Bit of Ivory

First (gacked from half my flist):

I want everyone who reads this to please ask me 3 questions, no more no less. Ask me anything you want, and I promise to answer truthfully. Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends (including myself) to ask you anything.

Second:

Happy Birthday Teri!!!

In other news, I’m not quite as tired today as yesterday. I made sure that I got to bed in time to have 8 full hours of sleep. I still woke up quite a bit, though, and woke feeling less than refreshed. I’ve also had a bit of a headache all day. Gah.

Gilmore Girls was pretty good last night. (skip if you don’t want to be spoiled).

The Paris/Rory kiss was rather disturbing. When it happened, I went “Eww! Femmeslash!” They also mentioned that a set of twins had learned the kissing technique, and I went “Eww! Twincest!” I remarked to Rachel on Y!M that I found it amusing that fandom has given me a vocabulary for stuff that I’d like to ignore exists. Anyway, GG. Don’t like Jason still. I also told Rachel that Jason/Lorelai is GG’s Harry/Cho. I guess that would make Luke/Nicole the equivalent of Ginny/Michael Corner. Heh. Anyway, glad that’s over with. They sure dragged that out, didn’t they?

And last:

Translation of the beginning of the Swiss JKR article we got the other day, translated by the amazing, wonderful Perceval:

The Spell

Her books could only be delivered in the afternoon, because otherwise, too many children would have skipped school. But adults are addicted to the stories about orphan boy Harry Potter, too. At the moment, the author J.K. Rowling is the most successful author in the world. Probably because she takes her young and old readers seriously.

Even though the books of 34-year-old Joanne K Rowling are meant for 9 to 11 year olds, they are written better than 92 percent of adult fiction.

By Thomas Bodmer and Neil Wilder/IPG (Photos)

We all know deep down that we are special. Who hasn’t dreamt that the boring or loveless people we are growing up with are not our real parents, and that one day, it will turn out that our real origin is far more exciting?

Harry Potter is an orphan, and his uncle, aunt and cousin have resolutely extinguished any feelings of being special in him. The Dursleys, who he is living with, are not just petit bourgeois of the worst kind, but also proud of it. While they adore their stupid fat son, Harry has to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs which is full of spiders. And day in, day out, all they do to Harry is torment him. But a few minutes before his eleventh birthday, he learns from a giant that which his foster parents tried to keep secret from him at any price: Harry’s parents were magicians and died in the heroic fight against an evil master wizard. And now that Harry is eleven, he, too, is to start school at Hogwarts, a boarding school for witchcraft and wizardry.

This is the point of departure of a novel that an unknown British woman called Joanne K. Rowling wrote at the lowest point in her life: At the end of 1994, after a failed marriage to a Portuguese journalist, the 29-year-old arrived in Edinburgh with her three-month-old daughter, where she lived off the dole in an icy one-room apartment. She had been caught in the classical poverty trap: She did not have enough money to pay a childminder for her daughter, and therefore could not work despite her qualification as a teacher. Thus, every day, she kept pushing the pram through Edinburgh until her little daughter Jessica fell asleep. At that point, Joanne Rowling knew that she had one and a half hours’ time for writing. She always went to the same restaurant, “Nicholson’s Restaurant”, ordered an espresso and a glass of water – there wasn’t money for anything else – and wrote by hand in her notebook, until Jessica woke up again. She used to joke with the people from the restaurant that if the book was ever published, they would receive a special mention. The second literary agent Rowling wrote to accepted the unknown’s manuscript, and today, J.K. Rowling does not need to worry anymore whether the money will cover a second espresso: Since the publication of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” in 1997, the book has been translated into 14 languages, it remained at the top spot of the American bestseller chart for weeks, and there are only rumours about the amount that Warner Brothers has paid for the film rights. The following book, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, topped the success of the first volume, but on July 8, 1999, things really took off.