I want this to be my birthday cake...

I live in the Baltimore area, so I'm lucky to have Ace of Cakes (AKA: Charm City Cakes) in my backyard and all of the incredibly talented people who work there. We were watching one day when Charlie yelled at the television, "Hey, I know her! We went to college together!"

But this.... this is truly amazing:

HOGWARTS! (A Cake Interpretation)

Ace of Cakes made this for the opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. You can see the making of the cake here on the Leaky Cauldron site.

Yes, I'm still a Potterhead. But for very good reason. There are so many ways to interpret these books that the fans continually find new ways to approach these books from different perspectives. One of my favorite Harry Potter scholars (and yes, I do mean scholar) is John Granger, also a University of Chicago alumn. He's written a few books on the literary theory of the Harry Potter series. He's written:

The Deathly Hallows Lectures: The Hogwarts Professor Explains the Final Harry Potter Adventure

How Harry Cast His Spell: The Meaning Behind the Mania for J. K. Rowling's Bestselling Books

and most recently: Harry Potter's Bookshelf: The Great Books behind the Hogwarts Adventures
To get a taste of his style (And how Chaucer and Jane Austen relate to the Potterverse), you can check out the article he wrote for our alumni magazine here.

Then I was at our little work luncheon get together and learned that my older colleagues haven't read the whole series. *Shock* Then I shamefully explained to my boss how all the books come together in Deathly Hallows and why Dumbledore HAD to die in the 6th book. (I mean, how else was Harry going to face Voldemort as a man without anyone protecting him? It's the classic hero's tragedy and tale.) Then there's the representations of Hermione and Ginny as both modern and postmodern feminists. I think I freaked him out a bit.