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Deathly Hallows / OOTP Movie Discussion
At midnight on Friday Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, ending the ten year run of J.K. Rowling's extremely popular book series. I imagine that there are a few folks here who have already read the book and want to talk about it. Likewise, the movie version of Order of the Phoenix was recently released (a film I was kind of underwhelmed by). So ... what did you think of them? Be forewarned: I imagine the comments will be filled with spoilers.
Milk left at room temperature goes bad on page 298.
SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDOR!
I thought it was nice that something, even if it was something that I thought was junk, could get kids reading for five minutes.
Now, if only we could find a way to make them read books like 1984, Brave New World, Catch 22 and Fahrenheit 451...
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
TL;DR. :p
...as it barely mentioned the Order of the Phoenix.
The latest film has the same problem as all the other Harry Potter films:
They focus only on the epic tale of Harry versus Voldemort and not on the far more epic story of Harry's emotional journey to be ABLE to face (and presumably) defeat Voldemort.
If you see the film with someone who has never read the books, they tend not to care one iota bout any of it and the reason is all to clear: the characters never develop. They never change. They never become who they need to be in order to confront the horrible evil that is taking over their world.
The books are amazing because, while there is an epic story of good versus evil, the reader is brought along for the ride to grow alongside the main character. But the movies watch the action from a safe distance and only really focus on the parts that have action.
Jory
Deathly Hallows fortunately played down the anti-intellectualism of the previous books. Harry admitted he should be able to heal wounds by magic (but still didn't admit any fault of his own for not knowing), Hermione's wide knowledge proved very useful on their little trek, and even Ron decided he should look cool in front of the kids at Hogwarts by spouting off a random fact he'd heard from Hermione. That was good, I liked that.
ResidntGeek
I think spelling the title of the book correctly shouldn't be too much to ask.
I always mod up spelling trolls.
I know this might prove controversial, but I have always compared Potter to Rings.
In the way they are both multi-volume, long, rambling engaging fantasy stories which good stuff to read, but in a terrible writing style
Don't get me wrong, I *am* a fan and have all of them - but neither are great well written works of prose.
Whats the betting she'll revisit the muggle/wizarding world in a couple of years? There is waaay too much money available not to in my humble opinion, its just too tempting a cash cow now.
And I must admit that the seven book series holds together well as a whole (Lucas take note!). She's obviously taken a few leaves out of Tolkien's epics to round this one off in the way that you feel satisfied, and don't feel the need for more.
Grief, it's hard to talk about a book without giving anything away, suffice to say that if you haven't read the series, of have been put off by the 'kids books' aspect, or surrounding hype, it's a damn good series of books (something you don't really see much today), that deserves to be read. Not since LotR and the Chronicles or Narnia has there been such an epic read.
As an aside, I would also warn people to avoid the Wikipedia article on the book, as it does go into great detail about the plot.
First off, I'm just going to assume everybody who clicks into this thread has read the book, because otherwise half the thread is going to require spoiler warnings.
Rowling's style of writing is definitely not where her strenghts lie, and everybody I know who has refused to read Harry Potter has used this as a reason. However, I think people who say this are cutting off their nose to spite their face. What she lacks in writing skill, she more than makes up for in enjoyable, well crafted characters, and amazing plot. Deathly Hallows is by far my favourite of the series (7, 5, 4, 6, 2, 1 - fot those who are interested).
I was pretty sure that Snape was on the side of good before I started reading, but by the time he was made Headmaster, I had actually figured that I had been mistaken, and was wondering how she was going to have a decent ending with him as a bad guy. The last few chapters were magnificently brought together, with payoff after payoff after payoff.
The only disappointment in terms of plot, I felt, was that not a single Slytherin stayed behind after the evacuation of the school. I know, they are supposed to be cunning and self serving, but Harry was almost put into their house. Surely there must be a handful of Slytherins who, like him, are borderline and would have enough bravery to stand beside their schoolmates against the deatheaters.
However, that aside, I am very happy with the book, and am glad to see I didn't waste my time on a series just to have it thrown in my face at the end (*cough* Dark Tower *cough* Wheel of time).
To steal from Joel McHale, who would have thought Hermione was a dude? I certainly didn't see it coming!
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
I enjoyed OOTP. The book is overly long and probably the weakest of the series, but what I find most interesting in the films is watching Daniel Radcliffe et al growing into their roles. OOTP is an incredibly long book and, like all the movies, it's like reading the book in fast forward. The book's better than the film, but it was still very very good.
I finished Deathly Hallows this morning after spending all of yesterday ploughing through it.
And I really, really loved it.
JK Rowling has been very clever with the books and I don't know if the entire series has been foreshadowed, but throughout the final book she drops little hints that I, if I had actually been paying very close attention to, would have figured out before the climax.
You can scoff all you want that it's a kids book and you'd rather die than read it and if this is the case, then I pity you. I felt exactly the same way until I tried them, and it's very rare that a book can make me laugh while I'm reading it.
Now that it's all over I feel very sad that there might never be another author in my lifetime who can create characters that fit together so well.
Summation 2
If Snape could enter Grimmauld Place, then why didn't he told the Death Eaters where it was? Voldemort should be aware that wherever the Headquarter of the Order was, Snape knew it, and with Dumbledore's death Snape would become a secret keeper.
Not really a mistake but... how did Griffyndorf's sword got away from the goblins?
How could Dumbledore best Grindenwald if the latter had the Elder Wand? also, how did he not defeat Voldemort completely with the Elder Wand when they dueled?
How did Dumbledore's painting know of the plan to take Harry off Private Drive, in order to counsel Snape?
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
Why UNIX?
Maybe it's that I read waaaay too much speculation about it, all with interesting theories on how Harry would defeat Voldemort without having to introduce trick wands.... but I just felt that she took the easiest possible route out of the story, giving characters dramatic about-faces when necessary. I mean... Kreacher suddenly becoming Harry's biggest fan? Cop out. Percy's sudden change of allegiance, apology and starting to joke? Excuse me?
I also felt that she let Dumbledore off the hook, and his character would have been much more compelling if he had killed his sister (or something similar)... or maybe, just maybe, we didn't have to have Dumbledore re-appear and explain everything? I mean come on. Add to that most of the deaths just didn't make sense. Except for Mad-Eye (and possibly Dobby), basically all the other major deaths were random, they had no purpose in the story and didn't advance the plot in any major way. The only sacrificial death was Harry, and he didn't even die (and don't get me started on the overly sappy epilogue).
Generally, I think the book was missing most of JKR's trademark wit, that made the rest of the story so enjoyable... and had too much of her maddening 'hand of god' habit of introducing new magical concepts to get the characters out of sticky situations instead of them having to figure a way out themselves.
...and Hermione manages to push Voldemort out of the Hogwarts airlock and blast him with the main engines...oops, I'm mixing my non sequiturs...
All in all, the Deathly Hallows was a satisfying read. Rowling did a good job of creating the illusion of a Grand Unifying Theory of the previous books and make it seem like there was a clever thread running through them that sustained until the end. She is very good at writing herself out of the corners she paints herself into.
I don't have book 6 on hand to search through, so I might as well ask here...
What exactly did Draco do in book 6 that gave him ownership of the Elder Wand?
OMG you are so right! I found it hilarious when "Mad eye Moody" was actually a clone and that the real mad eye was a good guy! Great twist there Rowlings.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Unfortunately, that doesn't seemed as far-fetched as it should be, based upon recent activities by lawyers working for several organizations.
"The Sword of Gryffindor presents itself to any worthy Gryffindor." I assume it fell out of the burning Sorting hat.
Yes but, what is a book?
I just finished the book this morning, and I must say, you did a heckuva job, Rowling. All the ends are wrapped neatly, the book didn't get too long or short winded on any subject. There are a few things you might have to backtrack a page or two on because it's confusingly worded. For example, I had no idea who escaped Gringott's with the sword at first. Harry denies to himself that Lupin and Tonks have died by saying they were just sleeping, and in my tiredness I thought it was literal. I think that pgs 180-400ish might get kind of long, it's a lot of arguing and moving about, usually little action. The last chapter, I wish, was longer. Who's Draco married to? Who raised Lupin's baby? I figured for sure that Bill and Fleur would adopt it, but it doesn't friggin mention it, and then Harry suggests "uh, let's have him live with us!" or whatever, and the kid is 19! Poor Snape. Did the books ever explain how Lily ended up with James, then? I can't recall any more. Also, I thought this book 7 would explain the howlers "REMEMBER MY LAST, PETUNIA." from 5. That's a loose end!
Popularity is generally not based on merit. See Snakes on a Plane, Britney Spears, Chrysler 300, etc. People like what other people like, if the chain reaction moves the right way it hits critical mass. That said, I find that the Harry Potter books are quite good, worthy of popularity (though perhaps not enough to make the author richer than the Queen).
ResidntGeek
Comment removed based on user account deletion
While The Deathly Hallows was enormously satisfying in that it answered just about every question that was ever raised over the course of the series, I found the ending to be...a bit abrupt and somewhat neglectful. I really would have liked just one more small chapter detailing a bit of the aftermath of Voldemort's downfall. What happened to the rest of the Death Eaters? Did Harry return to Hogwarts for one last year? Is he an auror? What do Ron, Hermione and Ginny do? What about Teddy? Did he come to live with Harry and Ginny, given that Harry was his godfather? It just felt like the book was more concerned with detailing the overthrow of Voldemort than winding down all of the relationships the reader built up with the various characters over the series. Yes, some of the answers come in the epilogue, but it was a bit lacking.
Order of the Phoenix was good, but perhaps the film is more notable for what was cut from the book than what made it into the movie. If the next two movies follow the same lines as Order of the Phoenix, a lot of fans are going to be deeply dissatisfied. Order of the Phoenix is the longest and most complex book in the series up to this point and yet it is the shortest of the Harry Potter movies.
Good for you! Now why are you in this thread, again?
Disliking something simply because it's popular is perhaps worse than liking something simply because it's popular. It is probably popular, at the core, for some sort of valid reason.
Why? Are you saying that Slashdot is filled with people with Asperger's Syndrome? That's highly unlikely. There are plenty of people here who wish they had Asperger's, even going so far as to self-diagnose. The truth of the matter is that while Asperger's is real, it's nowhere near as common as internet message boards would have you believe. It is a good scapegoat for people who never learned how to interact socially with other people.
After reading the final book, my opinion on the series is still the same: they're extremely entertaining, gripping, and emotionally engaging books, but their literary depth leaves something to be desired. Don't get me wrong - I love the series, but I just wish it had some more depth than the usual good vs. evil tale.
What really spoils the story is that Harry Potter dumps a hot asian girl. I mean come on, give the audience some credit. I can believe in kids whipping up spells, but dumping a hot asian girl, now that is just the realm of fantasy!
Monstar L
I always use a Star Trek analogy with Harry Potter. It seems like it's all magic, but I'm always reminded of Arthur C. Clark's quote Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The "Room of Requirement"? It's really a Holodeck. Disapperating? It's just a fast teleporter. The wands? A portable replicator (that one's a stretch). There is all sorts of technobabble, especially in Potions...
Anyway, I'm very impressed how well J.K. Rowling was able to tie almost everything together. This was probably the best of the series, but I'll need to go back and re-read them all!
What, me worry?
I sense sarcasm, but either way it is idiotic to not enjoy something because it's popular. As someone pointed out, are you 15? And I'm not just saying that to be a dick; when I was 14/15/16 I acted the same way towards music and people which was, in retrospect, quite stupid. Things, especially books, become popular when they are good. I guess if you were in Shakespeare's time, you would refuse to see his plays because they were trashy, soap opera-like, and popular. Maybe give Harry Potter 300-400 years and we'll see if it's become classic enough for your taste. Your only denying yourself enjoyment though, because Harry Potter might have turned out to be one of your favorite book series if you didn't put pretentiousness first.
ours had a misprint.. pages 500-532 were missing, while 532-56something where in there twice. A few other chapters had the same problem. We're keeping the misprint, and just went out and bought another copy (after verifying all the pages were in the right places)
meh
Dugg down for kuro5hin source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_ Deathly_Hallows
Spoilers for those who need them. The link does not pop because Slashdot strips out target=_blank.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Popular taste is low taste. True, things are popular for reasons --- mostly bad ones.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
It seems to me that the climax of the entire series hinged upon three choices that Harry made in this book. They epitomize everything Rowling was trying to convey: that the choices individuals make are ultimately what determines "good"ness or "evil"ness, and they are not concrete extremes that guide actions but rather a result of choices that are made in every aspect of life.
1. He had to decide to face Voldemort willingly, accept that he is going to die, and understand that he is doing this to save his friends. Courage and selflessness are the keys to defeating the emotions that power Riddle: greed, selfishness, and fear.
2. He had to decide, after being struck with the Killing Curse, to return. Death is easy. It is the easiest thing every living organism *will* do -- life (and staying alive) is a constant struggle not to die. When in King's Cross talking to Dumbledore, he had the opportunity not to go back; he had the chance to take the easy route. Again, he had to decide to return to save his friends.
3. When finally facing Riddle, now that both were free of any sort of magic to protect themselves, he had one final choice: To take life to protect his (Avada Kedavra) or to show mercy, compassion, love, even to his gravest enemy. By choosing Expelliramus, even after being explicitly told numerous times NOT to use this particular spell, he truly sets himself apart.
Ignoring the Aspergers comment which was kind of unnecessary, it's kind of stupid to tell adults to read grown-up books. Go ahead and read classics if you want, I'm sure many of the adults reading Harry Potter have read those as well. But please don't try and tell people that anything popular and contemporary is trash. You sound like a pretentious know-it-all that way. Newsflash: Plenty of the classics you are thinking of are only classics because they aged well; when they came out, many considered them to be trashy as well. In short: contemporary and popular != trash Seriously, HP could very well be taught in middle schools in 60-70 years. Look at Narnia and LOTR, for example. And I bet all you pretentious numskulls will be worshiping it as quality fantasy.
If Snape could enter Grimmauld Place, then why didn't he told the Death Eaters where it was? Voldemort should be aware that wherever the Headquarter of the Order was, Snape knew it, and with Dumbledore's death Snape would become a secret keeper.
