Like, many I was moved by JK Rowling's admission that she considered suicide as a poor single mom. It makes her rags to riches story all the more inspiring. Granted, not all suicidal stories end as happily, but it's definitely a lesson in the value of suicide prevention.
My personal favorite detail of the story however: it was broken by a student journalist! Way to go Adeel Amini of Edinburgh University! I've been trying to find the name of the publication he writes for but the big news sources don't seem to consider that an important detail. Oh well, congrats Adeel!
I'm really torn about the court battle between JK Rowling and Steve Vander Ark of the Harry Potter Lexicon. Vander Ark's website is a popular fan encyclopedia for those not in the know. It's very complete and has been used by makers of the HP films to check facts and even Rowling herself when the latter books were being written. Vander Ark now wants to turn the website into a published book. Rowling is contesting that a free website is ok but a book would infringe on her rights, and her own planned encyclopedia.
I've seen fan encyclopedias before, they're relatively common. It may not be fair to Rowling, but is it illegal? At the same time, I feel like the last call should belong to Jo.
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I gotta say, I think Jo's right here. Free web encyclopedia? Yes, sure. But selling a real-life copy? No. Definitely not without Jo's explicit permission and definitely not when she's publishing her own. It's kind of sad that it had to go as far as a lawsuit, though. :(
It is sad, especially to see it be Steve Vander Ark, he's like the king of fandom. Joy and I actually met the guy at Prophecy and I went to one of his talks, he knows HP front to back. It's so weird to imagine him facing Jo in court!
Thanks so much for coming over to comment Athene :)
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