JK Rowling on Twitter

I've only just read Troubled Blood, and finished it thinking, "How is this transphobic? Is it because it includes plenty of diversity and several paraphilias but doesn't have a transgender character?" Loved it. Absolute page-turner. I'm going to get 1-4, and by the time I've read them I hope TIBH will be out in paperback.

I wasn't tempted to go looking for whodunnit before the end, and I'm glad I waited and had the added pleasure of getting invested in little red herrings along the way.

😀

I hope not!

ive switched spell check and grammar off on my ipad cos i found them too judgey

i look illiterate!

It’s not unreadable but it took me a while to figure out. On mine (Paperwhite) when you get to what looks like a blank page you touch it towards the left and when a box appears you click the enlarge button.

Someone on another thread here warned not to get the kindle edition of The Ink Black Heart because the many pages of online chat are unreadable in that format. Tesco have the hardback in store for £13.50, which is only £1 more than the e-book anyway.

I normally wait for a cheaper deal on Kindle (I’m in Yorkshire. £12.99 for an ebook causes cries of ‘ ‘Ow much?’) but I didn’t want to risk seeing a TRA spoiler on Twitter so I had to buy it.

It’s brilliant. Next time I am going to just give in to the inevitable and preorder/wait in line at a bookshop at midnight. Probably both.

By the time I'd borrowed and read all the previous books (I had assumed I wouldn't like them and had never read any, at that point), my local library's waiting list had gone down to... 50. The TRAs did so well in cancelling her.

I have an absolutely wonderful image of a tiny feminist reindeer floating in a bath, underneath the weighty Troubled Blood, with inflatable swimbands around every leg.

That's possibly one of the best reviews I've read, ever!

I hope some of Rowling's press / publishing team are reading this!

I reserved TB at my library when that came it as I wasn't working then and couldn't buy it - I was 147th on the list!

Bugger, I was going to join the library queue for this one, and save the £12. There are a lot of people ahead of me. If TRAs are going to be posting info about the book, I'm going to have to buy it!

I'm so jealous you are at the beginning. The films too are great.

They're trans activists. Spiteful and mean-spirited is their defining personality characteristic.

Quite, but very frequently the personality characteristics are the starting point, and the trans activism follows from that. As someone wise wrote on Twitter last year:

The reason why so many extremely woke people turn out to have been bigoted in the past is because bigotry used to be the best way to bully and intimidate people, but now performative anti-bigotry is the best way to bully and intimidate people. An evolving toolset for sociopaths.

Just can't get my head around why you someone would do something so spiteful and mean-spirited.

They're trans activists. Spiteful and mean-spirited is their defining personality characteristic.

The TV adaptation is still available on iPlayer, too: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b093ypxy/episodes/player

My assumption is that JKR agreed with Warner Bros that they would generate and control the Intellectual Property Rights related to merchandising, and some other areas such as film production and distribution, in exchange for an ongoing royalty. Hopefully it was that, and defined in terms of a percentage, rather than a fixed royalty amount or a fixed up-front payment only.

There is a lot of Harry Potter LEGO:

www.lego.com/en-gb/themes/harry-potter

Just like normal LEGO except even more expensive. It's a shame the minifigures are no longer available:

www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2499334.m570.l1313&_nkw=harry+potter+minifigures&_sacat=263012

The way I see it, she doesn't need the money, but if profits from HP stuff suddenly took a nosedive, many important bean counter someones would notice and that might make a difference to the support she still gets from her publishers, Warner Bros, etc. Right now the HP juggernaut thunders on and people can't cancel her because of that. (Not for lack of trying.)

oooh... not sure how I got some random italics in there....

My favourite thing is actually a HP lego keyring. It's fairly subtle. (Although that may be because my key ring has a very great many things on it).

www.lego.com/en-gb/product/harry-potter-keyring-854114

I agree buying HP merch feels subversive. I recently bought a bunch of HP merch when it was in the Aisle of Impulsive Purchases at Aldi. Sadly both DCs are over their HP phase but I most definitely am not.

I used to keep my love of HP under wraps a bit - I'm nearly 40, I have an English Literature degree, I should probably be a bit more highbrow - but now I positively delight in buying HP merchandise. Every time I buy something I think 'royalties!' and I while I know it barely even counts as a drop in the ocean, I want to do my bit to ensure anyone looking at the bottom line of comments out vs money in sees that JKR is not losing that game. My house is filling up with the stuff!

Which reminds me - the new illustrated (Jim Kay) edition of The Order of the Phoenix is out later this year, pre-orders now available!

The howdunit and whydunit and withwhomdunit are as important as whodunnit I reckon. Also I have reread all the Strike novels in the light of knowing whodunnits for the retrospective reveals and subtle pointers, as well as all the other beautiful stuff in the novels. In short, knowing whodunnit in advance won't detract. It might even add something. But if you don't know, I wouldn't advocate going to find out. Mean spirited of someone to make that public though - arse like behaviour.