The Harry Potter Lexicon

Eager to hear the entire soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and don’t want to wait until it’s released on 14 July? AOL Radio just sent me this:

AOL Radio has an exclusive premiere of the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince soundtrack. The movie hits theaters July 15th, but if you can’t wait make sure to tune in to the Movie Scores station on AOL Radio. You’ll hear a track from the album every hour at the top of the hour!

Click here to go to the web page. I’m listening to Slughorn’s Confession right now … I do love Nicholas Hooper’s work …

Steve

I’ve been using my Twitter account to send out tidbits of Harry Potter trivia once or twice every day. I try to find particularly interesting odds and ends in the Lexicon book to send out. If that sounds like something that would brighten your day, follow Lexicon_Steve. And feel free to retweet.

Steve

I’ve been puttering around and editing pages over the past few days. Mostly, I’ve been fixing errors here and there, catching up on my rather lengthy to-do list. I’ve added a few of the new details from Tales of Beedle the Bard — Herbert Beery has now joined the character pages and the Hogwarts staff list, for example. I also updated the page for the Lexicon book and included a few entries from the book to give everyone an idea of what kind of information the book provides.

At some point in the near future I’m going to be looking to take on more editing staff and hopefully a programmer, someone who has experience with databases. If you know of anyone who might be interested in helping out, please let me know.

Steve

I’ve been taking notes on Beedle the Bard. I’m amazed at how much new information Rowling manages to cram into a very short book. I’ll be working on the Reader’s Guide as I get time. I’ve uploaded the notes for the introduction for you all to read and discuss. I’ve also added notes about the commentary for the first story.

I just finished reading through my copy of Tales of Beedle the Bard, and I am absolutely delighted with it. It’s so wonderful to read J.K. Rowling’s storytelling and tongue-in-cheek humour again. The stories are great, but I was particularly happy with the commentary. She gives us even more tantalising tidbits of information about her world, and manages to explain a few fan conundrums along the way, such as the definition of ‘warlock’ and the age of Beatrix Bloxum. This book is a treasure!

Well, I can finally tell you all what’s been keeping me so busy for the last six months. Today we announced the publication of The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials, which will come out on the 12th of January. This book has been written to carefully follow the guidelines laid out in the Judge’s decision concerning the original Lexicon manuscript. Last night, Christopher Little Agency released the following statement:

“We are delighted that this matter is finally and favourably resolved and that J.K. Rowling’s rights — and indeed the rights of all authors of creative works — have been protected. We are also pleased to hear that rather than continue to litigate, RDR have themselves decided to publish a different book prepared with reference to Judge Patterson’s decision.”

I share their pleasure at this positive development, and I’m very happy with the new book. I hope that fans everywhere will find it to be a worthwhile and engaging companion book to the Harry Potter series.

You can order the book here.

I am delighted to let you all know that my book In Search of Harry Potter is on the shelves. The book was published by Methuen Publishing in London and is now available in shops in Britain. From what I’ve been told, it should be in the stores in the US in a few weeks. In the meantime, it’s available from Amazon.

I’ve had quite a few questions about the book, so I’ve put together a page about it which I hope will be helpful. If you have further questions, feel free to send me an email.

The book is hardcover and illustrated with my photographs throughout. The material in the book is best described as a first-person travel memoir. I didn’t include information directly from the Lexicon website with the exception of a couple of essays by Ravenclaw Rambler for which he gave me permission. The cover and the maps were created by Camilla Engelby, a good friend and fellow Harry Potter fan.

Thanks to Claire M. Jordan, the author of an excellent essay in our collection, I have been able to update the page listing differences between the UK and US editions of Deathly Hallows. Most of the differences are simply substitutions of US terms for British ones (e.g. ‘crib’ for ‘cot’). There are a few interesting changes in wording as well.

Recently, some of my friends have been receiving unwanted and annoying phone calls from members of the press, trying to get in contact with me. This is definitely not appreciated. One friend has had to change her phone number several times to avoid these kinds of calls, but is still receiving them.

To avoid this kind of harassment, I’ve created an email account which can be used to contact me directly. The address is
steve.lexicon@googlemail.com. Please use this method of reaching me and do not call my friends and family, as they will not be willing to talk to you and will not put you in touch with me.

Steve

There’s been a decided lack of new posts here, I know. Sorry about that. I spent most of the week in London at the publisher working on the new book, In Search of Harry Potter, which is due out October the 9th, and so I’ve been commuting back and forth, which means hours on the train. So there have been only a few behind-the-scenes updates and edits.

One baffling problem I’ve been trying to sort out is the fact that our /icons folder wasn’t working. I finally determined that it’s because the server has its own folder with that name and automatically hijacks any URL. So this evening I need change that folder name and then track down and fix any links that will then point to the wrong place. Thank goodness for Dreamweaver. Even so, that’s going to take some time.

One thing that a working /icons folder means is that we will be able to start working on the icon database (the one that we’re missing all the current data for) and get the icons to work properly. If they’re set up right, clicking on an icon in the timeline or the Portkey brings up an icon search page with relevant links and saved searches for that icon through the entire database. This will expand over time as we begin databasing more areas of the Lexicon until clicking an icon will give you a well-organised screen of everything in the entire site which has that icon attached. So if you click on the Potions icon, you’ll see a list of people, places, timeline events, canon snippets, creatures, essays, and so on that are related to that topic, along with a concise definition and even offsite links.

Should be very cool … but I need to get the folder to work first, and the start re-entering all that data ….

I’ve fixed the Google search for the site, so have at it. Unfortunately, the Remembrall isn’t working right now because it’s fixed on the wrong domain. I’m sure we’ll be able to sort it out, but for now just use the Google search.

Great news! Thanks to Roonwit, we have our timelines back. Well, almost back. The back-up file was dated March 2007, so some material was lost. Also, since the domain names have changed, the links in the timeline entries themselves don’t work at the moment. However, we’re hoping to get things cleaned up, working properly, and updated soon.

But any way you look at it, this is fantastic news, and I am so grateful to Roonwit for his help.