Madam Pince, our librarian, tells me that it is “pawed about, dribbled on, and generally maltreated” nearly every day – a high compliment for any book.

Dumbledore's introduction set the tone.

I liked this one A LOT better than Strange Beasts (caveat: my digital copy didn't have the margin notes, so it lost the meta gold extra). Anyway, Bestiaries are good for curiosity, but this one was just plain entertaining. The tong in cheek tone was great, and the amount of laughters it pulled from me with the shenanigans involved in the rules creations, and the fouls mentions can't be counted. I mean:

The full list of these fouls, however, has never been made available to the wizarding public. It is the Department’s view that witches and wizards who see the list “might get ideas.”

Refereeing a Quidditch match was once a task for only the bravest witches and wizards. Zacharias Mumps tells us that a Norfolk referee called Cyprian Youdle died during a friendly match between local wizards in 1357. The originator of the curse was never caught but is believed to have been a member of the crowd.

That last is naturally taking "cursing the referee" to it's expected literal end, and those are just fast examples.

I got the edition with the History of the World Qudditch Cup and the the 2014 articles, which was just the cherry on top. Aaand also very fitting in timing *grin*

Quidditch Through the Ages is isn’t exactly fiction in the sense of telling a story: it’s the fictional history of the very old, very traditional, and very popular magical sport on flying broomsticks conjured up for JK Rowling’s famous Harry Potter series. The sport itself consists of 7 wizards and witches per team, with your typical goalie/keeper, three chasers, two defenders/beaters, and one very special position called the Seeker which is basically Rowling’s way of making Harrry Potter the most interesting and special and remarkable of all wizards in his year, because although he’s basically a skinny runt orphan in glasses he is now also a jock.

Seriously the position of Seeker is purely to make Harry the most important member on the team, because they don’t do anything except catch the elusive Golden Snitch and win 150 points, ending the game, but can you even imagine having a basketball team or a football team where one player doesn’t actually play as part of the team, is responsible for ending the match, and gets all the glory? Not very sportsmanlike, but then again, the wizarding community is very strange.

It was interesting to hear about the very beginnings of the game and how it evolved, how the beaters and bludgers were introduced and then the utterly ridiculous position of Seeker. I was intrigued by the thorough history by the pseudo-author Kennilworthy Wisp and his great skill at research and ability to access rare information… in this imaginary world of Harry Potter, that is…

The audiobook itself was very good, with sound effects used to great effect to enhance the narrative. Andrew Lincoln did a fine job narrating, and even taking on different accents and voices for the different characters quoted.

Also added in was some bonus content for the 2014 Quidditch World Cup which I found very amusing, ‘written’ by Ginny Potter, with a commentary on the Final including Rita Skeeter. The whole thing ended up being very exciting and sounding like a real sporting match.

I really wish Rowling would write one for 2018, and if she has, can someone link it to me? All I can find when I google for it is the stupid sport muggles play running on the ground with broomsticks between their legs which Albus Dumbledore himself said was incredibly imbecilic and should not, under any circumstances, be played.

Stupid muggles.

Okay, Hand aufs Herz, ich hab nie den Trubel um Quidditch verstanden, deswegen war ich mir nicht ganz sicher ob ein Buch in dem es ausschließlich um das Spiel geht, wirklich eine gute Idee ist. Aber es ist ein kurzes Buch und es gehört einfach irgendwie dazu, also hab ich es heute in Angriff genommen und auch tatsächlich heute auch gleich fertig gelesen.

Ich muss ehrlich sagen, dass es mir wirklich Spaß gemacht hat das Buch zu lesen, ich mag einfach die Art wie diese Bücher geschrieben sind und wie schnell man sie lesen kann. Ich muss auch sagen, dass ich es wirklich total interessant fand, was ich so garnicht erwartet hatte.

Es hat sich auf jedenfall gelohnt, dass ich mir die Stunde genommen habe, die ich gebraucht habe um das Buch durchzulesen.

***

Okay, here is the thing, I never really got the whole excitement about Quidditch, so picking up a book that is purely about the game, felt kinda like a terrible idea. But it's a short book and it's part of the whole Harry Potter world, so I tackled it today and actually finished it the same day.

I have to say that it was really fun to read the book, I just love how these books are written and how fast and easy you can read them. I also have to admit, that I found the book much more interesting than I originally thought.

It was totally worth it, to take that one hour out of my day, that I needed to read this book.