Because we’re grown-ups now, and it’s our turn to decide what that means.
Oh wait. . . I thought this thread was about HP fans going overboard. If it’s about adults not being able to enjoy anything made for kids, I’m going to have to switch positions in the thread. After all, my username is Heffalump and Roo, fergawd’ssake! (Umm, and that last part is not my last name!)
If we could find a way to capture and channel the energy needed for such lame rants, we will have practicaly invented the perpetual motion machine.
Re the library thing–I think you would be hard pressed to find a library that doesn’t have a copy of harry Potter (Vatican excepted)–and you can check it out, renew it, and (if you feel quite daring), check it out again next year! It’s the next best thing to keeping it. Now if you like some more obscure author, that might not be an option, but you could speak with the libarian in charge of collection development and ask her/him to either find the book/author within your library consortium or even buy for your library. Just FYI.
I’ve come to realize that I’m more annoyed by the amount of fanwank from devotees and overestimation of Rowlings abilities as a writer than I am about childish adults dressing up and that kind of thing.
Statements like “Rowling really knows how to write emotions” and “Rowling is the greatest fantasy author evah!” just annoy the shit out of me for some reason. For some reason it puts me in the mind of silly high school girls who would say, “I’m so mature I only date college men!”
Rowlings is a mediocre writer who is particularly bad at writing about emotions convincingly (writing about chronic irritability doesn’t make one very good at writing about emotions). The plots are often thin, convoluded and nonsensical, but the magical element allows for fanwankery to account for anything. If it can’t, then “it just strikes me as real” is the fallback position. As in, “the constant bickering between characters just feels real to me” and “wandering around in the woods without a plan, directions or anything interesting for months” just feels real to me.
You know what? People also shit a couple times every day. Writing about characters doing that might feel real to you, too, but it would also be boring and bad storytelling. Having characters bicker constantly just means that a bad writer is trying to find energy or motivation for the characters and is failing to do so.
The bit about it not being a book for adolescents because it describes death, or “however will they make a PG-13 movie out of this because of all the gore?” is ludicrous as well. Listen, people getting hit with magical spells and falling over dead is not “gory”, even if it is “the killing curse.” Most normal people won’t weep over a pet owl getting killed, and a magical elf getting stabbed in the chest isn’t the stuff of a Scorcese movie.
I’ve read all of the books. Who knows, I might have read them even if I didn’t have a child, but I’m not sure. I’ve enjoyed going to the store at midnight with my son for the last few books because it’s exciting for him, and I’ll miss that. They’re fun, and the basic premise is a great one. But the books are just fucking not great or impressive writing, nor very well crafted.
Quite right, old chap, quite right.
Rowling is a gifted storyteller, is what it is. A hundred years ago, before TV, before big-box bookstores, she would have been the village storyteller, with everyone gathered around, eyes wide and leaning forward breathless with anticipation. She can spin a yarn like nothing I’ve ever seen. Book 1 alone almost gave me a heart attack. But she is mediocre when it comes to description, and as you said, emotions.
Look how many times in this volume someone was scared shitless while being interrogated. How does JKR convey this? By having them stutter. There are a zillion ways to convey that someone is nervous and afraid to say the wrong thing. Have them lick their lips and look around as if for help (even that’s a cliche, really, but better than what we got). Have them gripping a talisman of some sort. Have them pulling at their hair. It’s not all in the speech, is my point. She does very little, if anything, to show how someone looks while they’re in the grips of a strong emotion. And when she does, it’s usually, “He looked terrified” or “She looked miserable.” Oh, and I love this, from page 243 (I know the page number because I kept pointing it out to people): “Someone in the crowd around the lifts called out sycophantically, ‘Morning, Yaxley!’”
How in the bloody hell can someone sound sycophantic?! Show how they were sycophantic! They smiled without looking up, or they smiled too wide, or…something! Gah!
But I think that’s actually part of the appeal. The books go down real easy, like frozen yogurt instead of ice cream. And I despise frozen yogurt. Obviously I don’t despise HP, but I’m currently looking forward to the new Harry Turtledove. He only irritates me with repetition*. Other than that, I will be savoring every word like Dove chocolate. With Rowling, the words are a means of conveying action, not art in and of themselves.
