Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Trailer Official HD

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Thai Readers Join Global Potter Mania

Hundreds queue to buy the first copies

Bangkok Post - A 43-year-old woman became the proud owner of Thailand's first copy of the seventh and final novel of the Harry Potter series yesterday after spending the night camped outside the CentralWorld shopping centre awaiting the launch of the book. Bongkotkorn Rod-anan, an ardent fan of the series, was the first local reader to lay her hands on the 759-page Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows novel at the B2S bookstore's Harry Potter fair when the book, by British author J.K. Rowling, was released at 5am yesterday.

Miss Bongkotkorn said she didn't want to miss the opportunity to be among the first owners of the book, so she left her home in Bung Kum, on the outskirts of Bangkok, for CentralWorld early on Friday night.

She arrived at the department store at about 10pm and waited in front of the store until the book fair opened early yesterday morning.

''I didn't even take a nap throughout the night,'' she said, adding that the store's security guards seemed bemused as to why she had put in so much effort to get a copy of a book.

''I've been waiting to read this final volume of the series for so long. I really want to know the ending. I hope it's a happy ending. For me, the series is so captivating. Once you read it, it draws you in,'' she said.

Miss Bongkotkorn said she loved the character of Harry Potter, the series' main protagonist, whom she said was courageous, moral and considerate.

''I'm not at all bothered about waiting for the book the whole night. It's worth the trouble,'' she added.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released globally in 93 countries at 00.01am British summer time yesterday.

By Sirikul Bunnag. Read More..

Harry Potter Fans Crowd Bookstores for Series Finale

Bloomberg.com -- To get one of the first copies of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, 17-year-old Chellie Carr flew from Okemos, Michigan, to camp outside Waterstone's bookshop in London's Piccadilly, braving torrential rains and nosy drunks in a 36-hour wait.

"This is very symbolic of the end of my childhood,'' Carr said shortly before the book's midnight release. ``I grew up with Harry. I'm 17, Harry is 17,'' she said, sitting on the pavement in her suede cape and witch's hat. ``It's very sad. I don't know what I'm going to do in my spare time."

After leaks threatened one of the publishing industry's most extensive embargoes, Harry Potter fans flocked to bookstores to buy the last installment of J.K. Rowling's bestselling series about the boy wizard who befriended muggles, slew monster snakes and solemnly swore to be up to no good.

``Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'' went on sale today in Britain at 12:01 a.m. London time. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc declined to say how many millions of copies it had ordered for its initial print run. U.S. publisher Scholastic Corp. made the first of its 12 million copies available to eager buyers five hours later in New York, also at 12:01 a.m. local time.

Thousands of fans in London lined up for more than a dozen blocks to get copies at the laser-lit Waterstones store. Actors dressed as large furry creatures and witches in hats entertained the crowd before a loud countdown to the opening.

Readers

Aude Quinchon, a 20-year-old intern with Sotheby's in Paris, had left work, taken the train to London and joined two friends who had queued for 12 hours on her behalf. Quinchon, in a black Halloween hat fished from her cellar, said she won't be flipping to the last page to find out what happens to Harry.

``No, no, I can't!'' she said. ``I will never do that! I just want to take my time! As soon as I finish this interview, I will put on my iPod so I can hear no one.'' She admitted that the conclusion of the series was ``really, really sad, but it was time to end.''

In Melbourne, Australia, acrobats entertained with a game of Quidditch while hundreds of fans braved 3 degree Celsius temperatures (37 degrees Fahrenheit) until the stores opened 9:01 a.m. local time.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s Asda supermarket chain in the U.K. sold 250,000 copies, half of its inventory, between the midnight launch and 9 a.m. London time, spokesman Ed Watson said by mobile telephone. The retailer expected to sell out its entire supply by ``early afternoon'' today, he said.

W.H. Smith Plc, the U.K.'s largest magazine retailer, sold the book at a rate of 15 copies a second between midnight and 7 a.m., spokeswoman Sue Beaumont said by mobile telephone, declining to give an outright sales total.

