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I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday weekend!  It seems that Mother Nature decided this weekend really did herald in the autumn, as it’s drizzly and chilly in NYC today.  It turns out it’s the best weather to hunker down and catch up on blog reading.  Here are some interesting links we’ve been reading lately:

• The Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2011 shortlist just came out and CONGRATULATIONS to author Veronica Roth (DIVERGENT) for her nomination in the “Published Author Blog” category.  Thanks to Lee Wind at I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read? for the link (and congrats to his nomination as well)!
• There’s still time to have the teens in your library or classroom vote for YALSA’S Teens’ Top 10 – they have until September 16th.
• Family of robots? Bookshelves of Doom does it again: makes me laugh hysterically first thing in the morning before I’ve even had coffee.
• The time has come: awards buzz is in full effect.  Heavy Medal has started their coverage of all things Newbery.  There doesn’t appear to be a link yet, but keep an eye out for Horn Book‘s own blog, Calling Caldecott.
• Liz Burns over at A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy had quite the ordeal, courtesy of Hurricane Irene.  Read her story and check out her links of other bloggers with Irene stories.
• Snape voted the favorite Harry Potter character?  Really???  It’s a total upset.  Me, I’m a Hermione fan through and through.  And you?
• Sam over at Parenthetical has a fascinating blog post, “To RSS or not to RSS?”  Really?  Only 6% of North American, Internet-using consumers use an RSS feed once a week or more?  That floors me, as I couldn’t live without Google Reader to help me keep it all organized (and I couldn’t live without my Bloglines before that, nor could Liz).  What do you think?  When everyone and their brother has a blog out there, how do you keep it all organized?
• Once again, Seattle Public Library closes for a week due to budget cuts.  I think the quote at the end really gets to the crux of the problem: “You kind of take it for granted – and then suddenly you miss it when it’s gone.”
• Doing last-minute book buying for school?  Here’s a list of some back-to-school titles from the New York Times.

Have a great (short!) week, everyone, and enjoy the cooler weather!

I just listened to Harry Potter 6 on my iPod--all 17 discs worth of it. It was a long haul, but the audio recordings are very very good.

I have some predictions about the upcoming seventh book and I want to document them here. First, I'd like to say that I do not read fan sites and I have not gotten sucked into debates about Harry Potter anywhere else. Being a fiction writer myself, I recognize that getting embroiled in an argument about what is going to happen in an upcoming piece of fiction is perhaps more ridiculous than fighting over what the weather is going to be like next month.

That being said, here are my predictions:

Snape: I believe that Snape is not as evil as we've been led to believe. I think he dispensed with Dumbledore for a specific reason, but I believe Dumbledore was right in trusting Snape. Dumbledore was too smart and Snape was too obviously evil for me to believe that Dumbledore just made an error in character judgment, which led to his demise. Dumbledore had a reason to trust Snape and I'm siding with Dumbledore on this one. That being said, I believe Dumbledore may play a role in book 7, but I believe he will remain dead. After all, he had quite a kick-ass funeral!

The DA: Dumbledore's Army (the D.A.) is the future. I think book 7 will reveal that Voldemort's operatives have compromised the Ministry of Magic more than we ever realized--all the way up to the top. I think that book 7 will see a huge upheaval that will lead to the toppling of the magical government. The aurors will be killed or rendered powerless and the DA will rise to the occasion and clean house.

Horcruxes: I'm not sure whether this has been postulated, but I think Harry himself is a horcrux. For those of you not into Harry Potter and just reading this to humor me, a horcrux (according to book 6) is when a powerful wizard splits their soul and implants it into an inanimate object in order to make the wizard more difficult to destroy. It is believed that Voldemort split his soul into 7 parts. All the way back to the first time we saw the Sorting Hat and it said Harry should be in Slytherin, I knew Harry had some part of him that was evil. I believe that Voldemort was trying to kill Harry to impart his soul fragment into an inanimate object and something went wrong that resulted in Voldemort's soul fragment to be implanted in Harry.

The Prophesy: The prophesy states, "either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives." This prophesy is worded very strangely and very carefully, is it not? I think this goes back to the issue of the horcrux. With part of Voldemort's soul within Harry, neither can live while the other survives. In other words, Harry can never be free with part of Voldemort inside of him and Voldemort can never live while Harry is still alive, since Voldemort would need that fragment back if he is to truly live.

Does Harry Die: When it's all finished, I believe Harry is going to live. If you've read my entire post, you'll know that the DA will need a leader and Harry has been aiming to be an auror for the past few years. People are talking all over the place about whether Harry is going to die in this book 7. Perhaps I am an eternal optimist, but I think Harry is going to live. He serves a direct function and he needs to go on to see to the rebirth of the magic world. Despite the prophesy, its strange wording leads me to believe JK Rowling has a loophole up the sleeve of her magical robes.

And that's all I'm going to say about Harry Potter. It's only 2 months away until the book's release and we'll see if I'm right! So, why in the title of this blog entry do I say that I hope I'm wrong, you ask? That's easy.

I want to be surprised!

This weekend I linked to a Snape article in the Los Angeles Times during the weekend reviews. A Fuse #8 picked up on the story and it got me thinking this morning.

You see, there are some adults with Snape-love--adults and teens who are petitioning J.K. not to kill off our crotchety Potions master. I am one of those adults, though I haven't gone so far as to petition. Let's face it, it's J.K.'s decision in the end.

There are two issues here: 1) why do we think Snape is toast and 2) why do we love him so much? Here are my thoughts:

1) If Snape will be redeemed, he must die. And he must die proving Harry was wrong. In other words, he must die a hero. So he'll have to go saving Harry or fighting with the Order of the Phoenix for the greater cause. If he doesn't die, then Harry and friends will always suspect him and so will we.

2) I am beginning to think Alan Rickman is at fault here. I've been thinking about Snape in the books and Snape in the movies. While not one of the films has been as good as its textual inspiration, Alan Rickman has always been awesome. He is THE standout adult actor in the films. He has infused Snape with a campy humor that may be lacking in the books themselves. This may be why Rowling is surprised by Snape love. True he is a "gray" character, as mentioned in the LAT article, but he's not a funny one in Rowling's books.

There's another aspect to adult Snape love. (That sounds a little nasty, doesn't it?) Teachers and Professors love the man. He tells students what we all have longed to say at one point or another.

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Where am I? I'm in the midst of editing The Edge of the Forest, which will go up sometime during the wee hours of the 10th/11th. I'm off for more work.... Read the rest of this post

I do not want to read anything about HP7 until I am holding HP7 in my hands. I have my own ponders and ideas about the story but I also like to be surprised. I do not shake presents under the Christmas tree or read the end of a book before I start it.

I have to chuckle at this t-shirt over at Bookshelves of Doom though.
I want a shirt like this. She got into lots of discussion about it at the adult circulation desk.

Lots and lots of comments too and I confess I did read them including Michele's, "If Harry turns out to be a Horcrux, I will shred my copy of book 7 and send it to JKR c/o Bloomsbury with a note about how very disappointed I am."