“I’m feeling right bad about this.”

From Death of a Dreamer by M.C. Beaton.

Meme from James Tauber, Greg Newman, Justin Lilly and Brian Rosner:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Just to drive the point home, this is a picture of the half wall behind the couch looking into the kitchen:

50 points to whom ever knows what 'orts' are... (no googling...)

As the book is about to be released, I wanted to let you know what is going to happen on the site the next few days.

As of just under an hour ago, I closed the submission of new predictions. Voting on existing predictions is still open, though. I encourage you to go back to http://potterpredictions.com/ soon and vote on the predictions that have been approved since you last visited the site.

Voting will be closed some time between Thursday 11pm EDT (GMT-4) and Friday 9am EDT so the next 24 hours or so will be your last chance to record your votes.

At some point after the weekend, results will start being published. You’ll want to avoid the site from Friday night until you’ve finished reading the book Given that it might be controversial whether some predictions came to pass or not, we’ll probably poll members for their opinion in ambiguous cases.

I hope you’ve had as much fun using the site as we had building it.
And, of course, I hope you enjoy the book!

James

James has been adding features to the site almost daily. There are stats including sure things, fat chances, most obscure predictions, and my favorite, most controversial. Not to mention group and friend management, tags, and you can compare your choices with anyone else. You can compare your predictions to mine. At last count, there were 519 members, almost 400 predictions, and well over 40,000 votes! The site is beginning to slow a little as votes are being made at about 10 a second (rough wall clock estimate for 5min to account for django caching). About 250 predictions were added just today. Even though James claims to have closed the adding of predictions there seem to be another 20 new ones sense I started typing all this.

UPDATE:

No, I’m just approving ones submitted prior to closing. -James

Once the book is released the stats will be closed and the results posted. I can’t wait… I soo want to know what people think. I need to e-mail the penny-arcade folks, tyco will go nuts for this!!!

[UPDATE: I got group Gryffindor!]

Bibliophile (bĭb’lē-ə-fīl’) n.

1. a person who loves or collects books, esp. as examples of fine or unusual printing, binding, or the like.
2. A lover of books.
3. A collector of books.

NOTE: The adj. form is bookworm. While ‘bibliophilia’ has recently entered the common vernacular, it is not an accepted form.

I am a self professed bibliophile. It is a trait which appears to be hereditary. As proof I grabbed my cell phone, snapped some pictures, created a new tabblo account for the site, and in under a minute I had something which looks like it took hours. I do love tabblo! I was planning on adding a ‘books’ page to the site this week in celebration of National Library Week. Unfortunately a stomach virus threw all schedules out the window as childhood ailments often do. The Worcester Public Library has a fantastic children’s reading program with music and local artists every Friday morning from 10:30am until noon with a playtime afterwards. Our son picks out ten to twelve books and we end up reading each at least three times over the week. This week is special in that all activities will be accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired.

10:30am Just Drop In Sing-a-long & Storytime
Kids of all ages are invited to. The program will take place in the Children’s Room ‘Ellipse’. Enjoy picture book stories, nursery rhymes, poetry and live music with instruments provided for children. Each week’s program is followed by an optional playtime for which the library provides coloring sheets, book displays library and literacy information for parents and children, toys for play and ambient music. The program is free, for ALL AGES and is open to the public, no registration required, just drop in ! Come early for best seats! Kids can bring their own instruments to help mr. frank play songs! Call the Main Library at 508.799.1671 for details. If the Worcester Public Schools are delayed or cancelled ‘Just Drop In’ our program will be cancelled for that morning.

Libraries and bookstores are sacred grounds to me and librarians are family. There is no better place in the world than an independent used bookstore on a rainy day. Sitting among the stacks, finding hidden treasures and becoming reacquainted with old friends. Books have a life and soul unlike any other media. It is the tactile aspect combined with the infinite expanse of imagination. The mind can conger sights, sounds, sensations and impossibilities which can never occur in the real world or be reproduced by Hollywood (though they try). The written word allows us to tailor the experience, fictional or otherwise, and make it our own. No two people read the same book; the experience is internalized and intimate. When reading you can close out all other stimuli. Even the visual. Your minds eye becomes your perceived sight and reading becomes like breathing; unnoticed and automatic. Film and audio, color and flavor the experience with an external interpretation which is not our own. The external stimuli breaks the spell and ends reverie. Is it any wonder the film is never as good as the book? This is not to say I don’t like movies of find them less entertaining that books, they just do not hold thrall over my like books do. I equally love graphic novels and manga; the experience is different, but no less enjoyable.

At our house we have budgets for everything. I have a complicated system for ‘upgrading’ my computer equipment which consists of me selling equipment on ebay and buying parts from whole sellers to build my own components. The only exceptions to budgetary constraints are books. Literary works are that important. There are books everywhere, in every room. Horizontal surfaces act like magnets for bound pages. Our coffee table does not have those standard ‘coffee table books’ which are decor and never actually read. The books on our coffee table are restless creatures which are snatched up at whenever a quite moment presents its self. Sometimes the house looks like a scene from ‘Read or Die‘.

It was not always that way as I am dyslexic and for the first sixteen years of my life I hated reading, and abhorred spelling. I still cannot spell to save my life, but reading has become like breathing, and collecting unusual works an addiction. I even read allowed; something which used to give me nightmares as a child. Ironically it was my high school Spanish teacher (Mrs. Ortiz) who gave me my first fix. The book was ‘The Unloved‘ by John Saul. Not a book that won any awards, but it struck a chord with the angst ridden teenager I was. From there I devoured the horror genre, moved on to science fiction, cyberpunk, fantasy. I went so far as to get foreign books, and was handed ‘If Only the Dream Trees Could Touch‘ by Hiroyuki Morioka and a fan translation from usenet posted weekly about 10 pages at a time. I was already hooked on Japanese horror, this got me hooked on sci-fi and romance. I have read translations of all Hiroyuki Morioka’s works, and to date the Crest of the Stars series is my all time favorite Science Fiction series by any writer. I am still looking for professional translations of her works, if anyone knows of where I can get them I would be eternally great full. My old dot matrix printouts were not on acid free paper and the white/green alternating lines are now brown and darker brown.