`Well on Way'

Tesco Plc, the U.K.'s largest retailer, said in an e- mailed statement it was ``well on the way to hitting the 350,000 sales in the first 12 hours as predicted.'' Tesco spokesman Adam Fisher told Bloomberg that more than 300 of its stores across the U.K. had been selling the book since midnight.

Early shoppers in New Zealand, where sales started late- morning, got to wait inside. By the time the boxes opened, the queue in the Borders Group Inc. store in Wellington snaked into Lambton Quay.

``You really want to know what's going to happen. Will Voldemort triumph?'' said Emily Steel, 15, who arrived at dawn with friend Chloe Shallcross to be at the front of the queue.

Worried that favorite characters, Luna Lovegood and Ron Weasley may not survive, the pair are confident Harry Potter's popularity with school-age children will.

``Hogwarts is a school for wizards. And kids love magic,'' Steel said.

Singapore Readers

Singapore fans formed a line that ran the length of a city block at the Borders bookstore on Orchard Road, the main shopping strip, at 8:30 a.m. local time. The line was half as long by 9 a.m. The only people in costume at that time were the store clerks, who wore witch hats.

Tarang Agarwal, 18, said he waited for 90 minutes to buy his copy and plans to spend the day reading it.

``If I turn on my computer, there will be 20 people that tell me what happened, and I'd rather find out by myself,'' Agarwal said. ``Her writing has evolved. Her original fans were about 10 years old. Now her fans are about 18 years old. The stories have improved.''

Abhiroop Basu, 18, said buying the book was a good way to pass the time. ``I just didn't have anything to do this morning, other than sleeping,'' he said.

Amazon Orders

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. received 2.25 million advance orders worldwide, up from 1.5 million for the previous novel in the series. Diehard fans would have done well to order online from DeepDiscount.com, whose distributor, Levy Home Entertainment, accidentally released about 1,200 copies as much as four days early.

Rowling read to 1,700 fans gathered inside the grand hall of London's Natural History Museum, where its towering dinosaur stands. Fans were pre-selected in an Internet competition to take part in the exclusive evening.

Embargo-busting reviews of the book appeared two days ago in the New York Times, which said it purchased a copy in a New York City store, and in the Baltimore Sun. Yesterday the entire novel was posted on the Internet and could be freely downloaded as a series of photographs of the pages.

In a statement released by Bloomsbury, Rowling said she was ``staggered'' by the purported spoilers, which showed ``complete disregard of the wishes of literally millions of readers, particularly children, who wanted to reach Harry's final destination by themselves, in their own time.''

Fans were equally livid.

Butterfly Wings

``Shame on them. They should be disgusted with themselves,'' said 23-year-old Anna Gallen, a barmaid from Wales who was No. 125 in the Piccadilly queue and wore butterfly wings for the occasion. ``I think it's wrong for people to come along and just ruin it for everybody else.''

When we last saw our hero in ``Harry Potter and the Half- Blood Prince,'' he had been crowned ``The Chosen One,'' the sole being capable of destroying ``He Who Must Not Be Named,'' aka the arch villain Lord Voldemort. Harry's quest, we learned, was to track down the four remaining Horcruxes -- lockets containing pieces of Voldemort's soul -- and slay the bum one last time.

It won't be an easy task, given Voldemort's prophecy that Harry will always be his own greatest enemy. Rowling has said two characters will die in the new book, and bookies were convinced that the boy with the lightning-bolt scar would be one of them.

William Hill Plc, a London-based bookmaker, was so sure of Harry's demise that on July 18 it stopped accepting wagers on who would snuff him. Harry Potter himself was the favorite at 2-5, with the Dark Lord, who murdered Harry's parents, the second-most-likely perpetrator at 9-4. The bookies were offering 8-1 odds on Rowling producing an eighth Harry Potter book before the end of 2008.

Hogwarts Express

The imagery in the previous book, ``Half-Blood Prince,'' was bleaker than ever. There was much blood and a lake filled with corpses. Harry himself was losing his intellectual drive: ``He felt no curiosity at all,'' Rowling wrote. ``He doubted that he would ever feel curious again.''

