Neil Gaiman | JK Rowling didn't rip me off, we stole from the same people

Forgotten?

During his talk on Saturday Neil Gaiman made a reference to a graphic novel of his I'd never heard of: The Books of Magic.
He made a joke about it. "People said JK Rowling stole off me. Of course she didn't. We were just stealing off the same people."
Or words to that effect.
The cover of the book is striking. What the heck is Harry Potter doing on a flying skateboard, and why is Hedwig grey?
The superficial overlap with Harry and Hogwarts is extraordinary. And I wondered how on earth I didn't already know that Gaiman, hardly an unknown writer, indeed, probably the best known fantasy writer in the UK right now, had written such a book, albeit as long ago as 1993.
Gaiman solved the mystery himself, to a degree. He explained that The Books of Magic were published by DC comics who sold the adaptation rights to Warners Bros, who in turn produced a brilliant first draft of the script. But it was just about this time that Harry Potter took off.
And remember, Harry Potter wasn't just another successful kids book: it was a phenomenon. Children, adults, dogs were queueing round blocks to get copies, to hear Rowling speak. Shops went mad about Harry Potter with supermarkets often giving hardbacks away for as little as £3.99, just so they could have a piece of the Harry action. And of course Warners won an extremely competitive bidding process to make the blockbusting movies.
Which have made a billion or so since.
Gaiman's graphic novel, in a parallel universe, might have had us all talking and dreaming about magic. As it was it was swamped by Rowling's juggernaut. Fair play her.
As for the film adaptation: Warners wanted to make the film, but it needed to be different to Harry Potter. So they messed about with the script so much that DC and Gaiman said, no thanks, please don't make this now. As for the book, it has been in limbo. But with Harry's adventures now finished, surely, surely it's time for a revival.

Edinburgh International Book Festival | Guardian Debate | NOT The End of Books

The Guardian sponsored debate The End of Books at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Saturday was entertaining enough - but it missed the point.

Ewan Morrison's talk in favour of the motion – the end is nigh, etc, reproduced on guardian.com at the moment - was considered and laden with stats. But I still think his take on the issue is wrong. The other speakers concentrated on the novelty of producing an iPad app of The Waste Land and the love of holding a paperback in your hands. Both these things seem as transient as the other to me.

Digital or paper, there will always be a demand for new authors, new voices, because each generation needs to recreate the world in its own image. I wonder how many kids now will read (and watch ) A Game of Thrones instead of Lord of the Rings. How many Harry Potter fanatics have ever read The Famous Five? Ewan seemed to suggest that publishers and Amazon -- the digital publishing giant of the near future [ie evil empire] -- will simply reproduce and mash up old writing and sell it anew. New writers will soon be on the scrap heap forced to take jobs in call centres rather than follow their calling by producing potential Booker Prize winners.

Ewan even referred to Shakespeare and Dickens as if they were getting by on modest advances awarded to them simply because their work was considered (by who? The great and the good?) to be artistically worthwhile. In reality, Wills and Charles were two of the most commercially successful writers of all time. Neither would recognise the current economic realities of the publishing / literary world, but they'd want to get paid.

The attraction of digital is that it allows a writer to bypass the traditional publishing log jam. Self publishing is no longer the resort of the vain but a decent option for a new talent wanting to showcase him or herself. A few have even made good money out of self Kindle publishing -- Amanda Hocking etc. But can the trick these genre writers have pulled off be repeated in the literary fiction world?

The fact is: lit-fic simply isn’t as popular as other genres and it is hard to feel sorry for well educated, talented author wannabes who would rather spend their days in a garret writing prose no one wants to read instead of holding down a proper job. Dedicate your life to literature if you want, but do it at your own expense.

Harry Potter | What did they do to the end of the Deathly Hallows? | JK Rowling

I'm not going to go on an on about this. The talented and hard working individuals who made the Harry Potter movies know more than I do about turning books into film and what flies in the multiplex. But I do wish they hadn't messed with JK Rowling's ending.

It's not completely different, of course. The essential elements are there, right down to having Neville chop off the head of the snake. But the final battle did not resonate with me on screen as it did in the book. It was too focussed on Harry, Hermione and Ron. Everything was over simplified. And in the apparent rush to keep the action at breathless, breakneck speed a lot of the subtlety and even humour of Rowling's climax was sadly lost.

