HP and the HBP... who? what? Oh, it's so close it's killing me.

[flexagon]

I've been doing a lot of Harry Potter research lately... I forget a lot between books, and it would be good to be able to read Half-Blood Prince without constantly referring back to things in the older books.

Good places to read, if anyone else wants to be obsessed too, include The Harry Potter Lexicon and the timeline there, unplottables, and of course the FAQ on JKR's official site.

My personal guess is that the half-blood prince will be a new character, most likely a transfer from another wizarding school (we saw them in GoF, and then... nothing. You really think they aren't coming back?). We know that at one point book 2 was going to be titled The Half-Blood Prince until the plot thread got deferred leaving only little hints behind, and I did just reread Chamber of Secrets for that reason, but I don't think that means we already know the character. Thus far, every other title has referred to something we never could have guessed beforehand, and this one won't be different. The only caveat is that it could still be Hagrid... that just doesn't happen to be my guess.

Oh, and I should add that the Knight2King theory I posted about in 2003 (Ron==Dumbledore) has been pwned by JKR herself. Which makes sense to me since it really wasn't supported by the whole chess metaphor anyway, good idea though it was.

Comments

Did you know?...

[webfaery.livejournal.com]

I haven't read any of the other stuff you've cited, so you probably know, but I didn't...
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in many countries, including (it appears, from amazon.co.uk) the UK.
I thought it was a typo in our local TV guide when they were showing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on the telly. Then a friend told me her book (purchased here in Australia) is also called that.

oh...duh...

[webfaery.livejournal.com]

I just had a quick look at The Harry Potter Lexicon (http://www.hp-lexicon.org/index-2.html) and realized that everybody except me probably knows that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was just the US title. I wonder why they would change it from Philosopher to Sorcerer. I guess if I read up a bit more on it then I'd learn the reason for that.

Re: oh...duh...

[flexagon]

Yes, everybody knows. :) I believe they just thought it would be more appealing to American kids... over here 'philosopher' tends to mean something rather dry and dusty, at least to the younger set.