This disillusionment was compounded, for British readers, by events in London the very month that the sixth Harry Potter book was released: When the Hogwarts Express pulled out of King's Cross Station in London last time round, British readers remembered that this was the same terminus at which suicide bombers were photographed before launching the attacks that murdered 52 people on London's transport system on July 7, 2005.

Pakistani police today defused a bomb outside a crowded Karachi shopping center where the Harry Potter book was to be launched, after receiving a telephoned warning, Agence France- Presse reported.

Harried Mother

Author Rowling has come a long way since the early 1990s, when she was still a harried single mother scribbling the first Harry Potter novel in Edinburgh cafes while her daughter napped in a stroller at her side. Major London publishers rejected the manuscript, which Rowling eventually sold in 1996 to Bloomsbury, then an upstart independent publisher.

Bloomsbury had such modest hopes for ``Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'' that it ordered a first print run of just 500 copies. Early reviews were positive, though, and publicity generated by a lucrative U.S. deal with Scholastic boosted the book's slow-burning success.

Now Bloomsbury is preparing for the aftermath of the Harry Potter series, looking for acquisitions in the United States and Germany as it seeks to diversify its sources of profit. The company is also expanding its digital publishing unit. In April, it reported its first drop in annual profit in 12 years.

To Gallen, the butterfly-winged barmaid, the series is sure to be ``the new generation's `Lord of the Rings.'''

``It's a classic,'' she said, pausing to hoot at a passing posse of Potter fans. ``It will always be relevant, because it has such moral issues that it's a never-ending story.''

By Hephzibah Anderson and Farah Nayeri. Read More..

Download Free ebook Harry Potter 7 and the Deadly Hallows

I was surprised when i got this ebook at this website



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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Answer.com
Author: J. K. Rowling
Illustrator: Jason Cockcroft (UK),
William Webb and Michael Wildsmith (UK adult), Mary GrandPré (US)
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, Scholastic Press, Allen & Unwin
Release date: July 21, 2007
Number in series: Seven
Story timeline: Summer 1997 – TBD
Preceded by: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series of novels by J. K. Rowling. The book is scheduled to be released globally in English-speaking countries immediately after midnight (00:01), British Summer Time, on 21 July 2007. In the United States, it is to be released for sale within each separate time zone at 00:01 local time, a few hours after other English-speaking countries.

The book reached the top spot on both the Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble bestseller lists just a few hours after the date of publication was announced on 1 February 2007. Retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders are reporting that more orders have been placed for this book than for any other in history, and American publisher Scholastic announced an unprecedented initial print run of 12 million copies.[6] The book is expected to be 608 pages in the British edition, and has been confirmed to be 784 pages in the US edition.

Rowling made a public request that anyone with advance information about the last book should keep it to themselves to avoid spoiling the reading experience for the many fans who do not want to know the ending in advance.[9] To this end, Bloomsbury invested 10 million pounds in an attempt to keep the book's contents secure until the July 21 release date.

In a web update on 6 February 2007, she wrote:

"While each of the previous Potter books has strong claims on my affections, 'Deathly Hallows' is my favourite, and that is the most wonderful way to finish the series."


When asked "What does 'Deathly Hallows' mean?" J.K. Rowling responded, "Any clarification of the meaning of 'Hallows' would give away too much of the story – well, it would, wouldn't it? Being the title and all. So I'm afraid I'm not answering." She also declined to say what her other shortlisted title had been, at least until after publication. The phrase "Deathly Hallows" was trademarked under the name "Stone Connect (UK) Limited" on December 5, 2006, along with 5 other phrases. It was later denied that any of the others had ever been contenders for the actual title. The word "hallows" had already appeared in phrases registered by representatives of Warner Brothers before publication of Half-Blood Prince. "Hallows of Hogwarts" and "Hogwarts Hallows" were registered as trademarks by Seabottom Productions Ltd in 2003-2004, amongst a number of fake titles.

What is known about the plot

Rowling completed the book while staying at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh in January 2007, and left a signed statement on a marble bust of Hermes in her room which read: "JK Rowling finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (652) on 11 January 2007". She has stated that the final volume relates very closely to the previous book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so much so that the two books are "almost as though they are two halves of the same novel."[32] Prior to completing the manuscript, Rowling stated that she could not change the ending of the book, even if she wanted to. "These books have been plotted for such a long time, and for six books now, that they're all leading a certain direction. So, I really can't." Read More..

Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem: An Interview with J.K. Rowling

Amazon.com - Divorced, living on public assistance in a tiny Edinburgh flat with her infant daughter, J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in stolen moments at a cafe table. Fortunately, Harry Potter rescued her! In this Amazon.co.uk interview, Rowling discusses the birth of our hero, the Manchester hotel where Quidditch was born, and how she might have been a bit like Hermione when she was 11.

---

Amazon.co.uk: How long does it take you to write a book?

Rowling: My last book--the third in the Harry series--took about a year to write, which is pretty fast for me. If I manage to finish the fourth Harry book by the summer, which is my deadline, it will be my fastest yet--about eight months.

Amazon.co.uk: Where did the ideas for the Harry Potter books come from?

Rowling: I've no idea where ideas come from and I hope I never find out, it would spoil the excitement for me if it turned out I just have a funny little wrinkle on the surface of my brain which makes me think about invisible train platforms.

Amazon.co.uk: How do you come up with the names of your characters?

Rowling: I invented some of the names in the Harry books, but I also collect strange names. I've gotten them from medieval saints, maps, dictionaries, plants, war memorials, and people I've met!

Amazon.co.uk: Are your characters based on people you know?

Rowling: Some of them are, but I have to be extremely careful what I say about this. Mostly, real people inspire a character, but once they are inside your head they start turning into something quite different. Professor Snape and Gilderoy Lockhart both started as exaggerated versions of people I've met, but became rather different once I got them on the page. Hermione is a bit like me when I was 11, though much cleverer.

Amazon.co.uk: Are any of the stories based on your life, or on people you know?

Rowling: I haven't consciously based anything in the Harry books on my life, but of course that doesn't mean your own feelings don't creep in. When I reread chapter 12 of the first book, "The Mirror of Erised," I saw that I had given Harry lots of my own feelings about my own mother's death, though I hadn't been aware of that as I had been writing.

Amazon.co.uk: Where did the idea for Quidditch come from?

Rowling: I invented Quidditch while spending the night in a very small room in the Bournville Hotel in Didsbury, Manchester. I wanted a sport for wizards, and I'd always wanted to see a game where there was more than one ball in play at the same time. The idea just amused me. The Muggle sport it most resembles is basketball, which is probably the sport I enjoy watching most. I had a lot of fun making up the rules and I've still got the notebook I did it in, complete with diagrams, and all the names for the balls I tried before I settled on Snitch, Bludgers, and Quaffle.

Amazon.co.uk: Where did the ideas for the wizard classes and magic spells come from?

Rowling: I decided on the school subjects very early on. Most of the spells are invented, but some of them have a basis in what people used to believe worked. We owe a lot of our scientific knowledge to the alchemists!

Amazon.co.uk: What ingredients do you think all the Harry Potter books need?

Rowling: I never really think in terms of ingredients, but I suppose if I had to name some I'd say humor, strong characters, and a watertight plot. Those things would add up to the kind of book I enjoy reading myself. Oh, I forgot scariness--well, I never set out to make people scared, but it does seem to creep in along the way.

Amazon.co.uk: Do you write by hand or on a computer?

Rowling: I still like writing by hand. Normally I do a first draft using pen and paper, and then do my first edit when I type it onto my computer. For some reason, I much prefer writing with a black pen than a blue one, and in a perfect world I'd always use "narrow feint" writing paper. But I have been known to write on all sorts of weird things when I didn't have a notepad with me. The names of the Hogwarts Houses were created on the back of an aeroplane sick bag. Yes, it was empty.

Amazon.co.uk: What books do you enjoy reading?

Rowling: My favorite writer is Jane Austen and I've read all her books so many times I've lost count. My favorite living writer is Roddy Doyle, who I think is a genius. I think they do similar things--create fully rounded characters, often without much or indeed any physical description, examine normal human behavior in a very unsentimental and yet touching way--and, of course, they're FUNNY.

Amazon.co.uk: What books did you read as a child? Have these influenced your writing in any way?

