Another quickie late-night post. So, about fifteen minutes ago I got my hands on a copy of Harry Potter 7 (a friend kindly lent it to me), and I’ve got all morning tomorrow in which to read it. Three cheers for holidays.
Now, I’ll say that while I do enjoy the Harry Potter books, I don’t necessarily think they’re my favorites. (Liz and Joni, do you have those vats of boiling oil ready yet? :P) I prefer Diana Wynne Jones and Tolkien and George MacDonald and such. But I do like Harry, and after I read Deathly Hallows I may like him even more. :)
(And just for the record, I’m amazed that I’ve been able to get this far since Saturday without hearing any spoilers. Kudos to all the people who knew what happens but didn’t say anything.)
[tags]Harry Potter[/tags]
Comments
Ben,
I hope you enjoy the book. I purchased it the evening of first day it was out knowing that Heather would have it read by sunrise and tell me all about it in great detail. I don’t like spoilers, but I appreciate a good story teller with a memory for detail when I don’t have time to read it myself.
Lately my work load has limited me to C21SPPV books like Sleeping Ugly, Cinder Edna and Fanny’s Dream (I’m doing research for my fairytale book.) I assume that as a librarian you know what a C21SPPV book is… ok well if you don’t, I’ll volunteer to be the spoiler. It means close to one sentence per page variety. :)
Enjoy your holiday. This Potter book was my favorite.
Well, after forty-five minutes last night and then 9 to 3:15 today (seven hours total, incidentally, or should I say coincidentally :P), I’m done. Don’t worry, I won’t give away any spoilers. I liked it! I was reading as fast as I could because I had to return it by this afternoon, and I think having a deadline kind of chewed off a small part of the enjoyment, but overall I was rather pleased with it. The ending was satisfying and more loose ends were tied back together again than I’d even realized were there.
C21SPPV’s aren’t half bad, I say, because you get the satisfying feeling of completion so much sooner. :) And fairy tales are cool. And I’m glad there was one in HP7. And that’s all I’m going to say about it. :) (I don’t think that counts as a spoiler, either.)
I’m glad you’re reading it. Here’s a tip. Savor it, but when you get to the last two hundred or so pages, lock yourself up somewhere where people can’t come to bother you, and where you have enough privacy to cry, if need be, and read the whole chunk at once. My ratty brother read my copy before I did because I was too busy, then when I read it and got to the climax he kept pestering me every ten minutes, and when I yelled at him to get out he looked all surprised and said “Wow you’re crabby” as though he were completely innocent. BROTHERS. Blegh.
I read the first 50 pages last night, then finished the rest (~700) today in one fell swoop. :) And I do have to say that the last 150 pages were the best, by far. (Which isn’t to say the first 600 weren’t good, of course.)
I wouldn’t call them my favorite books either-but then, to quote Ever After-”I could no sooner choose a favorite star in the heavens”
And I think it’s a bit unfair to throw Harry into either Tolkien’s or Jones’ camp-I’m not familiar with the other author, so I can’t judge that one, but-think about it. Tolkien set out to do something much, much grander-more or less perfecting the Arthur-myth-and he does it on an incredible scale. And, much as we both love him, he isn’t quite as accessible because his world takes over at times. It’s not as easy to digest, and the audience isn’t as broad. Jones suffers from too-many-sequels-itis-she started with an excellent, interesting idea…and it got way out of hand and the books started getting more and more uninteresting. At least for me. And I wouldn’t put Harry in either one of those camps-something that was intended to be more grand, or something very much so juvenile fiction (not to make that sound derogatory-it’s not supposed to. It’s just got an intended audience, and Potter doesn’t).
But you’re entitled to your opinion. I just think it’s wrong :P. And that’s fine-I’m possessive of my characters anyway. Er..Jo’s characters.
While I think you’re right to separate Tolkien and Rowling into two different groups, I beg to differ in Jones’s case. Jones’s books and Rowling’s books are effectively the same audience, really, though one could argue that the later Harry Potter books are aimed more at adults, I suppose. At any rate, I’m not sure which Jones books you’re referring to, since she’s written dozens and dozens; do you mean the Chrestomanci series? Because the four books in it are quite different, and I personally found the later ones even more interesting than the first. And if you mean the whole Jones corpus, I still have to disagree. Her books don’t come across at all as being too much the same. To pull one last arrow from my quiver, I think Jones is a much better writer stylistically, while Jo’s writing feels more like cotton candy. But that could be just me. :)
Throw in your two cents