7.25.2007

Harry Potter Contest Winners!!

CMC Alpine Campus Library
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Guess What Happens Contest Responses


Thanks to everyone for their contest entries. We had a total of 28 entries. The Grand Prize winners were Paul Primrose and his fiancĂ©e Kathryn Garber, summer visitors to the Alpine Campus Library, who guessed for a total of 55 points. Our Runner Up was our own Pat Tomasko, Assistant Registrar at District Office, who guessed for 50 points. A special mention goes to Aspen Campus Administrative Assistant Rebecca Arlington, who impressed us with her terrific guess of Regulus Black’s middle name and gained an additional 2 points, which pulled her ahead of the pack of five whose guesses earned them 45 points each. Our third place prize is a big shout out: Rebecca Rocks!!

Once again, Rowling has proved to be the master of misleading her readers prior to publication, but that’s part of the fun. She distracts us with cleverly phrased teasers, but in doing so, manages to save a number of surprises for us. This makes formulating contest questions pretty darned speculative. After reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows we had to eliminate one question.

If you’re interested in how everyone responded, email us (dwillis@coloradomtn.edu or kweber@coloradomtn.edu) and we'll email you back with an attached document. We're not posting it on the blog because it's full of spoilers, and we don't want to tempt anyone who has yet to finish the book.

7.19.2007

Harry Potter Guess What Happens Contest Closes Early

Late last night the New York Times posted a review of Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows which the reviewer apparently purchased at an unnamed book store in New York. We’re concerned about this early review because Scholastic Press has confirmed that a small percentage (1 hundredth of 1 percent of the U.S. orders) of books were actually delivered early.

The New York Times is a major national publication that enjoys wide circulation and is well respected by many. While “spoilers” have been published on the Internet prior to the publication of this review, it’s probable that accurate plot details will be (and probably already are) available early.

We want our “Guess What Happens” contest to remain fair and impartial, and after careful deliberation we have decided to cut off the entry deadline for our “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Guess What Happens Contest.”

We’ve received some really fun guesses from all of our Harry Potter fans. We’re looking forward to our spoiler-free reading experience of this final book, and we wish the same for you. We’ll evaluate all of our entries early next week and announce the winners when we know. We’ll compile the entries and make them available upon request.

Thanks to everyone who has participated.

7.16.2007

Featured New Books



Chasing the Rising Sun: the Journey of an American Song
Ted Anthony
"The song "House of the Rising Sun," which became a chart-topping hit in 1964 by the Animals, has a murky history, said to have originated in Appalachia, maybe New Orleans and perhaps even England, as well as having a thriving universal afterlife among cover bands and karaoke singers. Anthony, an editor for the Associated Press, crisscrossed the globe in search of the twisted roots and many spreading branches of this lonesome ballad of unknown origins." -Publishers Weekly




Crazy Horse: a Lakota Life
Kingsley M. Bray
"Although Crazy Horse has been a favorite subject for decades, many key aspects of his short life have remained enigmatic. In this extensively documented account, Bray utilizes a diverse array of primary sources, including contemporary Indian agent reports, personal military diaries, annual reports of the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and surprisingly detailed oral histories recorded in interviews with Crazy Horse's contemporaries nearly 50 years after his death... Bray's account not only traces the major steps taken by this remarkable chief, but also places them within the context of Lakota culture, past and present." -Booklist