Rowling: It is always hard to tell what your influences are. Everything you've seen, experienced, read, or heard gets broken down like compost in your head and then your own ideas grow out of that compost. Three books I read as a child do stand out in my memory, though. One is The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, which was probably my favorite book when I was younger. The second is Manxmouse by Paul Gallico, which is not Gallico's most famous book, but I think it's wonderful. The third is Grimble , by Clement Freud. Grimble is one of funniest books I've ever read, and Grimble himself, who is a small boy, is a fabulous character. I'd love to see a Grimble film. As far as I know, these last two fine pieces of literature are out of print, so if any publishers ever read this, could you please dust them off and put them back in print so other people can read them? Read More..

Harry Potter, in Final Volume, Grows Up, Crosses to Other Side

Bloomberg.com -- It's one of the most hotly anticipated novels in literary history, yet the young hero slouches into ``Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,'' the seventh and final installment of J.K. Rowling's series, bleeding and swearing under his breath.

He has cut himself on a shard of mirror while rooting in his old Hogwarts school trunk, literally wading through his past. Harry has come far since the days when he and his pals Ron and Hermione could hide beneath a single invisibility cloak.

Now on the cusp of his 17th birthday -- the moment when wizards officially come of age -- Harry must locate and destroy the four remaining Horcruxes, vessels containing fragments of his nemesis Lord Voldemort's soul. It's a quest that he knows could end in his own death, and midway through the novel he learns that he must also track down the Deathly Hallows, three objects that might protect him. As ever, Ron and Hermione are at his side.

As Rowling's series has progressed, the mischievous charm of the earlier books has given way to a more brooding, introverted atmosphere. Near the start of the new one, Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters seize control of the magical world, taking over Hogwarts and the Daily Prophet and embarking on a program of ethnic cleansing to wipe out wizards of human extraction -- Muggle-borns and Mudbloods.

Hormonal Silence

Harry, named Undesirable No. 1, goes into hiding in the forest with Ron and Hermione, where they bicker for days before lapsing into a moody, hormonally charged silence. Winter descends and they run low on food. It takes 275 pages for them to find the first Horcrux.

Midway through, though, the pace picks up, and the air grows thick with familiar spells and the clatter of battles. Car-sized spiders, dragons and 20-foot giants appear. There are some narrow escapes, and not everyone survives.

Throughout, Harry's distinctive lightning scar acts as a psychic connection to Voldemort, plugging the hero into his enemy's actions and emotions. Yet Rowling's arch baddie proves a less compelling figure than Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts's headmaster and Harry's mentor, who died at the end of the sixth book, ``Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.'' Dumbledore turns out to have been a far darker, more complex character than Harry suspected, with a past and secrets of his own.

`Brave, Brave Man'

Faced with a series' worth of loose ends to tie up, Rowling cheats by having Harry cross over for a mystical beyond-the-grave chat with Dumbledore in which all -- or almost all -- is explained. (Bafflingly, Harry arrives for the interview stark naked.) ``You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man,'' Dumbledore greets him -- and within the space of those two sentences the bespectacled boy wizard finally becomes an adult.

Though the novel's body count tops 50, its ending will delight fans who feared the worst, and Rowling reinforces its happiness with a coda that leaps forward 19 years to glimpse a new generation of wizards waiting for the Hogwarts Express while their parents josh about such grown-up matters as parking.

This extra ending feels unnecessary -- a too sugary, too tidy detraction from the metaphysical murkiness that has become Rowling's strength. Her fans aren't the only ones who have grown up alongside Harry. Rowling has, too, as a writer, yet these final pages hark back to the larkier elements of her work -- to earwax-flavored jelly beans and streets with names such as Diagon Alley.

Her skill lies in synthesizing motifs from an eclectic range of sources -- children's classics, myths, theology, even self- help books -- and grounding them in a subtly other world whose quirkiness is cozy and familiar. Shadows are crucial to the magic of that world. By exposing it to the rosy glare of a sunny ending, Rowling breaks her own spell.

``Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'' is published by Scholastic in the U.S. and Bloomsbury in the U.K. (759 pages, $34.99, 17.99 pounds).

(Hephzibah Anderson is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.) Read More..