The films have never really done justice to Rowling's large cast of secondary characters. I can understand this -- the language of film is such that you need to concentrate on the lead. But why did they, for instance, have Snape's death scene in a hitherto unmentioned boathouse on the lake and not the far more meaningful Shrieking Shack (which Harry etc could get to via the tunnel, unseen, rather than just wander over to when all the death eaters are apparently looking the other way....)?

Why didn't Harry use his invisibility cloak in the forest and to evade the death eaters once the battle was rejoined?

In the book the battle is rejoined by the wizards and by the centaurs and the elves from the kitchen - while believing Harry is dead. It shows they are undefeated, defiant. It was far more powerful...

Why didn't Harry use the Elder wand at the end to repair his old wand?

Why not have the glorious scene in Dumbledore's office when all the portraits applaud him? Couldn't Warner Bros afford all those actors?

Why for that matter have the lame scene with Snape leading the kids into the hall, then Harry revealing himself? Rowling's version in the Ravenclaw tower was a lot better...

Oh I could go on, but you probably already think I'm a bit of an ubergeek to have said this much. Usually with Potter films I enjoy them the second time more, when I'm not too concerned about what is not there. But this one I feel got the pitch of the ending wrong. It was too grey, too joyless and you never got the sense of a great coming together of good magic to defeat the bad.

So yes, I did love it. Well done to them all. But the books are better...

Harry Potter | Why it’s OK to relax and enjoy the Deathly Hallows | JK Rowling

We’ve all had the experience: that rolling of the eyes as someone tells you they couldn’t get past chapter three of the first book.

For some, not liking Harry Potter – indeed, the fact they have never read even one of the multi-million selling books – isn’t so much a cultural omission as a badge of honour.

“It’s just for kids” they say. Then: “And the writing is so bad...” And the clincher: “Philip Pullman is so much better.”

I find it weird that with so many people around the world utterly hooked on these books, enough to go and queue and a bookshop to buy one at midnight, that avid readers aren't at least be curious to know what they are all about.
But Not Liking Harry Potter is as much a part of the JK phenomenon as Hermione’s know it all attitude and Daniel Radcliffe’s bare chest.

Well, here are a few reasons why I think it is ok to be a grown up and to love Harry Potter. I’m looking forward to the final film, too. I hope the 3D is worth it...

1.       She can write. Oh yes she can. Nobody does a big story as well as JK Rowling. Quibble about her prose if you want to – and question the quality of editing she got, especially on book #5, which to my mind rambles a bit – but her books are structured brilliantly, the stories told with great pace and her twists and reveals hard to second guess. But don’t just take my word for it, Stephen King rates her as one of the greatest storytellers ever – and he should know.

2.       It really isn’t just for kids. They might be about a bunch of kids carrying wands, but the Harry Potter books are also about life’s big themes. Harry’s fight with Voldemort is as timeless, as elemental as you can imagine: a genuinely good hearted person who is prepared to put others first versus an entirely ruthless and self seeking individual who cares little for truth or beauty but only in power. Simplistic? Hardly. Rowling is careful to make sure that Voldemort is not simply a monster: so we learn of his past, that he was an orphan, not unlike Harry, who chose his path. And what of his followers? Evil or self serving? Rowling appreciates the political world, has a sense for the human scale of evil and with characters like Umbridge shows us how small mindedness can be terrible.

3.       Nostalgia can be a good thing. In proportion, certainly. There is something deeply nostalgic about the Potter world which I am sure explains a large part of their popularity with adults. The Magical World is a place where everyone knows everyone else, where they are all pushing in roughly the same direction, where tradition and family values count. These are good values which mainstream British society has lost to a large degree. And of course it is elitist – the magicians are different, set apart, inherently special. And this appeals to us too – because don’t we all feel that somehow we are just like that too? Better than average, different to the crowd?

4.       Characters you care about. Is there a greater creation in all of literature than the Weasley family? No, I’m serious. Varied, anarchic and full of detail, Rowling’s Weasleys sum up a lot of what makes her books so addictive. You want these people to survive and when they suffer a terrible loss you feel it completely in your gut. The Weasleys don’t come across as well in the films as they do in the books – no fault of the actors, it is just that the films don’t have the time to recreate them properly.