Isn't it obvious? Snape wasn't working for the Death Eaters, he was working for the Order and Dumbledore. This was a major plot of the book. I really do not understand why you are confused about this.
Not really a mistake but... how did Griffyndorf's sword got away from the goblins?
This was hinted to in the book in that Gryffindor's sword can only remain in the possession of one who's valor and need of the sword are true. One cannot simply possess the sword out of greed, which is how the goblin Griphook acquired it.
How could Dumbledore best Grindenwald if the latter had the Elder Wand? also, how did he not defeat Voldemort completely with the Elder Wand when they dueled?
Again, the answer was hinted at in the book if not a running theme throughout the series. Dumbledore admits to Harry that they were both skilled wizards, but that Dumbledore was perhaps a bit more skillful. That fact, taken together with the theme that runs throughout the books that it is not what skills or magical items you possess so much as what you do with them that is the key. I think that is your answer.
How did Dumbledore's painting know of the plan to take Harry off Private Drive, in order to counsel Snape?
I suspect someone in the Order other than Snape is in communication with the painting.
Prejudice takes many forms. Knowledge is its greatest weakness.
Gegorovitch I think Riddle kills himself because once again his spell rebounds.
You mad
Yes, you do. If all you potterheads went back and re-read the books, over and over again, the rest of us could get on with more important things, like having a row over GPL2 vs GPL3 and emacs vs. vi.
Almost immediately after reading the 6th book, I hypothesized that Harry Potter himself was a horcrux for Voldemort, fashioned to be so when Voldemort's killing curse backfired. I'm sure I wasn't the only one to guess such, but I was nevertheless quite pleased with myself when I read that I was right.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I like plenty of 'popular' things, I'm pretty sure I'm no cultural snob, but Harry Potter has not ever been one of those things. Don't know why. I know your comment wasn't aimed at me personally but I suppose there are always extremes in evry bell curve of whats universally liked and whats not, if that's not too much of an oxymoron.
Popularity is not an indicator of good quality, as you think. Other criteria ought to be used. In general, when these other criteria are applied, most popular works fall short. Most not all. Otherwise, the pet rock would have have been a paragon of art and business.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
They never really mentioned the fact that Griphook kind of got shafted by that. I mean he got the sword fair and square and then *poof* it just appears back in the hat when it's needed.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Oh come on, I am not alone on this. Many respected critics say the same thing.
s tm
http://www.theferrett.com/showarticle.php?Rant=69 / lord-rings-j-r-r-tolkien t w_sm.html
His writing style was frankly laughable, and not what you would expect from an Philologist. Have you read it recently? Everything in that books on the lines of "bog, son of log, son of Tog, son of Dog who begat...". He's a ham author.
I'm a big fan of the books and the film, but they are not well written prose. Give me an example from the books that is! And please don't get me started on the Silmarillion.
Some more references (some good, mostly bad) on Tolkien:
http://www.rilstone.talktalk.net/tolk.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3935561.
http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism
http://www.reflectionsedge.com/archives/mar2005/d
This is my point with Potter. The story in interesting and engaging. But the books are definitely not well written. This does not stop them being very successful, but does stop them being in par with the literary greats.
And please don't think I am needlessly bashing either of them. I am (as I have stated several times) a big fan of them and a few other (Elenium and Tamuli for starters?) - my point simply that I do not rate them on writing quality.
Oxygen is pretty popular amongst humans. There is in fact very broad agreement on the matter, and persuasion to "the cause" usually involves the persuadee being held under water until (s)he agrees...
Hate to reply to a troll here, but he's right. It's "Deathly Hallows", not "Deathly Hollows".
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Whilst I agree with most of your sentiment, comapring Harry Potter to Shakespeare is ludicrous. The books simply cannot be praised on literary merit. I'd certainly agree that Rowling can tell a good story, and has done so consistently over several books. She cannot, however, compare to a truly talented author in terms of literary ability. I read the latest book after reading "The Life of Pi" and "In Cold Blood", and the contrast was notable. Rowling's writing is, by comparison, rather mediocre.
Any half-decent author should be richer than the Queen IMHO. Off with her head, I say!
Indeed it is. Exactly as idiotic as to enjoy something because it's popular.
And let's face it, most people started reading Harry Potter because it's popular, not because it's in any way better than, say, Pullman.
I meant richer than the queen currently is. The discussion isn't about the merit of the Queen's riches. In the grand scheme of things Rowling really should be richer than the Queen because, as you so rightly point out, the Queen doesn't do anything.
ResidntGeek
You must hate air. whenever anyone I've met has been deprived of it, they go mad and obsess over getting some.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I'll agree with you on two things, and disagree with you on one thing. I agree that both Tolkien and Rowling wrote their books poorly. But come on. Tolkien prose is messy, but Rowling's prose is shite. IMHO, the whole Potter enterprise is shite, so I disagree that Rowling is a contender for literary greatness.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
My "wrong ending" that I was giving people yesterday:
Harry and Voldemort fight a duel at Hogwarts in front of the students and faculty.
Voldemort hits Harry with a sex-change spell and Harry becomes Harriet.
The fight ends with that.
Voldemort and Harriet get married, go bowling every Friday night, and live happily ever after.
So far, noone has believed me at all.
Or you could argue that it is newsworthy because millions of people enjoy it (plenty of Slashdotters included), and no, we actually aren't the lowest common denominator when it comes to reading literature. But good job, you really sounded opinionated and roguishly original with your "harry potter sucks why is it popular" comment. I'm glad someone brought it up.
Why are we discussing this on slashdot? When was the last time a fantasy book was this popular. I don't think LOTR sold this well back when it was first released. This book has spawned a new breed of fans. Take this story about a wedding I attended this past weekend, I met up with the groom and the rest of our pseudo-college reunion for drinks at a pub, and we asked what his fiancee was up to on the night before the wedding. Turns out she ditched him after the rehearsal dinner to go wait in line for the book. As the night continued we bumped into a bachelorette party, and some idle conversation revealed that her groom had done the same thing to her.
"Or, applying Occam's Razor, maybe she had the theories running all along?"
Occam's Razor suggests that the theory with the fewest assumptions is the correct one. (It is a simplification to say that Occam's Razor favors the "simplest" argument.)
In this case, which is the theory with the fewest assumptions? I really couldn't say for certain, so I don't think that Occam's Razor applies cleanly in this instance.
However, I think that it is highly unlikely that she wrote the first book with the entire plot-line for the series written out. The series is very inconsistent. For instance, the Patronus Charm was originally depicted as nearly impossible for a student to perform, being very advanced magic--albeit stupefyingly simplistic ("Think happy thoughts..."). Later, in Order of the Phoenix, all the students in "Dumbledore's Army" learn the patronus. The books generally do no show a great deal of forethought from book to book with he exception of book 6 which was written to setup book 7. So, if I had to choose, I'd say that assuming that Rowling plotted all the books in advance is the greater assumption.
Can you spell 'sequel'?
Or something like that.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
I'm just happy kids are reading. When I was about 11, I fainted as I was serving mass as an alter boy at morning mass, hit my head on the marble step and spent two nights in a hospital. I picked up a copy of "A Stone for Danny Fisher" that some alter cocher had left behind. It was a shit book, but it started me on a lifetime of reading that has served me well personally and professionally.
I just finished an excellent ghost story called "A Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill. It wasn't exactly Nabokov, but it held my interest over a couple of evenings, and gave me that lovely shiver that finishing any earnest novel gives its reader.
I've talked about "first books" with others. Some started with "A Boy's Book of Baseball" and some with "The Life of Abraham Lincoln". One started with the great "Jazz Country" by Nat Hentoff (a terrific teen book about a young boy who develops a friendship with a black trumpeter and learns about being human). All of them found some tale, some words, that created a thirst that would never go away, a thirst for the stories of others. It's the way we create our own story.
No, we can argue the riches that J K Rowling has amassed or the desire of certain twisted people to keep the Potter books out of the hands of children lest their own children strive to learn a spell to make them disappear. But I'm glad that kids are reading. And maybe, just maybe some sad adult who never had that thrill of enjoyment from a tale well told will pick up Harry Potter out of curiosity and find their own undiscovered country of words.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Laughable? You may not enjoy his writing, but it's certainly... sculpted. Okay, the Silmarillion isn't remotely polished, and there's that ridiculous chapter about geography in there, but the subject matter he chooses demonstrates a very poetic and Romantic sensibility, and the manner in which he writes... while it may be closer to declaiming or to orating than to speaking, some of us find it incredibly beautiful. "Ham" you may call it, but there are few people in the world who can produce ham like that, and I'll choose it over five-week-old meatloaf any day.
------
Do not kill him even now. For he has not hurt me. And in any case I do not wish him to be slain in this evil mood. He was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hand against. He is fallen, and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it.
--J.R.R. Tolkien
I figure since the hat and the sword are the only two remaining relics of Gryffindor that they are connected somehow. Since the hat is concious I bet he can summon it at will. It's kind of a deus ex machina, but hey, Harry Potter is filled with those (can you say book 4, Priori Incantatem? Or book 2, with the phoenix?)
Now along with kirk vs piccard, wars vs trek, gnome vs kde, we have:
Tolkien vs Rowling
Will it go on forever like emacs vs vi or fade out quickly into obscurity like babylon 5 vs firefly?
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
Ms. Rowling writes acceptably, and unlike far too many others managed to balance the desire for an "epic" story with one that is "fun." She didn't bother trying to mess around with any deeper commentary, and regardless of what your high-school teacher says, that's a good thing.
As to fantasy books being "childish" -- so are sports, and yet a majority of adults in the civilized world will get quite excited over at least one "professional" sport.
Agreed.
My S.O.'s got a degree in Religion, Philosophy, and is currently in grad school, and has (literally) tons of books most people would consider snobbish and high-brow,and damned academic.
She's also a HP fan, and finished the last book on Saturday afternoon, before the ink was even dry.
The point is: if ya like it, read it. If not, don't. But purposefully avoiding something because it's popular is just as brain-dead as seeking it out only because it's popular; either way, you're letting OTHER people make your decisions for you.
There is an absolutely foolproof method of discovering if you will like Harry Potter:
Go to the library (or bookstore), find a copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" [1], open it to page one and read a couple of pages. If you like the first few pages, you will in all likelyhood like the Harry Potter series, if you don't, you likely won't.
[1] Note: if you're in the US the title will be "Sorcerer's Stone"
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
That's a dupe! Damn those editors...
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
There's gotta be a worst fanfic ever award out there somewhere.... May I suggest that you give it a try.
The 1400s called. They want their prejudices back.
I picked up a copy of the first Harry Potter sometime before the first movie was released - I had the idea that I was going to read the book first. Somehow I managed to scan my eyes over all the pages of text. Something about a boy and his broom. The movie had been released on DVD by that point, and I eventually rented it.
I also picked up a copy of the second book before the movie was released. I was only able to get 50 or so pages into it before I was lost. Didn't bother to rent the movie.
Tried to read Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring before the movie came out. I was lost in the first chapter.
I do alright with non-fiction books that I've an interest in, and was reading John Taylor Gatto's A Different Kind of Teacher the summer after I finished teh college, and all my reading troubles suddenly made sense. Mr. Gatto realized over the course of his 30-year teaching career that most of his 7th-graders were incapable of reading beyond the level required for a standardized test. To prove this for his readers, he suggested going to the library and borrowing a copy of the classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, read the first 20 pages, and return for a question on the text.
I went to the library, checked out the book, and scanned the first 20 pages as best I could. I saw the answer to Mr. Gatto's question, but only because I'd read the question before going to the library. But he did have a follow up question too, and I had no idea whatsoever what was going on in this particular book.
Gatto says that he found that most his students didn't 'make pictures' to go along with the words comprising book's stories. Not because they can't, but because the way reading is taught in the Feral Government's schools trains children not to make pictures, but to read for the (multiple-choice) test.
Finally - why I couldn't (and still can't) read fiction. I've been spending these last few years trying to get my mental-picture-maker working, and when I succeed someday, then I'll pick up the Harry Potter books again. Until then, I'm not going to frustrate myself with fiction anymore.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Yeah and then they found out that they enjoyed them and they continued. Trust me, people aren't reading Harry Potter because it's a popularity contest. They probably heard about it and wanted to see what all the fuss was about and realized they liked it. If it wasn't popular they may have liked it but never heard of it, but they heard about it because it was popular, BECAUSE a lot of people liked it.
I think JRR and JK deserve to sit at the same table.
Rowling reinvented the epic tale for a modern age. Had JK Rowling had to compete with JRR, things would've been vastly different. No doubt. However, given just the difference of a few decades, JK had a tougher crowd. She brought an epic, multi-book, multi-faceted story to the masses and we took it. This isn't so much as a revival of reading, so much as a revival of writing.
I believe it was JKR who said that she didn't mind being compared to Tolkien, but something along the lines that he had a better setting, and she had better jokes.
(Given that I had never ever read the line "Nuttier than squirrel poo" before...)
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
So I don't understand if Harry's cloak is this Hallows or hallowed cloak that is so freaking *uber* how come Mad-eye could see through it? Was his eye even more uber than the cloak? Seems contrived.
McK
You're right, popularity does not equal quality. Notice how I never said that. I just said that popularity does not equal trash either. Harry Potter happens to not only be popular but actually good. And that is an opinion, but it's an opinion held by many people about a book that was the result of a lot of work. The pet rock is a fad, Harry Potter is more than a fad because fads do not last 10 years and have millions of loyal fans throughout who will stay fans even once the series ends and probably have children who they'll share the story with. Stop polarizing everything, there is something called "gray" and it's in between black and white.
The pet rock, along with the pog, is a paragon of business. A guy sold rocks to millions of people and told them they were buying a pet!!