And I’m only halfway through the review thread, but has anyone commented on her (mis)use of colons? I can’t count how many times she had a compound sentence divided by a colon: And then a capital letter afterwards. Fergossakes, if they’re really two separate ideas, then use a period and make them separate sentences. Or go ahead and use the colon, or better yet a semicolon, but then you follow it with a lower-case letter. (Unless that’s a British thing.)
*Mr. Rilch says he’s going to leave it to me to read the Leonard O’Doull sequences, and tell him if there’s anything to them besides, as he puts it, “Puff puff, war sucks, funny like a crutch, fighting against the ether cone.” But we’ll both be riveted during the battle scenes.
In 1907? Wouldn’t they be reading newspapers and magazines and novels and penny dreadfuls for the lowbrow types?
Can you give me a page number of an example? I don’t remember this, and I’d have thought it would have jumped out at me.
On the other hand, I do remember wincing at either the “sycophantically” or something very much like it. But then, Stephen King has chided her for her adverb habit back in his review of The Order of the Phoenix.
Well, depending on where you lived. Like if she was in a village in the north of England, where they might not have had a bookshop. Or make it 120 years ago, if you like. Anyway, I’m not sure storytelling went out of fashion immediately when novels were introduced.
Thudlow: Opening my book at random, I find an example in the last sentence of the first paragraph on page 691. And believe me, that’s one of many.
Who has said “Rowling is the greatest fantasy author evah!”, or anything at all like that? Don’t let the fact that tons and tons of people like HP quite a bit confuse you into thinking that any significant number of people (particularly SDMB-reading grownups) think that HP is the very bestest thing ever. There’s a big difference.
I didn’t say that a signifcant number of people say this, nor did I say that I was only referring to the SDMB. However, here’s the type of thing I had in mind:
I’ll grant you video games, but studies have shown that reading is good for one-learning skills, involves more brain activity, and generally builds more brain cells. Your brain is WORKING, as opposed to sitting passively watching a movie.
Computer games are also good-teaching one strategy and thinking skills. And I LOVE watching movies too.
But books are so much better if we’re talking about LEARNING. That’s all. And it seems now that kids don’t want to take the time and effort to read a book and use their imaginations. How does a movie involve that?
It has nothing to do with snobbery, or saying that films aren’t good enough. Just that I like seeing people wanting to learn and take the time and effort to read.
And hell, who cares if it’s a children’s book? It’s good and entertaining, and people enjoy it, so if that bothers you, fuck it.
(It’s not about “reading is gooood for the CHILDREN.” It’s saying that I like seeing kids excited about learning, that’s all. Christ.)
I didn’t realize that new brain cells could be built.
Yes, they can. For decades, the popular wisdom was that mammals don’t grow new neurons or develop the ones we have much past childhood, but that’s proven to be false: LiveScience
Not only that, but new neural development may “rejuvenate” old atrophied or slow signaling neurons: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19096030/
And while alcohol abuse inhibits new neuron development and growth, quiting alcohol stimulates new neuron development! New Brain Cells Develop During Alcohol Abstinence, UNC Study Shows | ScienceDaily
However, I don’t know whether or not movies are any better or worse at stimulating neural development than reading.
I do suspect movies and video games suffer from the phenomenon of snobbery’s dislike of new art forms. I’m sure once upon a time there were scholars sniffing at Euripedes and Sophocles (not to mention that low-brow Aristophanes) for their vulgar and common theatrics.
Your linked article suggests that the dendrites of existing neurons can continue to develop, but not that new neurons grow (despite what the headline of the article says).
Edited to add that I just checked the third link, and that one does suggest that new neuron growth is achieved in adult rats following abstinence from alcohol. Now that is a new one on me! I’m curious to check out the primary source on that article, but it is exciting, if accurate.
I see your point, Hentor. This is just so wrong, it does tend to irritate, even though I thoroughly enjoyed HP.