5.       Myths and legends. She is often accused of plucking the best from old stories and presenting them as her own. Anyone who knows anything about writing should be able to tell you that this is poppycock. Rowling is incredibly well read, it’s true, and she has a magpie genius for summoning ideas into her narrative. But this is her great strength not a weakness. In part, it is the familiarity of the books that help them work so well. They speak of rings, of power, of magicians – and well, these aren’t alien ideas, these have been around for centuries – so we accept them more. But Rowling’s goblins and elves are not Tolkein’s, they are very much her own.

Pottermore, but not enough

Great to hear that JK Rowling is bringing us a wealth of new material about the Potter universe. Her Pottermore.com website is planned as a sort of encyclopaedic interactive website. Sounds interesting. Because we know that JK has long held back details about the characters that never made it to the books...


But hang on...


"Although the author made clear that she had "no plans to write another novel", the fresh Potter material – to be unveiled later this year - already stretches to 18,000 words about the novels' characters, places and objects, with more to come. From Professor McGonagall's love for a Muggle as a young woman, to how the Dursleys met (Petunia was working in an office); from new information about Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff houses, to details about wand wood..."


Say that again? (I'm quoting from the Guardian) You said, "stretches to18,000 words"? You mean, just 18,000 words, don't you? Considering that the later books swelled beyond 100,000 words each, the idea of her holding back another 18,000 words.... well it doesn't sound like much. Not so much a Potterverse as the cuttings that fell on the editing room floor.


Not that I'm not grateful, JK. It will be a delight. It's just, I don't think we should get too carried away by this. Pottermore may well be a huge amount of fun, and it makes sense from a business and a creative point of view for her to create an online hub for controlling and reselling her brand through ebooks and the like. But those of us who love the books and admire JK for her storytelling are going to be left disappointed.


You know, I'm not even bothered about getting a Harry sequel or prequel. That story feels done to me. But I would like to read more JK. So come on Jo... write us another series. Surprise us (again). Bet you can...

Pottermore.com: New Harry Potter project spellbinds cyberspace

Ha. Youtube is now awash with little videos like this. Breathless YAs waving wands around wondering what on earth JK Rowling is up to.
That woman: she sure can sell her brand...

New Harry Potter project spellbinds cyberspace - Gadgets & Tech, Life & Style - The Independent

So what is it going to be?

An iPad app allowing the user to kill Voldemort and snog Hermione.

No, too easy.

a gigantic Harry Potter theme park to be built inside the M25, providing ten thousand jobs and saving the British economy.

Naaah, it rains too much in Britain.

An HP sequel? The website insists it isn't a new book, but what if she has written a prose poem instead? An epic in the style of Childe Harold all about Harry's children fighting a new dark wizard?

Naaaah.

I know, it's a boy band. Inspired by The X Factor JK has put together a great new pop act...

No, definitely not.

Oh, I don't know. I give up. Perhaps it will be a new book, after all. But just not a Harry Potter book - but set in the same world. I can't help but feel that is what JK should be doing right now.

But the smart money is on the theme park. Or the iPad app...

Top 100 Books: what are the best selling books of all time? Tolkein? JK Rowling? Dickens? Or Agatha Christie?

Like football fans dreaming up their first eleven of all time, avid readers love compiling lists of books.

That's why we challenged readers to help us come up with a new list of the Top 100 books that are Must Reads.

We want you to tell us what books have meant the most to you. The ones you'd pass on to your kids. The ones you revisit over and over again or which stay with you for the rest of your life.

So far we've had some stonking suggestions. Many lists reflect just how eclectic modern readers are: a bit of sci fi, a few classics, some modern lit fic. Contrary to what you might expect, few people restrict themselves to one genre or time period. It is clear that avid readers are also adventurous and seek out new writers and titles all the time.

But what if the list was restricted to the best selling books of all time? What would that look like. Actually, that's pretty easy to see because a quick Google search will throw up lists based on sales. These are from Wikipedia and are, therefore, probably pretty accurate.

Top 5 best selling single volume novels of all time:

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859, over 200 million

The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkein, 1954-5, over 150 million

The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkein, 1937, over 100 million

Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, 1759-1791, over 100 million

And Then They were None, By Agatha Christie, 1939, over 100 million

No surprise to see Christie up there. Next to The Bible and Shakespeare, her books have outsold everything else by any other author, over four billion and counting - she wrote over 80 detective novels alone. Rather tragically for her and her family she signed away most if not all the rights to her work in return for a fat cheque in order to pay a large tax bill.