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Reality check: Shakespeare didn't have any literary merit when he wrote. He was writing a good story that the people could relate to, but with no more literary talent than one of today's dime novel authors. This fact is acknowledged by historians, for the record, I'm not just saying it. He was writing plays that could be fed to the masses at the time and the reason he has stayed so popular is because of his ability to tell a good story. Most of his plays aren't original, they're ripped off stories that were popular at the time. His writing, while in some cases very moving and beautiful, wasn't exceptionally amazing and was written in the tongue of the time. Don't let the olde English trick you into thinking that he was writing fancily, his works were written in English that England's peasants could relate to. He even made up words like Rowling. Maybe in 400 years "muggle" will be on some list of great words that the literary genius Rowling thought up.
PS3 fans are like Harry/Hermione shippers. Fans of something that's theoretically very good, and would be nifty if it actually happened. But reality works against it, and there are reasons for that. And so it just doesn't work out, but it's not the end of the world.
Wii fans are like Ron/Hermione shippers. Much less glamorous, even mundane. Yet for various good reasons, it Just Works Out. The fans see it coming, using stuff that others just don't see (or refuse to see).
XBox 360 fans are like Luna/Hermione shippers. They just want to see Emma Watson making out with another girl on the big screen.
Nope. The product was the book that came with the rock. It was a novel way to sell a moderately funny book.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There have been 375 Million copies of these books sold, and probably more than that for movie tickets so far. Normal odds mean quite a few of those readers are bound to be nuts, even if the books don't have any effect on average. In fact, if the books actually helped people's mental state on average, that many readers would still include a bunch of highly visible weirdos who didn't get enough help fast enough. This plagues everything really popular, i.e. Star Trek is judged by the people who get married in Klingon costumes, not the ones who decide to become engineers and/or work for NASA.
Who is John Cabal?
While the series is enjoyable overall, there were some major problems that ruined my enjoyment of the books.
Molly Weasley kills Bellatrix Lestrange.
One of the most feared duelers on Voldemort's side is killed by Molly Weasley? Sure, she's a member of the OotP, but the only spells she had shown in the previous books were household charms. It shows JK Rowling's opinion of a mother's love. But that is going too far in my opinion. Made me laugh when I read it.
Snape's patronus is a doe.
I understand that Snape loved Lily, but why does a doe represent Lily? Sure, James (secret!) animagus form was a stag, but that would imply that Snape cared about James. Lily's patronus was a doe, but why would Snape's be the same? I assume Lily's was a doe to represent James (even though a stag would make more sense), but again, that implies that Snape cared about James.
Gryffindor's sword in the Sorting Hat.
I thought that Griphook took it? If he cared so much about it, why wouldn't he protect it in some way?
The Deathly Hallows.
JK Rowling introduces some super powerful items in this book that have never been mentioned before.
The Invisibility Cloak was around since the first book, but it was never noticed that it lasted much longer than normal? I'd assume Hermione would read up on it at least.
Voldemort made the ring a Horcrux without knowing its abilities? With his quest for power, I'd assume he would have at least heard of the Deathly Hallows.
The wand? An unbeatable super weapon was introduced in the last book in order to defeat Voldemort since Harry couldn't outduel him. And the concept of a wand changing owners was introduced to make sure that Harry owned it? None of this was ever mentioned before? Come on.
The Taboo.
So the Ministry can detect when and where a certain word is said throughout the whole country? Why didn't they use it before to find out when someone used the Unforgivables? Or when someone mentioned Death Eaters? Or plenty of other ways it could have been used.
Harry not moving when Voldemort cast a Crucio on him?
I understand not screaming, since the pain can be resisted somewhat. But not even twitching?
The epilogue.
If she insisted on doing an epilogue to destroy any future books, couldn't she have at least mentioned what happened to the other characters? The Ministry? Weasely Wizarding Wheezes? It mentioned that Ted Lupin wasn't living with Harry, but where else would he live if not his godfather?
Consciousness - That annoying time between naps.
The Book: I thought it was the best in the series, honestly. The book is so different than the first six though, but I think it's for the better. If Harry had just gone to Hogwarts and then realized in April that he hadn't yet destroyed all the Horcruxes, I would have been very disappointed. The way Rowling wrote the last book, it was very believable how hard their journey was. The trio fought, got bored, got cold, split up, adventured, almost gave up, and persevered. All very believable for a nine month journey if you ask me. And everything was wrapped up nearly perfectly. I loved the Battle of Hogwarts and the final battle, but the epilogue didn't really do "19 Years Later" justice. Obviously Harry and Ginny get together, obviously Ron and Hermione get together. They have kids, the circle completes, blah blah blah. I want to know what Harry did for 19 years? Become Minister of Magic? Become and Auror? Teach Defense Against the Dark Arts for a few years? No answer but we do learn that he has a son named Albus Severus so it's all good, right?
Anyways, the book was the perfect ending to a series many of us grew up with. I remember the first time my grandpa shows me the book and said "Hey, this is a story about a boy wizard, and they play games on broomsticks!" That was nearly 10 years ago and I remember it so fondly. Harry and me grew up together, and now his story is complete. I'm done with college now, am working in the real world. But how I still wish I was a wizard, going to school at Hogwarts, playing Quidditch, and hanging out with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
The Movie: Order of the Phoenix is my second favorite novel in the series, after Deathly Hallows. However, the movie kind of stinks. It's more in line with the last two, thankfully, but I thought the book was so good that maybe I had such high expectations. Umbridge was the star of that book, such evil but clearly not with Voldemort. It was a great concept and I think it worked wonderfully, in the book. In the movie, however, she's just an obstacle in the hero's path and not that interesting of a character. The final scenes at the Ministry were also a let down, and differed a lot from the book. I understand that the movie series now is pretty much on it's own, but it's hard for me not to compare.
I'd rate the book a 10/10 and the movie a 6/10.
All in all, thank you J.K. Rowling for a magnificent set of novels, you are a master storyteller.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
It is a good scapegoat for people who never learned how to interact socially with other people.
Wishing for Asperger's is as dumb as wishing for color blindness or hemophilia.
If you wish for that, what you probably have is Munchausen syndrome. Please go see a doctor and don't rely on self-diagnosys or what some random person of the Internet told you (myself included).
No sig
It's easy to substitute "mostly bad" with "can't possibly be good," but it's inaccurate. Incorrectly paraphrasing an opponent's claim to falsely imply a universalization is a popular fallacy. ;-)
Education refines our judgments. Lots of people call education "snooty." It's a popular cliche. Not that educated people won't like Potter --- it's just that they ought to provide criteria other than popularity.
I do think your thinly veiled analogy to racial prejudice is over the top. Even dumb, maybe.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
Toggle switches? Luxury!
REAL men write the bits on the drum with a bar magnet.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So what you're saying is that it has sex with other children-to-young adult-range series of fantasy and adventure books?
My goodness. What an aberration. What a sin against the will of God.
+++ATH0
Ironically though, kids aren't reading. Yes, they're reading Harry Potter, but various reports on the topic of reading in the generation who have grown up with it suggest that it isn't translating that into a general interest in books (One random article on the topic grabbed from a quick look at google). I'd be very interested to see what happens in 5 or 10 years, once the craze really goes away - will there be any lasting change, or will the whole "reading" malarky vanish into the night?
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
She didn't bother trying to mess around with any deeper commentary
There is a bit of this, if you're looking for it.
+++ATH0
seems to be that it is well worth reading at the very least as enjoyable fiction. Plenty of peer-reviewed papers have been published on the subject. I suggest you verify that you know what the fuck you're talking about before turning up your nose at it.
"Profanity is the last refuge of the inarticulate motherfucker" -- Oscar Wilde
+++ATH0
Speaking of Luna, what the hello happened to her in the end? There was not a mention in the epilogue.
"Popularity is not an indicator of good quality" -- True!
From this follows neither:
"Unpopularity IS an indicator of good quality"
nor
"Popularity IS an indicator of bad quality"
Popularity is typically an indicator merely that something merits attention, because if a large range of people can agree that they like it, it is probably at least deserving of some interest, if not approval.
You fail. Have a nice day.
+++ATH0
The sorting hat is Godric Gryffindor's old hat. Gryfindor's sword can be pulled from the hat in times of great need, but that's it. It cannot just produce whatever random object you fancy.
If you read the text (p.587) you'll find "Neville [...] drew from [the sorting hat's] depths something silver with a glittering, rubied handle"
In the movies, people sometimes use magic without wands, but it's rare.
If the movies are not canon, we could assume that, like Griphook implies, both species can use magic with and without wands, but wands are an easy way to gain power and control. I believe something similar was mentioned in a previous book about casting with and without words.
Probably, with easy access to wands, nobody has bothered studying magic without wands, aside from Potions.
Remember, of course, that the Silmarillion was never finished.
ed? You wuss. I use TECO.
The difference is that Tolkien was a crazy academic who believed his literary works were merely a justification to the fantasy languages that he had created, and Rowling is a mum telling a mediocre fairy story about no-one special.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Where Dumbledore tells harry something like 'Voldemort left a piece of himself in you, Harry'
Yay me!
>> you cannot deny that the work Tolkien put into Middle Earth eclipses Rowling's middle-grade novels.
Why yes I can deny it.
Why. I can deny it again. And again, and again.
You presumptuously saying otherwise does not stop me from saying so.
8-digit UID?
Aren't you right in the target demographic of 10-16 yar olds?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Does anyone remember those weird geeky scifi/fantasy stories (it might have been just one book) about some programmers who get trapped in a magical kingdom of some kind and doing magic involves writing spells with little dragon-spirits named emacs?
I can't remember who wrote these or what they were called AT ALL.
+++ATH0
He's gettin it like Harry on graduation nite.
She didn't bother trying to mess around with any deeper commentary
I'm sorry, but that's one of the silliest things I've read by someone who enjoys the books. She says the books are about death, but I see them as being about racism, particularly the Nazi genocide type. The Dursley's are all about child abuse (not the physical kind, but mental); there is corruption in government, huge amounts on freedom of the press, etc., etc.
One of the reason's I love the book is because of the social commentary she brings into it without ramming it down your throat.
Take note, take note, O world,
To be direct and honest is not safe.
Gilderoy Lockhart was obviously a liar, a fraud, and a coward the whole book. Sirius Black had a sudden realignment at the end of the book, as did Alastor Moody. None of them were questionable like Snape. Other than Snape, characters in Harry Potter are all black and white, they either like killing for fun or love their families and pet their dogs often and never, ever give up fighting Voldemort.
ResidntGeek
Read "Ender's Game" (Orson Scott Card) for a different take on this subject...
DH
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I think this is quite a fair assessment from someone who just doesn't like the books. I, for example, am entirely capable of recognizing that Being John Malkovich is a very well-made, well-acted, well-casted, well-directed, well-written film, but I simply cannot stand it. It just is not at ALL enjoyable for me (possibly because I find the characters repulsive). That doesn't mean I don't see some serious talent in it.
+++ATH0
It was 1963, kept the book below the desk, but I'm sure the teacher noticed. Also quite a few other SF books. We had a great library...
I don't like reading Tolkien because of its language. I know that Tolkien used a reach vocabulary, good style, and all that. But it's hard to read his "old-style" language.
Rowling uses modern easy-to-read language (various puns help too).
5 and 6 are pretty much rife with the same themes.
+++ATH0
So Argumentum ad populum is not a Wizarding spell like accio or expelliarmus?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
This, my high-horsed, elitist friend, is an article about the cumulation of a 10+ year long pop culture phenomenon, in which a series of BOOKS - BOOKS, that one must READ - have reached the heights of popularity normally reserved for much more pedestrian faire.
In this age of ever-deteriorating educational standards, dropping literacy rates, and a overall lack of mental challenges taken up by our youth, a story about jaded teenagers lining up in droves to buy a BOOK would flash right through science fiction and wind up as fantasy - if it wasn't actually TRUE.
Kids are reading, and it is cool to do so. This is a triumph beyond whatever "lack of challenge" you perceive in the writing.
And guess what? The stories are FUN. You're not getting Tolstoy, but you are getting a pretty good yarn with some deeper themes in it. Not every meal must be spinach and cod liver oil. It is OK to have the occasional ice cream.
Get over yourself and your pretentious attitudes.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
he was the bravest man I've ever known.
+++ATH0
ender's game, for me. considering the site we're on, i don't think i'm very unique in this.
the privacy of one's mind is important.
you do have something to hide.
No, really?! A purely profit driven film adaption of a mediocre children's book was underwhelming? I never would have guessed.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I can see the comparison... Both are shallow, overly simplistic, cliche and utterly boring.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
After all the talk about remorse and courage and love and all that malarky throughout the books, the villain lost the final battle not because he was a cruel heartless evil who didn't understand the true Power of Good (tm), but simply because he didn't doublecheck events well enough with his minions and killed the wrong person.
Really he lost because he was arrogant, which goes along with being heartless. It was a series of bad decisions and character flaws that brought him to his end. I think Rowling did a good job of illustrating that.
+++ATH0
see: star trek. Or just about any "universe" based fiction whatsoever with more than one installment.
I was disappointed by the epilogue as well. Before I read a page of it, I already knew Harry and Ginny would get married, and I predicted the kids named James and Lily too.
It might have been nice to see some vignettes--just a paragraph or two touching the courtship, wedding, newlywed argument, landing a job, etc.
As for the OotP movie adaptation, the only change that bothered me was that Harry handed over the prophecy to Lucius instead of stalling for time ("Yeah right, as if you're not going to kill us anyway"). I think the other changes streamlined the story for the movie screen without compromising its spirit.
Wow. I absolutely love reading Tolkien because of his use of language; it has a melodic quality that I've not found in any others' writing.
I particularly love to read Tolkien aloud, because this allows the richness to come to the surface. If I'm not reading aloud, I often go too quickly and miss the details and hidden corners of Tolkien's sentences that, while they don't necessarily advance the plot, are integral to his books as works of art. There is no such care or attention to detail in Rowling's words; hers make a workmanlike product that conveys a decent story but bears little resemblence to Tolkien's art.
I guess whether or not one finds Tolkien's language easy to read depends upon experience; I grew up reading and re-reading Tolkien, so his style of language is like an old friend, immediately recognized and warmly greeted.
I have read none of the previous books. I watched the Harry Potter 5 movie that just came out and was pleasantly surprised it had a mostly self-sufficient story (i.e. enough was presented in the movie itself to enjoy but if you were a Potter fan you'd get more from it). It was only when I found that four of my friends were closet Potter fanatics did I consider learning anything more about this series.
