"The Tales of Beedle the Bard" (Harry Potter) Discussion Thread

[Brendan Moody]

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling's collection of Harry Potter universe fairy tales, is coming out tomorrow (or, depending on your location, later today), December 4th. So here's a thread about it.

I imagine anyone who cares already knows the pertinent details, but just in case: the collection of five fairy tales, first mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was originally a handmade collectible by Rowling herself, who gave six copies to people who had been especially close to her during the writing of the series, and auctioned a seventh copy for charity. Amazon.com bought the book and took it on tour, but fan outcry convinced Rowling to release a public edition of the book as well, also for charity. In addition to an inexpensive standard edition, Amazon has exclusive rights to a collector's edition, which copies the design of the original charity copy and has some nice accompanying items. If you want even more details, Wikipedia has them, including spoilers for the stories.

I preordered a copy of each edition a couple months book, and since Amazon once more offered release-date delivery I should be getting them sometime tomorrow. I know there was at least one midnight party in the UK, so some people probably have copies already. It's hardly as exciting as a new book in the series would be, but the anticipation is still nice.

 

[darkwing_duck1]

Enough is enough already!

After the disasters that were the last two books I have officially had ENOUGH of Rowling's Harry Potter.

Most of the FANFIC I've been reading lately is better written than HBP and DH!

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

I'll probably give it a look-see, but I generally loathe short story collections, particularly when an author who's written a big book I love follows it up with short stories, very very disappointing. Same thing happened to me with Susanna Clarke's next release after Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I audibly groaned when I saw it was a short story collection.

 

[Takeru]

I just got my collector's edition and it's awesome, the outer case is gigantic (it will be the biggest "book" on my shelf) and looks pretty good. The actual book is in a velvet bag and is really beautiful, so far I only read Rowlings introduction, the first story and Dumbledore's notes on this story. The story is cute, but Dumbledore's notes are much more interesting, it's almost like a short history lesson of the Harry Potter world.

 

[Siwilliams]

Have already read it and enjoyed it

 

[Kemaiku]

Ordered it yesterday. Arrived and read it today. Loved it.

 

[Brendan Moody]

I got my copies a few hours ago.

The collector's edition is very nice (as it should be given the cost), isn't it? As is often the case with such items, it's designed more for admiring than reading, but the standard edition is so cheap that it'd be easy to pick up a copy of that if one were worried. My only complaint is that the outer case is a bit lightweight for something of its bulk. Obviously it's not designed to be collectible, but the US standard edition is pretty handsomely designed for a book of its type.

There's also some content. But not much. Most people had probably figured this out already, but five fairy tales don't add up to much book, even with the Dumbledore commentary. The US standard edition is about 110 pages with big print and spacing; the collector's edition is longer only because it's a much tinier book. It took me less than an hour to read the whole thing, and I wasn't going very fast. This isn't a flaw per se, just in the nature of the book. This isn't "J.K. Rowling's big new project;" it's a light character based endeavour, like the schoolbooks but shorter than either.

The fairy tales themselves are standard stuff, done in familiar Grimm's-type prose style with obvious morals (which are then reinforced, perhaps unnecessarily, in the Dumbledore commentary). Rowling has described these fairy tales as echoing the basic themes of the Potter series, and it's easy to see how. They're charming, and use a broad range of fairy tale tones, but they probably won't knock anyone's socks off.

The commentary is better. There's more Potter-style humor here, as well as the odd bit of new world-building, though again nothing too substantial. My favorite gag is probably the "excerpt" from a Bowdlerized version of one tale, a great parody of the insufferable cuteness of some children's fiction.

I voted for "It was pretty good" in the poll. The Potter magic (see what I did there?) is only intermittently present, but The Tales of Beedle the Bard offers a charming diversion, as well as an estimated $7.5 million for charity.

 

[coolghoul]

Thanks Brendan Moody for bringing this up. I had read Amazon's review of the tales when they had won the charity auction but didn't realize this was coming to the public until about sometime late last month.

Thanks for the reminder - I placed a hold on my library version. Should get it soon.

For some reason - I am no longer so enthused about the Potter world. I don't quite know why but I haven't picked up the last two books again for a full re-read - I somehow think of them as being "tiresome". Haven't read TDH fully again - read only certain parts of it again. Same goes for HBP too. I have re-read all the way till OOTP again but the thought of picking up HBP was too much.

One of these days, I'll have to clean up my sig below too. But laziness beckons...

 

[CaptainCanada]

I preordered it on Amazon, and just got the shipping notice, so it should show up in a bit.

 

[Corran Horn]

Came today (I ordered it for my wife) from amazon in the same kind of special shipping sleeve that amazon's used for the last few Potter books. (warning muggles against opening before the release date)

 

[opali]

I just got my notice from Better World Books...it is on the way! My eleven year old and I are looking forward to it. The anticipation is nice.