I bring you: some Friday book recs from the @rileyandjohannareadstuff Instagram account.Today's list includes marathon runners, hockey players who make a lot of pie, and eighteenth century rakes. What's everyone else reading right now? I have a library trip coming up, and suggestions are always appreciated. :) 
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​Welcome to the second installment of Harry Potter and the Future of America, where we ask ourselves this all-important question about scenarios taking place in American society:

If this were a Harry Potter book, what would happen next?
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(The “we” is royal, by the way.  I’m literally the only person in this room right now.)
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Shall we get started?

SCENARIO: A Supreme Court nominee is accused of sexual assault, and a whooooole bunch of people who want him on the Supreme Court immediately decide the accusation must be a lie. Or at least not that big a deal. 
 
PLEASE EXPLAIN: Donald Trump nominated a guy named Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. (That’s right: “lifetime” basically means for as long as he wants it or can physically keep his buttocks in the chair.) Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward to say that he sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. A lot of people are insinuating or outright saying that she is a liar, claiming that her accusation is just a political move to discredit Kavanaugh. 
 
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT IF THIS WERE HARRY POTTER? Remember when Harry saw Voldemort return and the Ministry of Magic didn’t want to believe him, so they spent an entire book trying to discredit him and destroy his reputation? They let the Daily Prophet malign him, basically called him unhinged, and did everything possible not to fully investigate or carefully consider his allegation that He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named had returned.
 
Well, we all know how that worked out for the Ministry. Harry was telling the truth, Voldemort was back, and they wasted so much energy fighting Harry instead of Voldemort that they didn’t even notice he was back in power until he was like five seconds away from destroying all of them in a battle so epic it required an extra movie. And honestly, would it have been that hard to investigate Harry's claims? If he turned out to be wrong, all they would have lost was a little effort and time. (And since half the Ministry appears to do nothing but sit around transmogrifying things all day, seems like they could have taken that hit.)
 
The lesson here is clear: when someone makes a serious allegation that will potentially do nothing but damage their own safety, security, and reputation, listen to them. Investigate fully. Take that allegation seriously. You have nothing to lose by doing so...and everything to gain. 
 
Unfortunately, Harry's plight reminds us loudly and clearly that people in power don’t like to be told truths that are inconvenient for them. (Pun not intended.) Voldemort’s return was inconvenient for the Ministry. This accusation is inconvenient for all those who want Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. And so, if our Harry Potter palm reading is at all accurate, here’s what will happen next: those who want Kavanaugh will continue to malign his accuser and do a bare-bones investigation as best. Or they’ll brush off any potential wrongdoing as just “teenage boys being teenage boys.” (P.S., if you think sexual assault is normal teenage behavior, please do not raise children. In fact, please don’t go anywhere near any children. Ever.)

Worst case scenario? Someone who committed sexual assault and then spent twenty years hiding it will end up writing America’s most influential laws. That's not quite as bad as "Voldemort is back," but it sure isn't good. 

So if you have a senator who isn’t calling for a complete investigation of these charges, you may want to call them and say the following: “Investigate these allegations. Don’t be like the Ministry of Magic.”
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If your Senator doesn’t immediately know what you are talking about, they are obviously not fit to be in public office. Obviously. 

​We’ve clearly hit a tipping point in our country. Truth is constantly in question. Morality is debated the same way we debate Star Wars vs. Star Trek. (What, everybody doesn’t have that debate?) Fact is called opinion, and opinion is called fact. It’s a topsy-turvey world, that’s for sure.
 
It’s getting a little harder to see the forest of America through the trees. So I’ve decided that from now, every time we encounter a tense or difficult scenario in this country, I’m going to ask one question: 

​If this were a Harry Potter book, what would happen next?


Let’s try this thought experiment and see what happens. ​

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SCENARIO: Host of second most-watched cable news show in America suggests that diversity isn't good for people. 
 
PLEASE EXPLAIN: Tucker Carlson, the same dude who used to wear snappy bow ties and debate tax laws with Rachel Maddow, pontificated in front of an audience of almost three million people that maybe diversity is a bad thing. No, not in 1965. This happened just a few weeks ago, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eighteen.
 
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT IF THIS WERE HARRY POTTER? Actually, this WAS Harry Potter. Remember Purebloods and Mudbloods? Voldemort tried to erase all Mudbloods from existence because he claimed they were too different from Purebloods and all that diversity of human blood and thought was ruining the wizarding world. 
 
And we all know what happened next. Hermione Effing Granger came rolling along with all her Mudblood brilliance and helped blow them away into no existence at all. Diversity for the win, Death Eaters. They should have been so lucky to have Hermione on their team. Hopefully they all figured that out in Azkaban.
 
So I guess this makes Tucker Carlson Lucius Malfoy? Which also means that eventually the power he thought he wanted will become too much for him to control, and he’ll lose everything in a rather anticlimactic moment that only about half of his audience will remember. 

And we’ll all kind of shrug as he disappears from our consciousness. Maybe some member of his family will appear in an Epilogue looking vaguely apologetic. 

SCENARIO: President Trump says that 3,000 people who died in the aftermath of a hurricane didn’t really die because they were denied the resources and supports needed to stay alive. The whole thing is a lie, a conspiracy against him!


PLEASE EXPLAIN: It happened via tweet, as so much of our government communication does these days, despite the fact that the death toll after Hurricane Maria was calculated by a completely independent and unbiased group of people. Even Rick Scott was all "Dude, no, 3,000 people died." 
 
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT IF THIS WERE HARRY POTTER? This is a Dolores Umbridge move. Her entire job was basically to claim that Hogwarts students were making up horrible things about the Ministry of Magic just to make them look bad. She’d call them all liars for saying that people died after Hurricane Maria and then make them all carve “I WILL NOT SAY 3,000 PEOPLE DIED” into their skin over and over for hours on end.
 
BUT OBVIOUSLY she would not break them. They would figure out a way to keep spreading the truth that actually, yes, people did die, and now their memories were being disrespected. Sure, some people would still believe Umbridge. Why? That's a mystery as old as Argus Finch. But Dumbledore’s Army would eventually get away from the blood-seeking quills and make sure the public saw that real truth does exist in this world, and real truth can be proven. 

Anyone know where we can get a Room of Requirements? We should probably speed things up on creating that DA. Maybe it already exists over on Twitter. I’ll check. 

Here come a few more book suggestions from the @rileyandjohannareadstuff Instagram account. We've covered poetry, some nonfiction, and a few serious 80s throwback covers. My big rec right now is actually a movie--the Netflix movie of Jenny Han's book TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE, which just came out this past weekend. Lana Condor is amazing in it, and if you are also a rom-com lover you cannot possibly be disappointed by this film. You're welcome in advance. 

I give you: a few book suggestions from the @rileyandjohannareadstuff Instagram account. I cannot recommend ALL'S FAIRE IN MIDDLE SCHOOL by Victoria Jamieson and FAR FROM THE TREE by Robin Benway enough. Both books kept me up until one in the morning. I suspect THE SUN IS ALSO A STAR will do the same, so maybe I'll try to start reading that one at a more normal hour. 

If you follow this blog, you've probably noticed by now that my friend Riley and I love to talk about all things books. We had a great time re-reading some of the Baby-Sitters' Club ​books from our childhood, and we decided we wanted to keep doing some type of online book chat together. So we've taken our weekly book chats to Instagram. Follow @rileyandjohannareadstuff to see what we’re reading, what we recommend, and how many times we can squeeze pictures of Winnie (Riley's pug) and Ra (my very sedate cat) into our book photos. I'll also be cross-posting some of our Instagram posts and conversations here.