Of course, I have more of an interest in the darker characters and the storylines dealing with fear and death than I do with the "coming of age" and "discovering your hidden talents" stories that were apparently much more common in the first books and movies. My friends discussions had spoilers flying about the events of Harry Potter 6. So only Harry Potter 7 really held anything like expectation for me.
My friends took me to a Harry Potter release party at midnight. That was an interesting story by itself, but one I won't relate here. I wound up with a copy of the book and only a vague knowledge of anything that had gone on previously other than the recently released movie and one big spoiler from the sixth book. Three words along the lines of X kills Y.
And I thought the book was pretty enjoyable. The 700 odd pages were easy to get through. I enjoyed the way the book starts out focused on the darker parts of the story. It went into questionable territory when much was made about a wedding for wizards and all the preparations and the comedy of the people who showed up. It started to get a bit tiring in all of that until a magical lynx showed up with a message that sends everything straight to hell. I couldn't put the book down at that point.
What I really liked were the challenging ways it gets the reader to look at authorities like a teacher, the media, or the government, and to at least look at it with something less than blind trust. Be prepared to read below the obvious. Don't be prepared to just give up because going along with an abusive power will ultimately be bad for you in the end.
There's a lot that happens in the story. For real espionage enthusiasts there will be a number of mistakes that the author seems to make that I fully expected to blow up on the main characters but did not. There are a couple of events that seem just a bit too coincidental but fortunately it's small and wound up speeding the plot along in what otherwise would have taken a long, long road that didn't really seem to hold much interest.
I very much enjoyed the tale of journey to the end even if I didn't really think the end was terribly fulfilling in itself. Of course my interest are the darker storylines and I was a bit surprised that certain characters made it to the end even though they had set themselves up as characters that would see more redemption and meaning if they died. Yes, that's morbid of me. And no, I don't have much empathy with most of the characters (not having read the first six books).
The Obi-Wan factor: I think this is an overused plot device where the hero gets things explained to him by a dead mentor. There was little of this in the book, but there was one chapter where it was used completely and totally and undermined some of the regret of not being able to talk to a particular loved one you really need to talk to. On the plus side, it could be interpreted as imagination rather than a ghostly visitation, and the advice delivered is really more to wrap together loose ends that otherwise wouldn't have explanation. It delievers a story that the dreaming character might have invented to make all the pieces fit in a way that makes everything okay. Or it might be a ghost that's finally free to relate the way the mysteries fit together. Personally, I was let down by this a bit since I would like to see this technique used in fewer children's stories. Death isn't like just being in an area with bad cell phone reception so you can't always call. As far as being integral to the plot though, it was not.
I'd definitely like my nephews to read these stories when they are o
I disagree. If this was a discussion about, say, a big hit sci-fi novel, would you accept it? My money's on yes, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Fantasy is a big interest of the stereotypical geek, and this is a huge event in the world of fantasy novels.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Something genuinely thought inducing, something that challenges the mind, something which speaks to our future? There are plenty of new books like that.
Name three.
Bet you can't.
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I would have to disagree with you where you say she doesn't show foresight.
While a slashdot comment isn't ideal for listing every instance of her picking up a long dead thread from previous books, I can list a couple:
- Harry talking to the snake in the zoo in the beginning of book 1, before we learned about parseltongues in book 2
-In the introduction to book 1, Serious Black is mentioned in passing, then ignored until Book 3.
-In book 1, Quirrel was traveling in Algeria, which is also where Wormtail found Voldemort, and where he hid the Ravenclaw headdress.
-Book 2 showing Riddle's diary being a horcrux, 4 books before we knew the word horcrux
-Horseless carriages showing up in book 2 (maybe book 1, too, but they took the boats across the water) 3 or 4 books before we learned about thestrals
There are a lot more, but you see where I'm going. Lots of details plotted long before they're "used".
I will admit that it seems like she sometimes (ab)uses Deux ex machina to get the people out of trouble, but hey, I still like James Bond, and he exists due to Deus ex machine.
I do believe she frequently
Check out my sysadmin blog!
..age ten and read LotR
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Harry is in fact the seventh horcrux. he is told so by dumbledore when voldemort kills him.
Soap box, Ballot box, Jury box, Ammo box. Use in that order.
Harry Potter discussions belong on Slashdot exactly as much as Star Trek, The Simpsons, Serenity or any other popular form of entertainment enjoyed (at least in part) by Slashdot readers. "News for nerds. Stuff that matters" doesn't just mean high-tech. After all, Slashdot started as just some guy's blog, with stories he found interesting.
I'm not aware of any scoping document for Slashdot that defines precisely what should and should not be here.
What? 4chan memes in my slashdot?
Captcha: dignity, which clearly neither of us has anymore.
You're introduced to loads of characters in each book. In Book 1, Ron, Hermione, Hagrid, Snape, Draco, Dean, Neville, Seamus, McGonnagal, Flitwick, Firenze, etc. Book 2, less so. Lockehart, Molly, Ginny, Arthur, Tom Riddle, Colin Creevy, Lucius Malfoy, etc. Book 3 gives us Sirius, Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Cedric Diggory and a few other characters. Book 4 was Krum, the vast majority of the Death Eaters, Fleur, Karkaroff, Rita Skeeter, The Tenth Doctor...
We're forced to evaluate some of their loyalties. Karkaroff, we assume, was going to rejoin the death eaters... Until he showed up dead later in either book 5 or 6. We assume that because he's a Weasley, even though he's a giant dick, Percy was going to end up on the side of Good... Until he's shown to side with the Ministry during the Second War until nearly the end of Deathly Hallows. Even Rufus Scrimgeour was questionable until he takes like the Auror he is and choose death over cooperating with the Dark Lord.
The question of Snape's loyalty was always in question, yes, but he's not the only character.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
What you and JK Rowling have in common is a dire need for competent editing.
definitely wasn't my first book, but it sparked my love of reading unlike anything before had. however as far as fantasy universe stories go, i prefer discworld, but potter has a much more convoluted story line that keeps me engaged. otherwise however, im generally reading political non-fiction.
Soap box, Ballot box, Jury box, Ammo box. Use in that order.
or Burroughs even
Yeah, I grew up on Edgar Rice - those Barsoom books made me a life long fan of reading!
Good on you - Uh, wait, you mean William don't you?
Who is John Cabal?
i wish i could mod you up for funny
he was pointing out that getting excited over professional sports is just as childish as getting excited over a book. plenty of football fans dress up in their favorite teams colors, and plenty of potter lovers dress up like their favorite characters for releases.
Soap box, Ballot box, Jury box, Ammo box. Use in that order.
You do understand, don't you, that you've just proved Star Trek is fantasy, not that Harry Potter is SF?
Who is John Cabal?
The sorting hat was owned by Godric Gryffindor, not Ravenclaw. :-P Plus, Luna might not have been worthy enough to pull the diadem out even if it was possible. Hence why people who do not appreciate details shouldn't read Harry Potter.
Your post reminded me of one still-dangling plot thread. There's still a 24-hour gap in the timeline of events between the time Hagrid took Harry from Godric's Hollow, to when he shows up to meet Dumbledore at Privet Drive.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
So you are trying to say that your lips move when you read?
Rowling *did* have to compete with Tolkien. The movies, anyway.
I don't really care about Tolkien's art. Sure, he invented several self-consistent languages for his books. But I get tired of his language about after 10 pages. I don't like books which require several degrees in literature to understand it.
I've first read Tolkien's books translated to my native language (Russian) and I've read Tolkien in English much later, but I liked translations more than the original English books! Maybe because I usually can consciously spot "language tricks" in English text.
More likely than you think, click here to find out.
Soap box, Ballot box, Jury box, Ammo box. Use in that order.
I'm not aware of any scoping document for Slashdot that defines precisely what should and should not be here.
Neither do i, but a line has to be drawn. Live free or Die Hard was released a while ago; why can't we have a front page discussion on it? Hey, almost every geek i know loves action movies, so it must be relevant! Ratatouille was great and those Pixar guys use computers - let's have another one! What about music? Should we have one the next time, say, Kraftwerk releases an album? Synths, oooh. And Transformers? Robots falling from the sky disguised as trucks is as sci-fi and geeky as stories about a boy attending to wizard school, isn't it?
My point is that these discussion invitations are nice, but they're not editorials. Heck, they're not even stories. Not even reviews - and we happen to have a space for book reviews here, even when most are for tech-oriented books. This is more of a blog or fan forum thing. Which is, let me repeat, perfectly fine. Just not the scope of this site.
After all, Slashdot started as just some guy's blog, with stories he found interesting.
I know. I weren't arround back then, but as far as i know, it was a blog about tech stories he found interesting. I doubt they had stories on pottery just because the owner happened to start a course and liked it either.
I disagree. If this was a discussion about, say, a big hit sci-fi novel, would you accept it? My money's on yes, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
/., if that can be called sci-fi ;).
/. (even while it very well interests the rest!); a "geee, let's all discuss the hot thing this week" sort of thing which usually fits better forums and blogs. So, we have to draw a distinction: is this a forum about things "geeks" will find interesting? Or is it a portal with news for nerds? I like Battlestar Galactica, why don't we have a front page discussion on it at the end of every season?
Actually, no, i really wouldn't. Then again, i wouldn't accept it if it were a sci-fi film either (and i was surprised when the fuzz about the new Transformers film didn't hit
My peeve is that this is not a story, nor an editorial, and not even a book review. It's an invitation to discussion for a topic that barely interests a lot of
Seen death, not caused death. Thestrals simply would be visible since he was present at her death. Causing it would be irrelevant.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Not really. JRR Tolkien nearly had as much say in his movies as JKR did. JKR just had the benefit of being alive at the time.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
So? I read LOTR in 3rd. What's your point?
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Maybe you should submit some stories about Ratattoullie, Live Free or Die Hard, or Kraftwerk.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
"As he dies, Snape gives up his memories to Harry, who uses the Pensieve to find out that Snape was on Dumbledore's side all along,..Snape has been acting to protect Harry all the while..." - from Wikipedia.
I caught something all the way back from the first entry in the series (though I think it appears only in the book and not the movie as much.) There was some kind of ridiculous commotion going on, but Snape realizes that Harry himself is somewhere else, and slips away to quietly deal with real problems.
Though Harry doesn't catch on right away (if ever), once I knew from book 1 that Snape's nastiness was all an act, I started looking for extra showy nastiness to please Draco Malfoy, but carefully orchestrated not to actually cause Harry any actual serious damage. I think the actor did a completely glorious handling of the double-agent gig.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So most of our Presidents have been bad? I would like to think most were good.
That's a great book. I've loved every Asimov book I've ever picked up.
I felt the author did a poor job with the Deathly Hallows and that the book's overall quality was mediocre. First I'll start off with what she did well:
m .
1. Snape as a hero. I doubt it was that surprising for most people, but her explanations of his motives were very plausible.
2. Dumbledore's history was intriguing.
What she did poorly:
1. Character consistency. Neville goes from almost a squib to holding his own against death eaters, where does this come from? Hermione becomes stupid. Hermione knows that there is a spell that can destroy horcruxes and _Crabbe_ of all people is capable of casting it, yet Hermione doesn't consider it worth learning as it is too "dangerous". Clearly running around without a plan and hoping a special sword drops into her lap is a much more intelligent choice.
2. Magic System still isn't explained. We have muggles, purebloods, mudbloods, halfbloods, and squibs and yet why certain people can do magic and others can't isn't even hinted at. Honestly the rules of her magic system are so poorly explained and adhocced that it can almost be considered it's own deus ex machina. Anytime someone is in a sticky situation that couldn't previously be solved, just change the rules of magic! See house-elves, wand pseudo sentience, and transfiguration limitations. I don't know about you, but I would like a magic system that is deeper than speak latin + wave wand + made_up_rule_that_conveniently_solves_plot_proble
3. The use of house elves as deus ex machina- Oh no Harry Potter is trapped in a dungeon where apparition is impossible. Hah house-elves can teleport where wizards can't, problem solved!
4. Magical battles are _boring_. Yes boring, if you are good you spam stupefy/expelliarmus, if you are evil you spam Unforgivable Curses although mainly Avada Kedavra. Occasionally someone does something mildly clever but this is the exception even for supposedly intelligent characters! No one does anything clever like "accio testicles", or transmogrifying the ground under them to something dangerous, or even something as simple as using a high-powered lumens to blind. Instead it's cast their faction's spell over and over and over. On top of this there are niggling things such as Avada Kedavra being known as the "Unblockable Curse" yet hitting it in midair with stupefy causes it to "explode into red and green fireworks".
5. Voldemort's incompetence isn't believable. Okay so she wanted Voldemort's flaw to be his arrogance, but he isn't a moron. He knows Harry will come back to Godric's Hollow and yet lays a pathetic trap. He should have at least made it unapparatable. He doesn't exploit the mind link like he previously did to kill Sirius. He also continues to be outsmarted by a 17 year old with no plan. It is like watching a movie where the superweapon has a giant self-destruct button that the hero pushes and the villian doesn't see it coming!
6. Cliched- Harry martyrs himself and is brought back to life.
7. Predictable- Who didn't know that Harry was the last Horcrux or that Snape was a good guy, or that Harry wasn't actually dead?
8. It had the plot of a bad rpg- Find the magical item that will help you complete your quest. Now destroy the villain's enchantments. Congratulations, kill the final boss. Scroll credits.
9. Unsatisfying epilogue. Now this could potentially be cleared up in a different book but it would be nice to know what actually happened to everyone. We aren't even told what Harry did afterwards. Did he become an auror, a quidditch player, or did he do something else? All this emphasis on non-human's rights by Hermione and no mention of if wizarding politics changed. Nothing is told about the main characters other than who they reproduced with and how they named their children (also not a surprise). Honestly she may as well have said "And they lived happily ever after.", and it would have conveyed essentially the same information.
There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
Some person who won't give their name or pseudonym on a blog says Harry Potter books are 'gay.'
