Recommendations

Be sure to check out the link Pauli appended to my post on Richard Harris, the link to his filmography on imdb (the internet movie database) Harris is a great actor and I mean to check out that Link myself (just wanted to put up a post on it so nobody missed it). I have not seen any of his other movies save one, but I loved that one too: The Count of Monte Cristo. Actually it is more really Jim Caviezel's movie (most well known as Jesus Christ in Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", but he was also in "Thin Red Line," which was all right ... but I thought "Frequency" was a great movie, although I usually shut it off when the "country music video" begins at the end - just not my taste), but Harris is great in his part of it. I intend to watch more Harris soon. Also, I highly recommend John Granger's books. He's very readable. There is a lot of solid information in his first book ("The Hidden Key...") but it does not come off as boorishly "academic." He does a good job of staying on target and organized for common readership (and has some nice illustrations to help visualize what he is talking about), very clearly working all of the information into the context of the question "Why is Harry Potter so popular?" (what is it that makes the books so universally appealing to human beings, so gripping to human persons? Why does it resonate so strongly with us? Not too just a few but to millions [and of course wisely disregarding the chicken little approach that says "if it appeals to so many, if it is popular ... it must be because it is naughty" ... which is basically saying that humanity is innately evil. Keep in mind that many who view the books as "low literature" also write some of the most boorish, dry and downright cynical reading material ... the odd thing about the two extremes that dislike the books - the fundamentalists and the more "gritty-agnosticism" crown of "literati" is that they both seem to think that using the popularity of the books to discredit them is a good way to do so ... the unfortunate thing is that this "argument ad hominem" does seem to hold some sway with their respective constituencies And to give credit where credit is due, a bit of my thinking on this has been informed by reading Granger ... I think the comment on the "attack based on popularity" is my own, but I can't be 100% sure of that) I will have to pick up "Finding God in Harry Potter". (I imagine his thoughts may fall along the same lines as those who have examined the question of "God" in Tolkien's work, especially in LOTR [a particular example would be the work of Joseph Pearce]. In "The Silmarillion" the character of Iluvatar in the first two chapters is obviously the "God" character, not just "a god" [like the Ainur, who resemble the good aspects of the Greek gods but in relation to arid and Middle Earth, when they become the Valar by forming the world Iluvatar has created]; Iluvatar is "God" with a capital G [the God of the monotheistic Judeo-Christian tradition]. But "God" is largely absent from LOTR. But neither is there a sense of the "fates" as in Greek mythology, those random dice that represent the life, death, joy and pain of humans and are tossed carelessly by Zeus and co. There is a distinct sense of a providence guided by a will and a mind [and even more so, a heart] that, although not "seen" in the story concretely, is none-the-less omnipotent, and more importantly, all loving. My guess is that, in Finding God in Harry Potter, Granger takes this same approach ... mainly because It think it is true and that he is insightful enough to see it. I think that it is not out of line to state from reading the books that the ancient magic Dumbledore used was not created by him but that it did have a source.)