Ever wonder what would happen if a conspiracy theorist got a little tipsy and studied the Harry Potter books too intensely? This. Sometimes you don't need an overly-complex and completely made-up theory to explain loose ends; sometimes they're just loose ends, and analyzing them just takes away some of the magic and mystery of the original text... ( )

Library Thing Early Reviewer
Dumbledore
I loved the Harry Potter series from their first release and have reread the books several times over the years discovering new things with each reading, but after reading The Life And Lies of … Dumbledore (and Lori Kim’s Book: Snape), I can barely wait to reread the series again. The authors of these two books don’t just accept the story as it rolls out—they ask why—they examine the motives and inner secrets of these two fascinating characters. And as much as I appreciated and marveled at their research and detective work, the real revelation was the depth of J. K. Rawlings’ vision. She may have started writing for children but the scope of her subjects force a maturity on her readership that very much mirrors the coming of age struggle her young audience will be passing through. She grew from inspired to genius.
I liked the way Khaytman decided to lay out his revelations devoting a chapter to each of the seven books in the series. It made his observations clear and cumulative and when he did dare to speculate toward the final chapters, it was easy to follow his argument. I was fascinated when the discussion turned to Machiavellian theory—I knew at that point that I wasn’t in Kansas any more. The way the author pondered Rawlings duplicity in wording and the red herrings she dropped along the way made my appreciation grow of her intricacy tremendously.
I would not recommend this book for a novice Harry Potter reader, but for anyone who has read the series and has loved it, this is a must read for the second, third or fourth time around! Well done. ( )

I received this book as part of the early reviewers program. I gifted this to my Harry Potter expert daughter who told me to rate it highly and call it delightful. ( )

This was an interesting read. A lot of the little happenings from Harry Potter are connected in this book in some way to "scheming" by Dumbledore. In all honesty it reads way more into Harry Potter than I would ever have considered... but it kind of all makes sense. ( )

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from LibraryThing in return for an honest review.

This book examines the actions of Albus Dumbledore throughout the Harry Potter series. What did he actually know and why did he make the choices he did? This book reads like an academic paper but the author presented everything in a straight-forward manner that is easy to understand. The author did tend to be repeat a lot of points in an attempt to support his conclusions and he referenced a variety of outside writings, which tended to make for a slower read. While I found myself disagreeing with several of the authors assumption, overall I found this book to be an interesting read. ( )