Good literary criticism there. No need to touch on plot, character development, holes in either, expressed morality, themes or writing style. No. The books are 'gay' and that should be a good enough review for anyone.
Thankyou, Mr or Ms Anonynous Coward. Your keen insight is a valuable addition to the many articles written about this series.
I suspect that reading as a form of entertainment will be completely killed by more modern pursuits such as web browsing.
Much like musicians never give live performances now that recordings of their work are available in various formats.
And the cinemas were all forced to shut down when TV became popular in the homes of the general public.
[/sarcasm]
The first book and movie had a sense of wonder. The Order of the Phoenix in movie form is more about blowing stuff up. The new book has enough violence for a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.
The final book has not just a war, but torture scenes, refugees, and ethnic cleansing. It's about the Final Solution to the Mudblood Problem. The movie version might have Voldemort addressing the Death Eaters from a dais backed by tall vertical banners.
Shakespeare is popular. His plays were written for the people in the street, the common men and women. I think you'd be hard pressed to claim that they're not high art, that they don't hold a pretty good mirror to ourselves, even after five hundred years.
I don't make the claim that Rowling is on par with Shakespeare, but the point stands. Popularity is a completely seperate thing to quality. Confusing the two is poor thinking.
Popular taste is popular taste. Calling it low taste is elitism, pure and simple. It also fails to substitute for informed criticism.
That's memorialized in a screenshot? Eeep! And I thought my slashdot addiction was bad. (Now, if only it was in postscript, rather than PNG...)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I have enjoyed reading the books and can't wait to finish the last one, but there are a few things that really bothered me.
It was all basically centred around Britain. All the wizarding history and what not. Then, in book four, all of a sudden there are other wizarding schools out there. And a few are friendly with Hogwarts. There are suddenly wizards in Egypt and China, and other areas of the world. With a whole world of wizards, why didn't any of the come to aid them in their struggle?
I know the latest book says Dumbledore didn't get a chance to travel abroad after he left school, but surely a wizard of his stature would have in later years at least communicated with and shared bonds with other great wizards from around the world. Why hadn't he formed friendships with other great wizards? Surely there would be some as skilled as he, or even more so. It just seems that Voldemort was strong enough to be a threat to the entire world. Why didn't Albus send word to other great witches and wizards, telling them he was back, and that they should form a gang to kick the snot out of him?
Just some of my thoughts after reading the first hundred pages of the last book...
Star Trek and Star Wars are just westerns, set in space.
Logic called, wants to know if you want an appointment.
Something is not good because it's popular, it is often true that popular things show bad taste, BUT and that's where your logic fails (or rather, where you fail logic), that doesn't mean that if something is popular then it's not good. Something can be good AND popular.
Or rather
if p then g
being false doesn't imply
if p then not g
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
How does Neville get Gryffindor's sword to kill Nalini?
:)
The sword is drawn out of the sorting hat, when it falls off his head. This is in the book, you know
And the snake's name is Nagini, not Nalini.
J.R.R. Tolkien more or less invented high fantasy as we know it
I understand that you like Tolkien but I suggest you take a look at literary history before you make such a claim.
Epic fantasy/mythology - take a look at the ancient greeks for early work. Ever heard of Homer's Odyssey?
C.S. Lewis also often gets compared to Tolkien though I'd call his books lighter reading and the Christian metaphors are a little bit annoying.
Invented languages? Here's a list
http://www.lib.umt.edu/guide/lang/artifph.htm
By the way I love neither the Harry Potter books nor Lord of the Rings nor Homer's works. All eventually put me to sleep with the rich detail. (I don't enjoy multi-page descriptions of things I'm afraid).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
While those other movies have got some interest in this community, I would argue that the Harry Potter books are something of a phenomenom and nothing else you've mentioned comes close. The attention these books have received is far more than I've ever seen for any non-religious book, and that alone makes them worthy of comment. Added to that is the fantasy nature of these books (a key nerd genre) and it seems reasonable to have at least one thread.
A line can be drawn, but I can't see any good argument for putting these books and their unusual reception (compared to any other books) on the far side of it.
Lastly, like all blogs you can skip stories you're not interested in - there are plenty of stories I find about as fascinating as lint. Posting comments won't help define editorial policy. Email Cowboy Neal instead.
I threw up my hands in the air and cheered when I got to this sentence:
"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!"
Even though I enjoyed the whole book, that line alone deserves its own reward (once you understand who it's coming from and who it's directed to).
(Tolkien made that error with LoTR. There are six "books" there, but the final one is horribly rushed in comparison to the others. If Book six had expanded out into books 7 and maybe 8, he could have cleaned up a lot of things. Yes, he had enough trouble getting a publisher as it was. The tape recordings were made during the time of deepest despair. Ultimately, though, a few more chapters probably wouldn't have made it any harder of a sell and would have added texture and flavor that ended up missing.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
They are black and white only in the sense that it is how Harry sees them. Book 7 shows him and us how Snape wasn't that evil, and that Dumbledore wasn't always that good a man. Seeing the world in shades of gray is part of growing up, and that is what Harry does.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
The same reason we can all program in 1s and 0s if we wanted to, but we use compilers instead. With a superior tool available that can do everything the inferior one can do, the inferior ability/tool atrophies in favor of the superior one.
Did anyone notice the fact that the ending was quite similar to the Matrix, apart from the fact that the protagonist(s) are alive at the end of it ?
I don't know. What was the last SF novel that had an initial printing run of 12 million copies?
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
I don't want to read
Strange, I first read Tolkien in French and liked it, but once I read it in English I couldn't believe how horrible a translation of Tolkien is horrible.
Oh and I love reading stuff which requires broad knowledge and understanding of literature or history to understand and appreciate. It's certainly harder to read than HP but it's intellectually more rewarding.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Why is this post on slashdot?
1984?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Sadist.
After all, I am strangely colored.
It's less of a deus ex machina if it's been planned for years and was set up three books prior. I believe priori incantatem fits both those criteria. Not everything in the books fits, but that did.
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
I don't have to. I think they've no business on this site.
Apparently not, since Dumbledore in fact utters the exact words "You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make."
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
After reading the book, one thing stuck in me regarding copyright issue. Somehow J.K. Rowlings manage to slip that in the book, the time Bill and Harry discuss about the ownership of the Godric's sword. The goblin always thought that the ownership belongs to the maker, not to the buyer. What do you slashdot lot think?
Work like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like you do when nobody's watching
It's fanon, of course, but the topic is covered in some depth in Don Sample's altogether excellent Harry Potter and the Key of Dagon. If you don't already know what that's a crossover to, don't feel bad, I didn't either...
OMG!!!!1 THESTRALZ13!
The world would be much worse off if reading Harry Potter was as essential to survival as breathing.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Priori Incantatem was first mentioned in book 4, at the Q******* (I can't spell that :) World Cup, and the extremely obscure effect that happened when Harry and Voldemort crossed wands had never been mentioned. For four books the idea that you couldn't stop a killing curse had been pounded in, that's what made Harry so special. So then, suddenly, as if by magic (pardon the pun) a plot device is introduced so that suddenly Harry doesn't die by Voldemort's hand? It's like the definition of a Deus Ex Machina.
I should add that I don't necessarily think this is so bad, I really like the Potter books. Deus Ex Machina's are lazy ways to get out of tricky plot points, but they don't necessarily drag a book down. I mean, the expression comes from classic tragic plays like Medea, and that play is probably one of the most brilliant works of literature in history. I'm just saying, Rowling likes them too :)
So, we have to draw a distinction: is this a forum about things "geeks" will find interesting? Or is it a portal with news for nerds?
It's a blog. It's their blog. It's a forum about things CmdrTaco et al. find interesting.
I like Battlestar Galactica, why don't we have a front page discussion on it at the end of every season?
You must have missed the dozen or so stories put up in the last few months. They posted something like three stories about Edward James Olmos claiming the show was ending. Not surprising that you didn't notice. Most people only complain about things that irritate them.
After all, I am strangely colored.
AbeBooks is an international clearing house for the sale of used and rare books. 100 million books on sale from 13,500 booksellers in 57 countries.
At last count, AbeBooks had sold 55 Harry Potter books priced at $1.000 or more. In August 2005, AbeBooks sold probably the world's most expensive Harry Potter book when a buyer spent $37,000 ($20,000) on an exceptionally rare first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Most Expensive Harry Potters Ever Sold on AbeBooks
To date, the Harry Potter books have sold more then 300 million copies worldwide in over 200 countries and the books have been translated into more than 60 languages - only the bible can better those statistics.
In France, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix became the first English language book to ever top bestseller list but the series has permeated almost every corner of the atlas.
The books have been translated into most Eastern European (from Albanian to Ukranian), East Asian (Cambodian to Vietnamese), and Scandinavian languages. Some countries even have books in several dialects - for instance, in Spain it is possible to buy the books in Spanish, Basque, Catalan and Galician.
But it's possible to find even more obscure translations such as Faroese (with a mere 60,000 to 80,000 worldwide speakers) and Kalaallisut (the dialect of Greenland spoken by about 54,000). Some of the books have even been translated into the dead languages of Latin (meet Harrius Potter) and Ancient Greek, the latter translation being the longest work in the language since the novels of Heliodorus of Emesa in the 3rd century AD. The Wild World of Harry Potter Books, The Harry Potter Series
The literary critic, the academic, doesn't quite know what to make of Harry Potter:
Literary manias expire with horrible suddenness. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the novel in 1852. In America, at the height of its popularity, steam-driven printing presses exploded, trying to keep up with sales demand. But, two years later, Harriet Beecher Stowe's book was dead on the shelves. Last year's book. Harry mania...and there may be more
The only problem with this particular example is that it isn't true. Stowe's novel sold well throughout the nineteenth century. Stage productions and later films embedded Stowe's most memorable images in the in the American consciousness. Simon Legree. Eliza crossing the ice. In the 1930s the WPA's Federal Theater Project produced a stinging, unsentimental adaptation that took the story back to its anti-slavery roots.
Perhaps the key to understanding Rowling's appeal to children, to adolescents, is that she like Twain, like Dickens, like Lemony Snicket, is an uncompromising moralist.
And Harry gets killed by bees.
I was actually referring to the fact that the LOTR movies were coming out at the same time as the Harry Potter books, so there was no way Rowling could have got away with simply recycling Tolkien (like so many other fantasy writers have done).
Truth be told, there was probably marketing synergy with the coincidence of LOTR and Harry Potter.
IMHO Harry Potter actually owes a lot more to the Narnia series than LOTR. Both Harry Potter and Narnia are stories of modern day children with access to a secret magical world (although the Narnia kids aren't so modern any more!).
In any case, my bookshelf is certainly wide enough to accommodate all three of Rowling, Tolkien and Lewis.
You underrate the value of the Queen's diplomatic role and seem to think that wealth/success should be proportional to effort/artistic value. No matter what field you look at, there are always examples of brilliant work being (relatively) overlooked. Imnsho, if you want cracking good jokes in a fantasy world, try Terry Pratchett. If you want a brilliantly paced story arc, try the Jonathon Stroud's Bartemious Trilogy. And for great plots with subversive anti-establishment undercurrents, try Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. These authors are just plain brilliant. Perhaps their originality gets in the way of wild success. I hope that the end of H.P. leads to people seeking out other good books.
In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible. - Ursula Le Guin
I can hardly believe the elitism and snobbery in some of these comments!
:)
Oh wait, yes I can....
The series is decently written, she's a much better storyteller than writer and definitely a better writer than most who target this audience. Which audience is that? I would say a similar audience as the Famous Five books (Enid Blyton), Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and the Narnia tales. Not Dostoyevski, Bulgakov, Asimov, Steinbeck et. al.
Clearly, as the Harry Potter series more akin to these stories than to "serious literature", they must be pretty good. I mean, they sell by the truckload, and buyers are definitely not just in their teens.
Their secret is in capturing the imagination, nothing more, nothing less. By getting a certain suspension of disbelief and creating a exciting, wondrous world she gets her target audience wrapped up in her world and caring for the characters therein. Thing is, she manages to get this effect for lots of other people too, many of whom also read serious stuff.
Although her writing is not as fluid as many other contemporary authors (notably Neil Gaiman IMO) dhe gets the job done with massive overkill.
As for reviewing the actual book, it was ok. It wrapped up the characters, the main storyarc and most substories, with only minor disappointments. The main would be her too frequent use of deus ex machina solutions (goblin teleportation comes to mind, additions to magic rules). I also think she could have spent a few extra pages on the last chapter, I had already ploughed through 600 pages, a few more won't kill me!
All in all enjoyable, rating as fun book 8/10, as a work of serious literature ?/10 (I dunno man, get your a** out of your head...)
As for my background, I'm over 30, decently educated and a "serious" professional and have been reading books since I could hold them (tecnically untrue, I dropped a particularly large and expensive book, damaging its spine, just too damn big). I enjoy books that challenge me intellectually or mess with my head in other ways, with a special affinity towards anything that really sucks me in, dont care about the degree of artiness/intellectualism. Will read authors with strange Russian names if their books are interesting enough (surprisingly, some of them are REALLY good, others could bore the snot out of me!).
If a book has anything to do with the numbers 42 or 5 I've probably read them
Plot device it may have been, but it was explained rather well in the end. And it added to the mystique that Harry was not only special, but destined to face down Voldemort.
My Sysadmin Blog
Remind you of anyone?
That happens to, what two or three characters? Snape turned out to be good, Dumbledore had some shameful bits in one of the many years of his life, Ron went all emo then came back, Lupin tried to leave his kid, and Xenophilus Lovegood turned out not to love good so much as his daughter. Okay, five. I see that she probably was trying to do what you said, but even with those, most of the characters were either evil people, who liked to eat babies and deserved nothing but the basest treatment (Fenrir Greyback, the Lestranges, the Malfoys, Dolohov, Umbridge, and all the many other Death Eaters I won't name here), or good people who fought evil bravely and deserved to be showered with sugar and orgasms all of their days (all the Weasleys, Tonks, Hagrid, Grawp, all the students at Hogwarts, the rest of the Order).
ResidntGeek
To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem's perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem's greatest becomes a relatively simple matter.
If the poem's score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.
