You read about it in Rowling’s works and you saw it on the silverscreen, now experience the game in real life! On 29 December, 2009, two teams of seven muggles each from McGill University, Canada, grabbed their broomsticks and played an exciting game of Quidditch. Yes, you heard it right, it was quidditch with the chasers, seekers, quaffle and the all elusive snitch. Only in this case the Snitch was not a winged golden ball, but a muggle runner.
Despite the end of the series, Pottermania shows no signs of letting up. The Middlebury College in Vermont holds an annual quidditch competition, called the Intercollegiate World Cup.
For more juicy details of the Muggle Quidditch, click here.
The image is of a popular Harry Potter video game
January 15th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
hmmm..that sounds interesting….
one hopes that Rowling doesn’t stop writing though…i was 20 years old when i first laid my hands on a potter and i actually bunked college that day to finish it!!!!
i am not sure whether enid blyton had a similar impact on children(and some grown-ups as well!) but am certain nobody else come even close.
January 16th, 2010 at 11:15 am
any chance of a sequel by rowling? perhaps a return of voldemort….u never know!….would make it interesting though…voldemort taking on an adult harry. i think the chances of that happening are pretty slim though, rowling has left very little scope in her last novel for any comebacks
January 16th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
I can’t believe this…zaheer, how can you compare Rowling with Enid Blyton? I agree that Rowling’s imagination is brilliant and she has managed to create some really interesting and intricate plots and characters, but she can’t touch Blyton…the beauty of Blyton’s works is that she doesn’t need wizards and evil lords and flying balls and a host of magical creatures to weave a spell. She shows you the magic in everyday life, in the simplest of things. She tells you how every moment in life is and can be adventure. At the end of the day her characters are simple, average people….and through them she helps you to discover the magic within yourself and the adventure in your own life. You can almost picture yourself in the shoes of her little characters, sitting on the mountainside, drinking in the beauty and enjoying a meal of simple bread and butter….who else can make simple tea, or bread butter or even the regular scrambled eggs seem like the most delightful meal in the world? You could easily be Peter or George, whereas you could never be a Harry or a Ron or a Hermoine because you are no wizard. And even when she enters the realm of magic – like in the faraway tree series, it’s about enchanting the the things which are normally regarded as mundane. The land of popsicles, the chocolate that explodes in your mouth…..a tree where every few days you discover a new world….Rowling creates a make believe world for you to escape to and long for wistfully (actually considering the gore and blood she introduced in the latter novels, I am not even sure if I would long for that world); Blyton shows you that there is no need for escape because your world is just as much fun and as beautiful as any other. You only have to discover these small pleasures that make life worth living.
January 16th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Kriti, that is why I prefixed my statement with “I am not sure”:-)
I have read Blyton and I agree, she is incomparable in weaving “magic in everyday life, in the simplest of things”
The point is, it requires an equal amount of skill(though perhaps a different type of skill) to create a world which is so fantastic that it becomes unreal and yet is so captivating that one starts yearning for it. And you have to give it to Rowling for the sheer complexity of the plot that she stitched across 7 books with such dexterity. It was complex enough to keep even adults hooked, and yet simple enough for nursery-goers to comprehend. That requires more than just skill. It requires an odious amount of literary ability.
Perhaps I erred in comparing the two since comparisions are not just inappropriate, they are irrelevant. I, for one, adore both the worlds-Blyton’s real one and Rowling’s surreal one.
January 16th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
I don’t rate rowling over blyton. To me it is much more difficult to create an engaging and fascinating book set in the real world than to place it in a fantasy world, where you have no rules. It’s like playing football without the offside rule or batting without the LBW.
January 16th, 2010 at 3:18 pm
Even the most fantastic of fantasy worlds has to has some rules….the difference between a good fantasy world and the real world is not the absence of rules…its that a fantasy world is governed by a different set of rules. The avada kedavra curse can’t be reversed. Even by Voldemort.
January 16th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Infact, manufacturing a sensible fantasy world requires a foolproof and flawless system of rules to be framed by the author in addition to everything else. In that sense, the work of a writer creating his work in the real world is that much lesser, as he doesn’t have to tinker with the rules. The flipside to this is that the author’s scope for manoeuvrability is limited. And therefore, he/she has to have an extraordinary amount of ingenuity to make the mundane, spectacular; the routine, interesting.
The 2 skills are therefore as incomparable as they are different. Just like cricket and football. booklover, even you would find comparisions between pele and bradman stillborn, right?
January 16th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
The writer in the real world is limited by the rules – the boundaries are set, the lines are drawn he/she has to stay within those lines. In a fantasy the writer has the licence to create his or her own rules – the onus is on him/her to then build upon this redefinition of constraints to spin a yarn that is compelling and not a regurgitation of age old stories.
And as for the avada kedavra curse and all that – you only strengthen my argument. Why can’t Voldemort reverse that? Just like that. It’s like an escape clause for your writing limitations. A plot tool. That is the point. You can define the rules. As per your wishes.
January 16th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
I completely agree with kriti…..rowling cant touch blyton…..for one, blyton is dead.:-)
January 17th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
booklover, what makes you believe that creating rules, setting boundaries and drawing lines (in essence, creating a whole new world) is any easier than not doing all of this? one cant just randomly do anything…a fantasy world might not be real, but it has to sensible and appear to be believable within the rules that have been framed by the author. The reason why Voldemort can’t reverse the avada kedavra in Rowling’s world is similar to the reason behind football not being played without the offside in our world-it is against the rules-albeit one have been framed by Rowling, the other by FIFA
As I said in my earlier post, I completely agree with you that the task of an author like blyton, constrained by the rules that already exist, is no easier. All I am saying is that the 2 tasks are different.
January 18th, 2010 at 12:23 am
Creating a new world is in no way easier than to create a real one… But one must not forget that Rowling has only 7 books in the same series to her credit while Enid Blyton has more than 700 books and stories to her credit- each one of which is wonderful in itself without relation to the other…. One can only venture to compare the two authors once Rowling writes some thing else… Also check the web and we can find that contemporary book series are popular as long as they are to be completed… once that is done it tends to come down a bit… in fact Richmal Crompton’s William Series beat Harry Potter in a popularity race in America…. These are some of those books that are evergreen and will continue to be popular as long as people enjoy reading….
If you realy want to compare authors then do so with contemporary authors….
March 31st, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Ask the father of a 10 year old, anyone who can keep her engaged for hours together is brilliant, may it be Ms Blyton or Ms Rowling. Unfortunately for my Parents there was no Harry Potter during my time, but ofcourse the Famous Five kept me out of mischief.