A Return to Blogging with a New Test of the Double Wedding Band Model: Looking for connections between Philosopher's Stone and Lethal White.

 Greetings to my readers and other Strike/Potter fans.  I am back from the longest blogging break I've taken in a while. I am happy to announce that I return with the new title of Granny to CJ, the, in my unashamedly biased opinion, the most perfect and beautiful granddaughter ever born. Since I have chosen to keep her full name private, and respect her parents' wishes not to display her face on social media, you'll simply have to take my word for it that she is absolutely and completely adorable. 

During my break, I've been mulling over what to blog about as we continue to wait for Sleep Tight, Evangeline. I finally drew inspiration from:

• first, the new series of Three Broomsticks podcasts I've been doing: looking at connections between the Strike books and the corresponding Potter books, so starting with Philosopher's Stone and Cuckoo's Calling and
• second, the Double Wedding Band model for the Strike series, which hypothesizes that tha last seven books of the series will form a ring structure, much as the first seven did, and as the seven Harry Potter books did. See here, here and here for more information. 

As I have noted before, one of the strongest arguments in favor of DWB is the fact that it predicted connections between THM and Order of the Phoenix, of which there were many. This gives me hope that the final three books of the Strike series will connect to the final three Potter books both alchemically and thematically.

But, what of the earlier books of the putative second ring. That's what I have decided to explore for the next few months.

Everybody raise a glass! Two new posts with insights into the past and future of the Cormoran Strike series.

 I'm spending lots of time with my butt planted on the Farting Sofa these days, trying to get both some work for my business and some needlepoint completed before the birth of my new granddaughter, now due in slightly over three weeks.  But I had to pop in for a couple of celebratory toasts. 

First, the latest installment of the Three Broomsticks Podcast has dropped, where I had the privilege of appearing alongside my good friends and fellow Strike Scholars Beatrice Groves and Nick Jeffrey to discuss character and thematic connections between The Cuckoo's Calling and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.  Even better, my trademark nickname for Matthew made it into the episode title. This is the first in a series of podcasts that will look at each of the Strike books and their connections to the corresponding volume in the Harry Potter series. 

Second, "Mr. Galbraith" tweeted the above picture today, with a notation that Robin has one in Sleep Tight, Evangeline.  The drink is called "Churchill's Courage" and is a speciality of the Rivoli Bar at the Ritz. What we do not know is if Robin has her drink at the start of STE, when she goes to meet Ryan for his birthday/potential proposal, or later in the book. JKR/RG tweeted some weeks ago that STE was 2/3's complete, and historically, tweets have come from the part of the book currently in progress.  It does seem like a pretty powerful drink to have in front of a known alcoholic who is struggling with his sobriety.  But then again, we can't deny that Robin needs one after the events of THM. 

Repository: a list of all connections between The Hallmarked Man and Order of the Phoenix.

I realized as I was working on a recent alchemical post that I had never compiled all the connections between The Hallmarked Man and Order of the Phoenix in one place. So, I am setting this post up as a repository, and will update it if any others show up.  

Suggestions for links to other Harry Potter books are also welcome.  See here for the echoes to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

THM links to other even-numbered books can be found here. 

THM links to Career of Evil and Troubled Blood can be found here. 

Onto the full list!

The Freud Desk Follow-up: More wild ideas (with maps!)

As Freud might say, sometimes a desk is just a desk, but I'm going to feel pretty foolish if that turns out to be the case with Robert Galbraith's latest header, which is not just a picture of Freud's famous desk from London's Freud museum, but part of a Cathie Pilkington exhibit that made a notable substitution: Freud's alabaster Thoth baboon was replaced by one of Pilkington's own statuettes, the many-breasted El Shaddai. 

In the 24 hours since I first blogged about the header, I've done a bit more research, had some great online chats with other Serious Strikers, and was fortunate to pick up some information that Redditors Random-Occurance365, TheFamousWriter and thegiraffe7 provided.  It was clear there would need to be a follow-up post. 

Another New Twitter Header: The curious nature of Freud's desk and that creepy thing in the corner.

 

Barely five days after surprising us with a statue of Robert Raikes at the Victoria Embankment Gardens as a twitter, Robert Galbraith switched it for the above picture, quickly identified as a picture of Sigmund Freud's desk at the Freud museum of London.  However, as sharp-eyed Redditors, intrigued by the strange figure on the right-hand desk corner (which resembles nothing so much as a conjoined triplet figurine of Douglas Adams' Eccentrica Gallumbits) quickly realized,  the arrangement is not how Freud's desk is typically displayed, and certainly did not look like this in 2017, the year we expect much of Sleep Tight, Evangeline, to be set. What's the difference?  Find out after the jump. 

Nigredo storylines amid albedo imagery: the how and why of the oddly inverted alchemy of The Hallmarked Man.

I actually started this post way back in my initial reading of The Hallmarked Man;  occasionally making notes as idea occurred to me, but it quickly became clear to me that it was going to take multiple re-reads and in-depth consideration to make any sense of this.  As is common in Rowling/Galbraith books, expectations were regularly subverted, but the results were both intriguing and ultimately quite satisfying. 

I went into The Hallmarked Man thinking this would be a second albedo volume, following The Running Grave, which was clearly albedo with all of the baptisms, rivers, rain and cleansing showers we saw, along with Strike's own self-improvement, with his weight loss and smoking cessation. There were huge hints of this from the author's Tweets, which showed us silver ships and white swans. We were told that Dean Martin's "Silver Bells" would feature, suggesting Christmas, with snow and twinkling white lights. Even the title referred to a "hallmark"-- a stamp indicating the degree of purity in a precious metal. The scene was indeed set for a silverly-white, cold and snowy journey to purification, similar to what was seen in The Half-Blood Prince and Catching Fire. 

Another reason I was fully expecting  albedo was that, after Strike's nigredo-duo of Troubled Blood and The Ink Black Heart, and his albedo in The Running Grave, another albedo would fit well with the "extended play" model proposed by Kathleen on Hogwartsprofessor several years ago as a means of stretching a seven book series out to ten.  

Did that come to pass?  Well, not exactly.....

The Hallmarked Man paperback published: were there any errors corrected?

The news today from the Galbraith website is that The Hallmarked Man paperback is available for purchase.  To date, I have not bought any of the paperbacks, though I get the hardbacks and audiobooks on the day of publication.  One thing I am always curious about, though, is to what extent errors in the original text get corrected in later editions. I am always wondering if we'll get another substantial re-write like we did when Australian Vashti-saleswoman Mia Thompson was added to Cuckoo's Calling. 

If anyone out there is reading the paperback and notices any error corrections, please her me know either in the comments or in the direct messages.  The errors noted in THM to date can be found here:

General errors noted by myself and others:  

Substantial mix-up in dates and times in 96-98. 

Another list of errors and why I think they weakened THM as a whole. 

There are also lots of timeline inconsistencies highlighted in red in the timelines I have prepared for Robin and Strike's lives. 

Please let me know what, if anything, you find. 

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