My Sysadmin Blog
Maybe it's the fact you're not a native English speaker which makes you not able to understand Tolkien. He uses a wide vocabulary that you probably wouldn't come across in a translation guide that tells you how to get directions to the beach.
It's tricky, for me. The first sci-fi I remember reading was the huge collection of 1970s Analog magazine issues my dad had in his library. Then I read Worthing Saga, followed by Ender's Game and Xenocide, Asimov's Lucky Starr series, and, finally, all of Heinlein's works, from his short story collection Expanded Universe to Stranger in a Strange Land through Time Enough for Love and I Will Fear No Evil.
Mind you, this was all between 1993 and 1996, when I was 10-13 years old...My mother would kick me off the computer to get me to go outside. I'd grab a book from our library and sit in the building stairwell. Later on, when I was 15 or 16, I started reading Niven. I barely skirted Known Space, and only read Ringworld, The Mote in God's Eye and Lucifer's Hammer.
By the time I got around to reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was to come out in a couple months. I only read it to find out what all the fuss was about. I read and enjoyed the first four books, but, for some reason, I didn't feel motivated to read the rest of the series. (Though I have listened to the audiobook of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. If you haven't listened to the audiobooks, you've missed what are quite possibly the best performances of the material.)
Eventually, my mother stopped kicking me off the computer, and I stopped reading anything that wasn't online. Until about a year ago, that is. I wound up checking a bunch of books out of the library to research info on Dyson spheres, and wound up checking out the remaining books of the Ringworld series in the process. Lots of fun.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
A) They had an article on Transformers.
/. reader.
B) The editors decide what articles do or do not have any business being on this site. You can decide to read them... or not.
C) How does an extra article like this being on the hurt the site? It's not that there was a major nano-technology announcement made Sunday afternoon that this article displaced.
D) Given that this article (currently) has about 500+ comments, it would seem that you're in the minority in this matter, and have made that fatal mistake of assuming that YOU are the average
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
1985, Super Brave New World, Catch 23 and Fahrenheit 452...
I always love seeing or hearing comments such as these. The closed-minded elitism engendered in such comments is honestly pathetic to me. You see it in all sorts of different communities. "If it is popular then it must be crap" is such an inane and useless argument. Was LOTR cheapened in anyway by more people finding it and coming to truly appreciate it? That is complete rubbish, a work of any sort stands on its own merits not the merits of those who find value in it. As to Potter, yes the first few books definitely follow a more juvenile bent, but guess what the main characters are kids. The later books take on a darker tones. You are right that it does contain a lot of coming of age elements, but it also contains a lot of classic literary fair also. Acceptance of difference, the power of love and loyalty, the dangers of extremism. Had you actually taken the time to read the books, perhaps you would understand that. But instead you spill yet more drivel of finding more "shining pearls", but guarding them against other people. Again that is simply a load of shite. If something is a truly great work then you should expose it for the world to see. Would the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel mean anything if they kept it under a tarp? Would Mozart or Beethoven mean something if they were never performed for people to appreciate? If it is truly great it holds up under exposure. The truth of the matter is that more then likely the same percentage of what you regard to be truly good is crap as that which becomes popular. Thinking otherwise just allows you to think better of yourself, stepping on the backs of others and all.
What kind of Catholic knows the term "alter cocker"?
The female is all but non-existent in Tolkien's world.
There is a kind of abhorrence that a woman might be compelled to directly engage the evil which surrounds her.
Tolkien ideal is the structured pre-industrial - pre-war - society of rural England.
Rowling's world is as ramshackle, crowded and intensely vital as Dicken's London - or more properly the England that would emerge from the Blitz.
I mean he got the sword fair and square and then *poof* it just appears back in the hat when it's needed.
It wasn't as fair and square as that. Harry was under the impression that the sword truely belonged to a goblin when he agreed to give it to him in exchange for helping breach Gringotts. It wasn't until he spoke to Bill later on that he learned that the goblins consider an goblin-made object to be property of the craftsman, not the customer.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Then explain Xenophelius Lovegood from Book 7.
My former roommate went to a Harry Potter party Friday night. While lots of folks were dressed up as Harry Potter characters, one person was walking around in a Sailor Moon outfit.
Now I'm wishing I'd gone...
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Speaking of cod liver oil, you reminded me of the best way to cure seasickness:
1 cup cod liver oil mixed with 1 cup of whiskey, taken over 1-2 hours. Works like a charm!
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
There's plenty of oxygen in water; Just ask a fish.
You'll have to go down there to get his answer, though. Please patiently wait five minutes for the fish to respond...
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Someone beat him to it. I've seen fanfic by three separate authors that uses that very premise.
Don't ask me why I was looking at Harry Potter fanfic.
ah, for me, my sci-fi experiences have been usually less spacy, with william gibson and neal stephenson being among my favorites. more recently i went into the hyperion universe, which very interesting (though the sequels weren't as fun as the first).
for a while (say, 10th grade or so) i read a lot of simon hawke: a mediocre but fun author (and he had some great titles). no, they were not good books, but that's the neat thing about reading; the more you do it the more you can enjoy it. later i got the hitchhiker's guide, a lot of orson scott card, foundation...
i've always bought a lot of physical books, and more recently i have acquired a large, uh, illegitimate electronic collection as well. during high school it was common for me to keep myself in my room with a book; since college started i've been doing it less (also with discovery of anime).
anyway, the only harry potter book i've read was the goblet of fire (don't know what number that is), which was just lying around the house. i was not especially impressed... i guess the whole magic system just seemed too random. i don't think it's cuz i started with a random book either; the system is such that the author can just pull some spell out of nowhere to satisfy the plot.
offtopic: i noticed your sig; are you building a sci-fi universe of some sort?
the privacy of one's mind is important.
you do have something to hide.
"- Harry talking to the snake in the zoo in the beginning of book 1, before we learned about parseltongues in book 2"
That is a good example, but it is still quite possible that Rowling really hadn't thought about how or why the snake talked to Harry but just thought it was a fun image and took advantage of the vagueness later on. I think you can argue the same way about every example you bring up. Robert Jordan, for example, is a master epic plotter, sometimes setting up plot-lines several books ahead but you can also see that he leaves his options very, very open so as not to constrict his future options. I don't think Rowling does the kind of advance story arc planning as Jordan does based on the "I just pulled this out of my ass" feeling that some of the plot points in the books have. Anyways, this kind of discussion based on speculation is unlikely to be very conclusive either way.
Their competencies vary by individual, but all have had above-average education. The fact that they have to grossly simplify their positions, even lie, in order to get elected only shows that the method of their selection is faulty, not necessarily the selection itself.
Any American-born citizen 35-years or older with enough charisma can get elected. It just happens that charisma isn't necessarily linked to the ability to lead intelligently. (Any leader has charisma, else he wouldn't have followers. That doesn't make him a good leader.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
'It wasn't as fair and square as that. Harry was under the impression that the sword truely belonged to a goblin when he agreed to give it to him in exchange for helping breach Gringotts.'
Yes but that is a legal and philosophical distinction. It isn't as if the idea that the item belongs to the crafter is incorrect it is just a difference of opinion. It isn't as if the goblin tricked Harry into making the agreement under false pretenses. According to Goblin law and philosophy the item does belong to the goblins. If Harry's deal wasn't legitimate because of his ignorance, then it is fair to say that the deals to purchase items from the goblins weren't legitimate either because of their ignorance of the human philosophy. The goblins never intended the prices paid to be exchange for a permanent transferrence of property.
It's rare that I meet anyone who knows of the Barsoom books. To think I was trying to describe them to someone only Saturday...
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
...wrote many of his operas for "common folk." The ones which were sung in German were written for the 18th Century equivalent of Vaudeville.
Popular entertainment of the present often becomes the high-brow fare of the future. Of course, eventually that leads us to the world of Idiocracy but that's another story for another time.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The drum came long after hard-wiring your programs.
I still miss ye olde textile pattern punch-cards.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
She is now teaching Divination at Hogwarts, and rocking Prof. Neville Longbottom's world every night.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I'm sorry do not you agree. That's fine with me. I would wager many feel as I do: Crowds ruin things.
I maintain that turning certain literature into a mere commodity DOES cheapen it because "for me" it cheapens the experience. I genuinely crave to be apart from the herd. I actively seek out things different and special. That's not a character flaw or even something I want to impress upon you; it's just me. Of course, these arguments are for adult literature. Hell, just look at Slashdot! This place is moving away from its original flavor because of its popularity. We are discussing kids books and not programming. What does that say?
My main argument was: Harry Potter is for kids, not the Slashdot community. I am stunned this topic merits any discussion.
Closed minded? No. Elitist? Call me independent. Imagine a quiet, back-woods lake you stumble upon. Now imagine months later when someone happens to follow you on that back road by accident and is joined a few weeks later by 200 of their friends and the lake becomes a 80-decibel rave and trash strewn mess. Then someone comes to you one day and says "Hey, you should check out this new lake everyone goes to." Listening to someone say "That Golem dude was sooo bitchin in that new movie" grates upon my soul in the same manner.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Yes, because following Slashdot threads about fictional stories you haven't read is SUCH higher use of your mature judgment and valuable time.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
That depends on the musicians. Despite the inroads that the RIAA's standard 'jerk-the-musician-over' contract (I remember hearing a piece on NPR where a musician described how an album she'd recorded with a major recording house had sold something like 200,000 copies at ~$20 per CD, but the recording house claimed that they still hadn't made back her advance in profits, so she wasn't earning royalties, but an album that she'd recorded on her own and was selling on the Net for $9.50 for the CD had rolled over into the green in about two months) have made on it, musicians' big income has always been from touring. And it depends on the genre; different genres of music will have different average rates of musicians giving live performances.
Actually, according to the Guinness World Record people, L. Ron Hubbard beats J. K. Rowling, with his work translated into 65 languages: "This new world record, officially verified as 65 languages, exceeds the previous record of 51 languages set in 1997 by American author Sidney Sheldon. It also tops the unofficial count of 63 for "Harry Potter" novelist J. K. Rowling and the 64 languages translated for "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Dutch teenager Anne Frank."
I think that book 7 was the weakest one in the series. There are too many moments where Rowling seems to relay on the reader being completely stupid/gullible. Really, many segments of it were barely above comic-book writing. That is, you imagine one possible course of action, no matter how implausible, and then bend the plot to the breaking point to make sure it happens. There was also a lot of "magic babble" that was as convincing as the "techno babble" in the typical Star Trek episode.
If the first book had been as bad as the last book, I would have thought, "not a bad fantasy, but not worth reading the other six" and probably forgotten all about it a year later. Sad to see such a great series have such a poor ending. But, in a way, it makes it easier to let go of the series, too, I guess.
All in all though it's still my favourite set of books I've read in the last five years.
By the way, for people still sneering at the series, just pick up the first book and read the first chapter. I don't know anyone that's been able to put it down. Her writing was a lot tighter back then.
Oh for crying out loud, I'm making a modal claim. Things that are popular are usually low taste. There's nothing illogical about it. You can legitimately dispute it's truth, but not it's validity.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
It 'aint called the Democratic Fallacy for nothing, pal.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
It won't, unfortunately. But thank you for the recommendations, I'd not heard of any of those authors except Terry Pratchett.
You seem to know fantasy, so you might be able to help me with this current dilemma of mine: I'm halfway through the fourth Wheel of Time book. Should I finish up that series, or skip it and start something else? I understand they get crappy near the end, but they're god so far, so...
ResidntGeek
First, thanks for an aggressive but accurate reply. We probably disagree about this but, I claim that popularity is a much better indicator of trash than almost any other metric. Whether it's popular television, popular novels, popular songs, etc. However, I see your point, and I might extend it. Popularity seems necessary for a work to make it in the long haul, which is how we ultimately determine the value of a literary work. It has to "work" out of its time. The only response I have to that is rather weak: time will tell. If we are giving opinions, mine goes like this: Rowling's writing is awful; her plots are weak deus ex machina after deus ex machina; her themes are ethically backward; her characters are well developed and also self-consciously cliche; but her sales are great. Again, I do appreciate the spirit of your reply.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
Of course humans in the story can use magic without wands! Remember in the first book, of Harry removing the glass of the snake display? Or in the seventh book, of Snape's early memories with Lily?
Besides, it isn't only that Griphook implies that; it's pretty much stated outright.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You failed at the outset to understand what was being said. I ground my claim --- that popularity is a good indicator of trash --- in observation, not the premise with which you start. Indeed, that premise was addressed to someone else's claims, not my own. Your cast has netted you a red herring, I'm afraid. Try again little logician.
Society is nothing but collaboration.
I hate to break it to you, but that more-or-less happens in every book.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I have to agree. I read 'The Hobbit' and LOTR out loud to my kids over the course of about two years. I had read the series twice before, but reading them out loud brought a whole new dimension to the story.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Spoilers:
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Yes, just a few the happy hobbitesses and elf-maidens cooking and dancing in the background...
Except when they are rescuing Frodo from the Ringwraiths (Arwen) or killing their leader, the Witch-King of Angmar (Eowyn.) I think that is something more than "non-existent".
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
...who porks Hermione?
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
All I know is, if I find a magic hat, and I reach my arm in and pull a sword out. I'm keeping it. I don't care who says they own it.
(For the record, I was diagnosed in the US, by two independent doctors.)
These days, diagnosis by a doctor based on external symptoms is wholly unnecessary - in theory. fMRI scans will reveal Asperger's and all other autistic spectrum disorders very nicely with a very high level of accuracy. The problem with such tests is not accuracy but expense and difficulty in finding a place equipped to carry them out. Neurologists who are sufficiently far up on such diagnostic methods, given that they've only circulated from conferences in the past couple of years, are extremely rare. So whilst a symptom-based diagnosis is not required, a mechanistic diagnosis is unlikely to be in anyone's near-term future.
(However, if Slashdotters do encounter a research group wanting to verify the published results, I'd say go for it. This would give you as close to definitive proof as you can ever hope for in medical science.)
