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Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter

Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter

List Price: $24.95
Your Price: $15.72
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Brilliant!!
Review: This book is a must read for any Harry Potter fan. It has only enhanced the enjoyment I receive when reading the Harry Potter books and has me even more curious and excited about the future of the series. It is in a well organized format and the author has a delightful sense of humor. I can't say enough wonderful things about this book, you must read it to appreciate it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Must Have for All Harry Potter Fans
Review: As someone who works with children in a library and an avid Harry Potter fan, I found this book to be not only entertaining reading, but thought provoking as well. It delves into many aspects of the "mysteries" of the first four books. Are things always what they seem to be? Is Ms. Rowling keeping secrets from her readers with the answers to be revealed in future books?
Do not be deceived by the large number of pages. This book is a "fun read". You will find things in it that lead you back to the Harry Potter books and, perhaps, seeing things in a different light. This book is for adult fans as well as older children. I give it my high recommendation.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Well worth reading!
Review: If you have any interest at all in the complex series of clues and hints left throughout the 4 current Harry Potter books, this book is for you.

Each of the four published Harry Potter books are looked at in depth, clues are pointed out and hints revealed. This book will make you go back and re-read the series, wondering how you could have missed so many obvious things. It will also make you think, wondering about the over all plan that JK Rowling has. The Unofficial Guide also points out patterns the JK Rowling has followed in each book....allowing you to be alert to these patterns in forthcoming books.

While I don't necessarily agree with every conclusion and theory presented in this book, each are well thought out and referenced from Sorcerer's Stone through Goblet of Fire. There are a list of unanswered questions from each of the books....what should the reader be asking at the end of each?

I would recommend this book to every Harry Potter fan who wants to look beyond the surface story into the larger story that is spanning the entire series.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Harry would call it brilliant.
Review: I know Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a friend of mine. He is, however, apparently a much BETTER friend of Galadriel Waters. No, Ms. Waters is not J.K. Rowling, but she's as close as we're going to get till June.

This enormous book is also enormously entertaining. I can't count the number of times it sent me running back to the books to check clues I'd missed and reassess my earlier readings. It manages to be a work of depth and a delicious aperitif to the banquet we're waiting for, all at the same time.

I know it's "unofficial", but IMHO, it should be packaged and sold with the Potter books as a matter of course. I can't wait to see the notes after the release of Order of the Phoenix!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Informative
Review: The thing I like the best about this book, is that it gives the reader hints on how to figure things out for herself/himself. I think that was worth the money all on its on. I'm going to re-read the Harry Potter books now and try the hints out. Also, while I didn't agree with all their interpretations, it still gave me pause to think and question what I had orginally thought and I can't wait to see if they might be correct about some things. It was also interesting to see someone interpret a sentence differently than I had; especially since both interpretations could be correct. Only Rowling knows. All in all, the book was well worth the money.
The writing style of the book is informal and enjoyable and while the grammar may not be the best, I didn't notice it. It reads more like someone is talking to you and since people don't use proper grammar structure when they talk I didn't pick up on any problems with the grammar. I enjoyed that aspect of the book. It made me feel like someone was having a conversation with me, instead of me just reading a book.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Clever, but flawed for children
Review: This book is clever and thought-provoking, but I was disturbed at the apparent lack of copy editing. I believe that a book that is targeted at children, especially "tweens" and teens, had many English usage problems. The major problem was the use of "it's" for the possessive, but there also was affect/effect misuse, "phased" instead of "fazed," and many misuses of hyphenated words (a lot of hyphenated words shouldn't have been hyphenated). These were not typographical errors.

I found that the errors detracted from my enjoyment of the book. They were distracting and a poor example for a youngster. I therefore would not recommend it (unless the adult pointed out that there were grammatical errors -- would the kids care?)

J.K.R.'s writing is exemplary in grammar, style, and structure. Would that the authors of this work followed her example.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Full Of Little Things Most Readers Overlooked
Review: This book analyzes (maybe over-analyzes) the Harry Potter books, but the results are very enlightening. It's like seeing the HP world with a whole new set of eyes. A typical item notes that Mrs. Figg's house (she's Harry's "babysitter" when the Dursleys exclude him from a family event) smells of cabbages, just like the apothecary shop in Diagon Alley. I had already noticed that Diagon Alley = "diagonally", but missed Knockturn Alley = "nocturnally".

By tying small references from one book location to another, it makes connections that are easy to miss. These are not the usual "how could I have overlooked that?" tidbits, but things one could never connect without keeping detailed notes. Who reads a book of fiction like that? The authors also note the significance of character names, using knowledge that is way beyond my shallow understanding of mythology and magic.

From what I've read so far, I'd say that calling Harry Potter a "children's book" is to miss the deeper meaning (and hard work) that makes the series so special.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A New Paradigm!
Review: Yesterday, in one short evening, the first eight chapters of this book took "Harry Potter", for me, from impulse speed to full warp (thank you Star Trek). In a mere forty pages of the full-size book, Galadriel Waters has proven to me that the HP "septology" is a full-blown "Epic Mystery", containing mysteries, puzzles, clues, names, and numbers that present meanings on many levels, all for the "HP Sleuth" to find. As I read in this book, I observed that it was instilling in me the detective's analytical -- yet fun-loving! -- mindset, enabling me by example to ferret out J.K. Rowling's more-or-less concealed clues. These stories -- one epic story, really -- seem to be leading the reader to an inevitable destination; what will it prove to be? While Waters does point out individual clues that the reader might have missed, she more importantly coaches ones to become sensitive to the larger Mystery questions, the ones that cannot be answered by a few localized clues. Among others: Why did Voldemort wish to kill baby Harry in the first place? What was Hagrid doing borrowing a motorcycle from Sirius Black? What is the true nature of Severus Snape? And Waters accomplishes all this in a book-by-book, chapter-by-chapter format, so that if you have read only HP Year 1, and you read only that part of Waters' book, the other, later books will not be spoiled for you. As thoughtfully as I had been reading and re-re-reading HP 1-4, I now know that I had missed a lot. Now, what a richer ride! Thank you, Ms. Waters!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The BEST book. EVER.
Review: This book is the best. It picks up so many little details of the story that people miss. I loved this book, and its worth the money that the seller is asking.

...Thankies...and great book!!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ultimate Unofficial Guide is the ULTIMATE BEST!!!
Review: This book was not only entertaining, thorough, and humorous, it gave me a deeper and greater appreciation for the complexity of JK Rowlings' writing. It highlights clues that are carefully planted within the chapters and alerts HP sleuths on what to watch for when reading the Harry Potter books.

IMO, it was worth every bronze knut I paid for it! A MUST have for the true Harry Potter fan.


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