The others are not much of a shock either. Tolkein's bandwagon is huge and will get bigger with The Hobbit films when they are released in 2012 and 2013. Perhaps it is a surprise to see Dickens at the very top, but he was the original literary superstar and his writing was always accessible and readable enough for even a 150 years not to dent its appeal.

As to Dream of the Red Chamber... I must admit that's one I need to put on my Amazon wish list. It is one of China's four classic novels, written in the vernacular. It sounds intriguing and 100 million Cantonese speakers can't all be wrong.

Further down you find Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (80 million) and Catcher in the Rye (65 million). JK Rowling's Deathly Hallows is the top selling Harry Potter with over 44 million sales. Incredible really, for a book that's only been out four years. CS Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has sold 85 million since it was published in 1950.

Of course, our Top 100 Books list isn't about sales. It's about your judgement as to the value of a book: be that literary, entertainment, originality, the strength of the idea. Also it is meant to be personal and idiosyncratic. The resulting list will and should be a surprise to everyone. If it isn't we'll all have failed.

So what is your list? Leave it in the comment below and I'll integrate it with our master list. Over the next few weeks we'll be running the challenge in The Big Issue and hope to come up with a definitive Top 100. But all you need to do is think of five titles and authors, or ten if you can.

And please share the challenge with friends too. The more lists, the better the final result.

First words

What is the most memorable first chapter ever written?

For an author, those first few pages are crucial. Unknown authors in particular need to get them right because they are the hook to capture an agent, an editor, a deal and eventually enough readers to rocket them into the bestseller charts. Get those first pages right and a reader will stick with you through the next 100 pages or so. And by then, if they aren't in love with your story, characters and prose style then all is lost for you anyway.

I picked up Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones yesterday and took it off to read while my daughter took part in her weekly country dancing class. As she skipped around some wooden swords I found myself totally immersed in Sebold's story.

How did I not read this book before? I was being contrary, of course. I'd heard about it, there was a while there when you couldn't move without tripping over great stacks of these books at any and every bookshop. It was on everyone's reading list and recommends list from Richard and Judy out. So I stayed away from it, assuming it to be populist schmaltz.

But that first chapter has got me totally hooked. The girl's voice comes over so clearly. The situation is so stark and awful. And the description of the rape and the murder: well it really does make you gasp a little. But because the narrator is the girl, that she is talking from 'her heaven' (let's not go there this time), it isn't a horror yarn but something far more moving, intelligent and clever.

Thrillers do the first chapter thing very well. Silence of the Lambs & The Ring come to mind. But a good first few pages isn't just the product of the highly competitive modern commercial fiction market. Philip Roth, a literary writer, has the knack. Cormac McCarthy's first few pages in The Road. Anything by Dickens, who had the popular touch.

But some really successful books have terrible first chapters. How many people abandoned Harry Potter while reading that opening about owls and strange goings on?

It is World Book Day. You can tell because their website has already crashed due to huge amounts of traffic. This year's event includes a big book giveaway tomorrow night, which is a cute idea and will make for great marketing for the twenty odd, established writers who are involved.

Did Dumbledore create his own horcrux?

I'm a huge JK Rowling fan, which is good because my children are obsessed with Harry Potter. We've just worked our way through the Half Blood Prince on audio (a great way of keeping everyone distracted on even short car rides).

I've read the book already, of course, and seen the rather disappointing film version (how did they get it so-o-o wrong?). But listening to Stephen Fry's narration got me thinking: did Albus Dumbledore create his own version of a horcrux in order to keep up the good fight after his death?

Horcruxes were Voldemort's dastardly plan to live forever. A slither of his soul is sliced off and kept in an artefact, for revival at a later date. To kill Voldemort, Harry has to first destroy all the horcruxes. In the end he doesn't destroy any of them, but his friends do. It's a great yarn.

In the last book, Dumbledore is dead. But we discover late on in the story that Snape truly is Dumbledore's man. Snape's posthumous memories include him plotting with Dumbledore's portrait on how and where to leave Harry the Gryffindor sword.

Later still, when the war is won, Harry speaks to the Dumbledore portrait. My feeling about both these scenes is that Dumbledore's image goes way beyond any other magical portrait. You sense it is more than just an impression of the living man. you sense that it is Dumbledore.

If that is the case, does Dumbledore live on in his portrait? Is it in some sense a horcrux? And if it is, did big D have to kill anyone to make it?