Asperger's is problematic in that there is no cure and no therapy for most of it. It is also genetically as harmful as the gene that produces Manx cats. The gene for Manx cats is additive, so eventually not only does the tail go, but so does a large chunk of the spinal cord. The gene for the Autistic Spectrum seems to be similar - if your parents both are on the Autistic Spectrum, you will be further down the spectrum. Eventually, you have nothing but mentally deformed cabbages. Asperger's can be beneficial and should be utilized as such. Play to your strengths, not your weaknesses. However, it is also a very dangerous genetic trait and should not be trusted too much. Like a Ring of Power, over-use will lead to betrayal.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A while back I heard something quite astonishing.
(don't have a source, so don't hold me to it)
It seems that our lungs CAN get the oxygen out of the water, just not the water back out of our lungs.
(not taking all the crap in the water in consideration though)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Oh No!
What book? I didn't get a book with either of my pet rocks...
Damn, maybe if I did I might have been able to work out why they bred so profusly. And stopped it!
Think what you like, but Rowling has stated in interviews that she had the plot mapped out for all seven books before she wrote the first one.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
It's more likely than you think.
Like my dad always said, opinions are like assholes, and so are you.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
A few small parallels here and there is not deeper commentary. It's a passing nod.
If that's your idea of deep social cometary, then you need to read more, or get out more, or just think more.
Advanced users are users too!
Boy, don't get me started on those two... I stopped reading (and buying) WoT after fifth book, because it seemed clear that the author has no intention of really taking the story anywhere. In fact, it was a bit like Lost (only seen 2 seasons mind you) - both have an enormous potential of really good story development, but hints are pretty much all we get. Simply not worth my time to wade through hundreds of pages full of bickering of the most annoying and unrealistic female characters and stuff that has almost nothing to do with the grand story the series promises. There are a few pages of payoff in every book, and some of it is good, but when I want to endure lots of boring tedium for a payoff I play a MMO. Oh, and did I mention the female characters annoy the hell out of me every time they do anything?
Dark Tower is a completely anothe beast. I loved the series, the first three in particular, but that ending was just horrible. How can he do that to his readers, after, what 3000 pages? It was just evil.
The Odyssey is a type of a fantasic voyage - a different literary genre but one that has many examples including the ancient Irish stories and some of the Sagas.
Truly there is very little new under the Sun - and that quote goes back probably over 2500 years.
Pining for the fjords
Damnit, I was bored and wanted to heap scorn on people, there just weren't any whom I felt I could....
I half-agree with you. They're lazy ways to get out of tricky plot points, and they therefore drag a book down.
You're right that the term "deus ex machina" comes from old great plays. But back then, it was just the machine that let characters "fly" (by attaching the actors to wires and lifting them up). That's it! The term as applied to plots is completely derogatory: the author uses a mechanism hidden from the audience to make something happen that shouldn't be possible. It's pretty much the worst thing you can say about a plot.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
I was just referring to the large portion of /. who don't have social skills who will see similarities with Asperger's syndrome, I certainly did even though I don't have it (although my ma thinks I do, the doctors don't)
Says the person with a 6-digit UID.
(I just know I'm going to have to explain that remark...sigh. Here's a clue - the number of digits in my UID is irrelevant).
>Gryffindor's sword in the Sorting Hat.
>I thought that Griphook took it? If he cared so much about it, why wouldn't he protect it in some way?
The Sorting Hat provides things to people in great need. In the final fight with the Baselisk in 'Chamber of Secrets', Harry drew the sword from the hat (the sword being in Dumbledore's office at the time, IIRC). Neville is just following the same pattern...I don't think Griphook could have done anything to stop it.
cz
I was trying to sound pretentious and it would appear that I succeeded. I do think I'm smarter and better read than most of the chattering classes. So thanks for saying I hit exactly where I was aiming at.
People who don't know the difference between a detail and a deus ex shouldn't comment on the literary critique of others.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
But you did something very similar in your first reply - you turned a claim that disliking something because it is popular is worse than liking something because it's popular into a claim that it's ok to like something just because it's popular.
That wasn't the claim.
Your comment on whether or not popular taste is low taste was completely irrelevant.
There's only one reason for something being popular - it appeals to a large number of people.
Why does it appeal to a large number of people? There could be a few reasons -
1. It's targeted specifically at a single group, who happen to be a large group.
2. It has broad appeal and provides something for everyone
3. It has achieved critical mass and has a lot of people interested in it to see what everyone else sees in it.
4. It is considered fashionable, and those who like to appear fashionable therefore want to been known as someone who enjoys it.
5. It actually really is very good.
Of them, only 4 is a bad reason. 3 gets new people into it, but can't sustain the popularity without 1, 2 or 5.
I believe the success of the Harry Potter series is mostly 2, 3 and 4 - but mostly 2 and 3. 3 couldn't have a sustained effect over 7 books if it weren't for 2.
There's a little bit of 5 in there too - it's certainly not the best thing ever written, but there are far worse books out there that do pretty well, or are fairly well regarded.
The other thing that Harry Potter had going for it was the right mix of being aimed at children to young adults whilst remaining accessible to adults, parents will buy for their children what they might not bother buying for themselves even if they knew it was something they might like (afterall, one only has so much time for reading between jobs, housework and children), and once it is bought there's less barrier to them reading it. Then because of 2, they also become fans and feed into the whole thing some more.
In any case, the original statement still stands. Sure, liking something solely because its popular is a bad reason, but disliking it because it is popular isn't just a bad reason, it's nonsensical.
Advanced users are users too!
I agree with the recommendation of Pullman. It's a dark series, meant for teens, but it's much more brilliantly written than HP. Though not as popular, unfortunately.
1 + 1 = 3?
You understate your case. Around that time? Did you notice the date of their duel? (1945, for those who weren't paying attention)
> adults in the civilized world will get quite excited over at least one "professional" sport.
You do not disprove the notion that fantasy is childish by saying that sports are too. It is not a logical argument. Yet you did stumble upon an interesting chain of thought:
As long as most adults get unduly excited about some or other professional sport I don't feel we can call it a civilized world by any stretch of the imagination.
It isn't as if the goblin tricked Harry into making the agreement under false pretenses.
Well, the goblin did assume that Harry would act in bad faith, and so made the deal planning to steal the sword and strand them in Gringotts. That sounds exactly like "false pretenses" to me.
Go re-read the end of the book; you missed something rather important.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Now that the horcrux is gone, I think Harry should loose most of his special talents.
Given that she has failed to mention what harry does in the epilogue, the following two threads of sequels come to mind:
Let the voting begin!!
Seriously? This is not modded as troll/flamebait?
Who did write 'The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod'?
And to evilbessie I hope I am not the one to break it you, but some people aren't so moronic that they read 'Eco perhaps, Hofstadter, Orwell or Burroughs even' and think that they are thinkers. A lot people read this stuff and a lot of other things without worrying what is 'think' material and what is not. They just enjoy it.
My grandfather started reading to me when I was about 1, and by 2-3 I was reading full-on novels.
I don't remember most of them now, but on occasion I see a book that I don't QUITE remember having read, and then it hits me that I read it when I was 5, like Green Mars. I need to pick up a copy of it one of these days and re-read it. I only remember the basic storyline now.
>> Seriously? This is not modded as troll/flamebait?
Probably not. No matter how hard we might try to elimate the problem, there is a significant proportion of white supremacist homophobic Taleban-styled Americans who feel that reading a damned good book is a mortal crime, and whose most grevious insult is to accuse someone of being gay.
My personal suspicion is that someone who falls to such a pathetic level is almost certainly gay themselves, and so horrified that they take a very strong "anti" stance. I suggest that the parent takes a long, hard look at their life and makes a positive decision before it's too late.
J K Rowling has probably done more for child reading than any other person in the last 50 years, and you are insulting her for that? Grow up.
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To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
and this is why she is so succesful. Books of her peers are far more elaborate in their fantastical worlds - Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials series weilds a grander foil almost the antonym to CS Lewis' Narnia novels while Artemis Fowl is a sort of junior Agatha Christie.
JK has colonised the most obvious of territories - the school and all its works. A school for wizards could not be more distant to the reality of the grinding hell-hole that is school (copyright Bart Simpson) and Buffy has already covered that area to the full.
In many ways JK's fantastic ideas are reminiscent of all those Enid Blyton novels where posh grammar school girls (I suppose I should say "young ladies") would have midnight feasts in their pyjamas and spend the daytime solving mysteries that usually involved at least one foreign national spying, organising elaborate practical jokes, commenting on the differences between classes "Toffs and Toughs" and winning the spelling competition. I should image JK's books will continue to sell, in much the same way that Enid Blyton manages millions of sales per annum even now. Sadly I recall the immense sense of disappointment I felt when I found that her novel "The Naughtiest Girls" failed to live up to any of my childhood expectations.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
There are similarities there, but if I were to compare Harry Potter to anything it would be The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper.
If you've not read them the books are essentially about a boy, William Stanton, who "comes of age" on his 11th birthday and is told that he is the last of The Old Ones - magicians.
He goes on to collect talismans which are later used to defeat "The Dark", in much the same way that Harry Potter collected items to stop Voldemant getting them. The biggest difference is that the sides are split into factions (the Light and the Dark) and there is no single big-bad.
Yes, but Glorfindel is an elf, so it's close enough ;).
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'm a Finnish white supermacist homophobic taleban-style rowling hating bigot, thankyouverymuch.
wtf that taleban thing has to do with anything? Some people who are terrorists take a steep anti-terrorist stance themselves. I suggest you take a long hard penis up your ass and make a positive decision before you fly an airplane to a scyscraper.
Also, some adults turn out to be puppy kicking ass holes like me. No amount of "growing up" will fix that.
Also, using gay/faggot as an insult is just fun as it sounds fun and rolls off the tongue. English language seriously lacks good curse words and insults. Are gay people now taking offense because "their word" is used improperly. Damn niggers...
Bot Assisted Blogging
People who reference first person shooters as if it were a literary device shouldn't comment....period.
I too think it's a shame that adults are resorting to reading things like Harry Potter, it's just a bit weird to be so enthralled with a childrens book.
The first book I remember reading was about a farm and I found it amazing because whereas previously I had looked at it and the words hadn't made sense this time most of them did and I could make up the bits inbetween I didn't understand to get the story ( which I think I new pretty well anyway ). This was probably when I was 3 or 4 and since then I must have read several hundred books because on the whole I much prefered to read books than bother to pay attention to a lot of school, and later it was much more fun to throw sickies and spend the day in the library than it was to go to work. I could normally get through one and a half average sized novels in a day.
I can't believe people who don't start reading as soon as they can, books are great which is why it's such a shame so much fuss is made of this one when there are far better alternatives out there.
Is this the theory then;
People start reading Harry Potter because they hear it's popular and they like it because they haven't been exposed to any decent books or authors and have very little basis on which to judge the quality of what they've just read. This is because they are the sort of person to read things because they're popular and not because they're things they may enjoy.
It's not that Avada Kedavra couldn't be stopped, it's that anyone hit with it died. Obviously you can deflect spells with other spells, and so on. It's the getting hit with the spell that counts.
The effect of the two wands meeting was (as you know) a side effect of the wands sharing a core source. The reason that they shared a core source is explained in the entire underlying story arc of the (at that time) 4 books.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
1 in 56?
Don't be ridiculous. Where have you got this figure from?
Gillberg et al 9:10000
Lauritsen et al 4.7:10000
Ehlers et al 36:10000
They are European figures (mostly Scandinavian)
In the UK?
57:10000 and that's Autistic Spectrum disorders *including* Asperger's.
Even the National Autistic Society figures only suggest 36:10000
So I'd love to know where your 'reported' figure comes from.
Dan
(NT partner of AS girlfriend)
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
In book 2, maybe it's a deux ex machina, after that, it's more like a recurring convenient feature.
kinda like turbo boost in Knight Rider
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But isn't it weird that he was the 7th horcrux, and not the 8th, since in book 6 it was clear that Riddle made 7 because he know of the magic properties of that number?
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Put it away son, it's not worth you getting beat again.
Oh wait, wrong story.
Anon fail. Use your ID.
Ei huudella nimettömästi nappula.
Bot Assisted Blogging
My peeve is that this is not a story, nor an editorial, and not even a book review. It's an invitation to discussion for a topic that barely interests a lot of /.
/. stories.
Over 700 comments so far. This puts it up above about 95% of
From the very first book, the wand maker Ollivander comments that the wand Harry finally ends up with was a curious choice. It had a core of Phoenix feather, which had a twin. That twin core is what conspicuously gave Harry the scar. Rowling, from the get go, wanted to point out that Harry's and Voldemort's wands had a connection.
In Book 4, drawing from information laid upon in Book 1, the spell "Priori Incantatem" does mysteriously manifest, but the definition of it found on Wikipedia is:
While it may seem she pulled Priori Incantatem out of no where, I have to argue that she did lay the foundation of it in Book 1. Why else point out the fact that the two wands are twins?Everything you've said here smacks of elitism and the "oh, look at me, I'm so so special" bullshit that pervades people who have drab, uninteresting lives. I'm not saying that you personally have a drab, uninteresting life. It's just that I know so many people that do exactly what you do. Which is to attack anything popular and the totally elitist "the masses are asses" attitude. Sorry, but YOU are also part of the masses.
Harry Potter is not just for kids. They're books. They're BOOKS. When was the last time people got excited about READING. It's usually about something else, but it's heartening to see that people can still get ga-ga over an old fashioned, printed book. To sit there and say "this isn't adult literature" is pure bullshit. What defines "adult literature" then? Stephen King is adult literature right? But I have a feeling, since he's popular, you wouldn't be caught dead reading him. But what I can't understand is, how does it change the actual book? The book is the same if 5 people read it or 5 million people read it. It doesn't mystically change the words inside. Moby Dick, when it was first published didn't have any fans. Was hardly read. It wasn't until like 50 years later it was rediscovered and all of a sudden it became popular. With your attitude, you would have liked it when it first came out, but not after it became popular....even though it was still the same book. What difference does it make how many people read a book? A book is a book. Oh, would it hurt your image to be seen reading a popular book or listening to a popular song or watching a popular movie?
