood Prince. For that matter, you can make the case that the last name of Harry Potter's mother - Evans - is an anagram for Vane. And Agatha Christie wrote a novel called Why Didn't They Ask Evans, and that takes me back to the fact that JKR is on familiar territory in the British novel pantheon and I suspect her offering will be just as witty and insightful as the many writers of that pastoral genre who have come before her.