Makes You Wonder (Updated!)

So as I men­tioned in my last post, we had a very engaged dis­cus­sion about the the Harry Pot­ter prophecy.

My sis­ters, both very hard­core Harry Pot­ter nerds, argued about the word­ing of the prophecy. Dong Ha insisted that it stated that “one couldn’t live with­out the other.” (In ref­er­ence to Harry and Volde­mort.) Gio Linh con­tended that the prophecy said some­thing along the lines of “one can’t live while the other does.”

Dong Ha asked how that could be, since Volde­mort has been revived, and Harry isn’t dead. She also put forth an inter­est­ing pre­dic­tion — that the last of the Hor­cruxes (Voldemort’s soul shards) was embed­ded into Harry, which would explain their strange con­nec­tion, as well as his above-​average abil­i­ties. Thus, in order to kill Volde­mort, Harry would have to kill him­self, and that would make her inter­pre­ta­tion of the prophecy the right one.

… as inter­est­ing as I found that the­ory, though, it turns out Gio Linh was right. The exact words of the prophecy are,

The one with the power to van­quish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the sev­enth month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for nei­ther can live while the other sur­vives…the one with the power to van­quish the Dark Lord will be born as the sev­enth month dies…

But if you think about it, Dong Ha’s idea might still be true… Volde­mort isn’t “truly” alive because his soul is incom­plete. And Harry cer­tainly can’t “live” freely with the threat of death hang­ing over him and all those he cares about. But yeah… I’m stretch­ing, now. It would have been pretty cool if the word­ing was the way Dong Ha had imag­ined it — an end­ing I never would have seen coming.

Any­way, while I’m on the sub­ject of books that make you think… I’m gonna start a list of books I want to read for plea­sure. But I still want them to make me think. A bit of a para­dox, I know, but hey… I’m odd like that.

So far, I’m look­ing to read:

1. Empire by Orson Scott Card Finished!
2. The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
3. Lon­gi­tudes and Atti­tudes by Thomas Friedman
4. The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman
5. U.S. v. Bush et al by Eliz­a­beth de la Vega (rec­om­mended by Stephen Col­bert)
6. The Tenth Cir­cle by Jodi Picoult (rec­om­mended by Alison)
7. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
8. … Your sug­ges­tion here …

Obvi­ously there’s a bit of a polit­i­cal slant to my list right now, but feel free to sug­gest books on any topic.

Tags: Books, Bush, Dinhternet, Dong Ha, Education, Gio Linh