Also, next time you come to Slashdot, check it's tag-line which has never changed: "News for nerds, stuff that matters". Doesn't say anything about programming only. News for nerds. I'm a nerd, yet I'm not a programmer. So does that mean Slashdot isn't for me?
Or better yet, the Internet itself is way way too popular. You're SO uncool now dude....you're conforming like everyone else. Perhaps you should chuck that computer (which is so popular, everyone has a computer), and go "seek out things different and special".
I'm just saying...
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
No, Voldemort had intended to make 7 all along and was planning on using the death of the Potters to make the 7th horcrux. He had only made 6 when he tried to kill Harry.
I used to have a 3 digit UID, but I sold it. There used to be good money in low Slashdot UID's, but the market collapsed a few years ago.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
No. All along, the intention of Voldemort was to create six horcruxes (horcruci?); the seventh part of his soul was to remain in his body.
In fact, I seem to remember Harry making the same mistake and Dumbledore reminding him that they're only looking for four (not five) more horcruxes in HBP.
The Aristocracy are cunts.
It didn't dawn on my at first, and I forget when I realized it, but after that moment I saw Harry Potter for what it was. A thinly veiled slight on the Royal families. I fault my American upbringing for not seeing it sooner. All of the old wizarding families live in castle and have tons of gold, except for those deemed "blood-traitors". They get to be poor in the books. Poor, but happy and truly noble.
My twitter
Indeed, people who think otherwise should read something by John Le Carre and then compare his characters with those of Rowlings.
I certainly enjoyed them as child, also Alan Garner wrote similar sorts of stories.
I'd be very interested to know who these historians are who acknowledge that Shakespeare had "no more literary talent than one of today's dime novel authors."
LotR: The story of a young hobbit coming of age who must, with the help of his sidekicks and old guy mentor, destroy a powerful object to defeat the evil Dark Lord.
HP: The story of a young boy coming of age who must, with the help of his sidekicks and old guy mentor, destroy 7 powerful objects to defeat the evil Dark Lord.
Star Wars: The story of a young man coming of age who must, with the help of his sidekicks and old guy mentor, destroy a moon-sized powerful object to defeat the evil Darth Lord.
King Arthur: The story of a young man coming of age who must, with the help of his sidekick and old guy mentor, destroy a powerful army to defeat the evil Dark Witch.
I'm not trying to argue with anyone, I'm as big a Harry Potter fan as most. I'm just making the point that so many great books/movies are essentially the same story. They always seem to boil down to Jung's archetypes.
Not really, it's just that in the rest of the civilised world calling someone "gay" stops being an insult at about seven years old.
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ah! right! Thanks, that makes perfect sense, and I do seem to recall that now.
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"J.R.R. Tolkien more or less invented high fantasy as we know it, bringing the folk tales and fables of Europe into the realm of literature."
Sorry, but you're very wrong there. Tolkien may have legitimized fantasy, but as far as actual fantasy (defined as stories of magical creatures that the readers know are imaginary) goes, the genre has been around since the 16th century. The first fantasy novels were the "decadent" or "artificial" romances of the 16th century, such as Amandis of Gaul, which used fantasy tropes that are very familiar to us in the setting of the knightly romance. In England in the 18th and 19th century there was the gothic novel, which tended to be on the horror side, but still had many fantastic elements.
The first invented world appeared in 1856 in stories by William Morris, who drew heavily on Norse and Medieval sources. In England he was followed most notably by Lord Dunsany at the beginning of the 20th century, and by Edgar Rice Burroughs in the United States at the same time. Arguably, much of the important early 20th century development of the genre happened in the United States in the late 1920s and early 1930s, with H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard setting in stone most of the tropes of horror and heroic fantasy, respectively. They were not the only pulp writers doing this, but they were the ones with the most influence, and they survived the test of time for a reason.
What Tolkien did was legitimize the genre that had already formed and matured. Coming from an Oxford professor, and having the impact it did, the Lord of the Rings could be considered part of the literary canon, which elevated the entire genre, and to a large degree, has prevented it from being absorbed back into mainstream fiction as had happened with the artificial romance and the gothic novel.
(My source for this information is Wizardry and Wild Romance, by Michael Moorcock.)
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
That doesn't make a lot of sense, actually. That implies Voldemort's been wandering around without a soul for a decade and a half.
OTOH, maybe it does make sense. It's always seemed kind lame that after Voldemort did all this magic to live forever, he get hit with our rebounding killing curse and he's a half-dead lump for a decade and a half, reduced to trying to find the Philosopher's stone to live again. Yeah, he technically survived that, but seriously, it seems like a lot of work for almost nothing.
But what if that happened because he accidentally transfered all, or almost all, of his soul to horcruxes? And then, because he was unaware of it, didn't know how to fix it. (We know that he had assumed that he would feel the destruction of the horcruxes and couldn't, maybe that's caused by the same problem.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I've read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(novel) in university, so Tolkien was not really a problem for me :)
Um, if you think the books don't talk about racism you're an idiot. There are frickin pogroms in the last book against muggle-born wizards, with the inane claim they 'stole' their magic.
The prejudice against non-'pureblood' wizards (Whatever that means, because wizards are human in the first place and they all know it, and almost all of them have muggle relatives somewhere in their known ancestory.) has been there from the start, but only became official government policy once Voldemort [re]started running things.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
No actually that's not the theory. If something becomes popular then more people become interested, making it more popular. This isn't selling out or being lowbrow, this is just how things work. Popularity breeds more popularity and it's not necessarily a bad thing. In Harry Potter's case, the books just kept growing more and more popular for two reasons: more and more people kept reading and suggesting them to friends and these said people continued to enjoy Harry Potter. They continued to enjoy it because the stories were fun to read, not because they are lowbrow or the lowest common denominator and aren't aware of other literature.
/. in order to make our dicks hard. Congratulations on making sweeping generalizations about a population consisting of millions.
Seriously, what gives you the right to group millions of readers of a certain book into a category of lowbrow idiots who force themselves to read "stupid" books they don't enjoy in order to keep up with the Jones'? What do you think you are then? One of the many intellectual idiots who forces their self to read "smart" books they don't enjoy in order to keep up with Jones'?
Anyway, you need to stop judging the quality of Harry Potter when you've most likely never even read it because me and tons of the people I know who read Harry Potter have been exposed to quality literature and enjoy quality literature but don't need to go flaunting that on
Yeah, there's something really odd going on there, but I'm not entirely sure it's what people might think, that Grindelwald was involved with the Nazis in some way.
Why? Because there was the explicit point made that most British wizards didn't know about his 'take over the world attempt'. Now, there's a rather large disconnect between the wizarding and muggle world, but to have British wizards unaware of WWII is rather absurd, especially if WWII was secretly being run by a wizard! I mean, if a wizard was doing the invading, wizards would have had to fight it off, or he could have walked into England and owned it two weeks later with a few well placed unforgivable curses.
I suspect that, instead, Grindelwald took advantage of the chaos of WWII to attempt a takeover of the wizarding parts of places that Germany conquered. I mean, think about...in Vichy France, who was in charge of magic? I bet Grindelwald was. Germany wasn't working for him, and he wasn't really involved in the war per se, he was just walking into the wizarding areas that the war effort was effecting and saying 'I'm in charge now' and there was no effective force to stop him.
Even in places that hadn't lost to the Germans might have been in enough disorder to take over, which raises the interesting question: Did Dumbledore attack Grindelwald to stop him in general, or did Grindelwald finally attack England and Dumbledore only acted to defend it. (Implying he was okay with the rest of Europe being conquered, but had a change of heart when England was attacked.)
OTOH, Krum's reaction to the Deathly Hallow's symbol was certainly intended to parallel a Nazi symbol. Although note that what Krum described happened at Durmstang, not Germany in general, so it's possibly it's only the school where that is incorrectly interpreted as his symbol. (Technically, do we even know that Durmstang is in Germany?)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Well if we can have articles announcing the death of The Lone Gunmen, I don't see why we can't have this. This is the end of a successful and popular fantasy series which has acted as a gateway to other fantasy series for mainstream readers. I think this discussion deserves a place on /..
Insert Sig Here
What do you mean, if Transformers can be called sci-fi?
What the fuck do you call it? A Western?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
comparing the two is pretty insulting to Professor Tolkien
Not really. Rowling only wastes about 50% of a typical book with boring garbage. Tolkien wastes more like 80%. A friend of mine used to claim that he could cut Lord of the Rings down in length by 2/3 and most fans would be unable to identify what was missing without referring to the original.
J.R.R. Tolkien more or less invented high fantasy as we know it
Rather less than more. Eddison (The Worm Ourobouros) predates even The Hobbit, and then there's, oh I dunno, Monkey (13th century China), Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (16th century Italy) which itself was a spoof of Le Chanson de Roland -- and contains pretty much every idea and subplot you've ever seen in a fantasy novel (including a ring of invisibility, an "orc") and some you'll never find in LoTR (strong female characters, complex moral arguments).
But Tolkien's work was groundbreaking, in many ways the first of its kind.
Name one.
I'm a Wheel of Time fan, but don't bother going all the way on unless/until you hear the series has been concluded. Book 4 is the best of the bunch. They go steadily downhill after that. 8-10 were particularly bad, but 11 was a little better.
My advice: ready 5 and 6, then read the chapter summaries at wotmania.com (http://wotmania.com/chaptersummaries.asp) and if any of those pique your interest, read those chapters of the books.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Well said, but I'd make some allowances. Many of the predecessors of Tolkien weren't setting out to create a setting, mythology, and story from scratch. So I restricted my counter-examples to writers who basically did this, and did it single-handed (e.g. Ariosto).
The problem with Tolkien and Rowling isn't the rich detail, it's the pointless waste of space. Deathly Hallows could cheerfully lose 300 pages between page 100 and 500 with no loss of rich detail.
Given that this article (currently) has about 500+ comments, it would seem that you're in the minority in this matter, and have made that fatal mistake of assuming that YOU are the average /. reader.
That, I think, is the dealbreaker.
It might be worthwhile to complain something doesn't belong on slashdot if it gets no discussion. Or if people are mostly complaining about it.
This is neither. It's been up about 17 hours as I write this, which included an overnight period for the US and Europe, so it's more like 9 hours actually. It's gotten 800 comments. Something like 10 of them are complaining about it being posted here, and maybe 50 are people who don't like the series.
The rest of the comments appear to be people actually discussing the series. (Plus random slashdot noise with trolls and spammers.)
Q.E.D.
No one needs to try to figure about how it fits in the site's premise or point out that the editors are in charge or that no one needs to read stories they don't want to...HP is immensely popular among posters. You don't need to justify something that has almost twice the comments of any article posted in the last three days, despite being up for a fraction of the time.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Instead of 'elitist', how about I call you 'fucking moron'? Books do not get ruined by more people reading them.
An, incidentally, if you don't like popularity, why were you the 463,344th person to join this site?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
'assume that Harry would act in bad faith'
There is nothing dishonest about making a deal despite believing the other party won't honor it.
'planning to steal the sword and strand them in Gringotts'
The deal was that Harry would give the Goblin the sword after the goblin got them into the vault. They were in the vault thus the sword was his to take, there was nothing in the deal about getting them out again.
I was being facetious. Next time i'll add more smileys so it's more of a giveaway, relax.
Yes, because Aleister Crowley is the perfect thing to read as a bedtime story to a child. "Magick" is even more of a sham than modern religions.
Well if we can have articles announcing the death of The Lone Gunmen, I don't see why we can't have this.
Well, that would be news. For nerds, even. Not a "hey, let's all discuss the latest HP book!".
From what I remember, and I hadn't bothered with re-reading the books before DH came out, Durmstrang was most likely situated in a Nordic country and not in Germany.
While Hogwarts was essentially and all-England school, it was never explicitly stated that Durmstrang and Beauxbatons were also 'all-Country', meaning that it was likely that they took in students who were geographically close to the school (meaning that Grindelwald could easily have attended Durmstrang, though he was from Germany), but not necessarily from that schools country of origin.
This, like many other things in the HP series was glossed over as it really had little to do with the story that Rowling was trying to tell.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
It's a blog. It's their blog. It's a forum about things CmdrTaco et al. find interesting.
/. demographic. So is a story about the launch of the latest HP book. Inviting a discussion like this is a reading club is, i repeat, outside the scope of the site, even when a story would end up the same way.
Ummm...
You must have missed the dozen or so stories put up in the last few months. They posted something like three stories about Edward James Olmos claiming the show was ending. Not surprising that you didn't notice. Most people only complain about things that irritate them.
Oh, for fuck's sake. I sad discussions. Discussions. A story about the end of BS is interesting for most of the
There's oxygen in water. lrn2beafish
I'm confused...how do you know it won't make you think if you haven't read it? Books written for children are consistently, imaginative, perceptive, and thought-provoking, and it is a sad, pitiful arrogance that leads adults like you to scorn them ignorantly. No opinion held about a book unread is remotely worthwhile. There are many great books to read, and perhaps your list is too long to get around to this series, but why peddle an uninformed opinion?
When the first few books started to garner attention, there were a lot of misguided attempts to pigeonhole them in the popular media. Many compared Rowling to Roald Dahl, which is stylistically and structurally ridiculous.
But she shares one part of her formula with Dahl: the exercise of adult authority is depicted as bad, and she gives us (supernaturally) strong children who defy authority -- even well meaning authority.
The other thing she does is she marries cynicism towards authority with sentimentality about human nature. It's the same formula that makes Casablanca a classic movie. Generations have learned to square the circle of "cool" from Rick: it's cool to be cynical and alienated, but go to far and you're not on the inside, you're on the outside. It helps a lot that Casablanca is not an "art" movie, it's well crafted and aimed at the masses, which is probably appropriate.
The next element in the Rowling formula is taken from the classic English detective story. The first four books are relatively self contained and scrupulously "fair" mystery stories. Armed with the information available to the hero, you could beat him to the conclusion. The fourth book is a novel in itself, and a bridge to the second half the the epic, in which the books are longer, and rather than self-contained, are installments in a longer story arc. So I think of HP as consisting of five books: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 4+5+6+7. Each one of these works follows the rules and many of the conventions.
The final element of the Rowling formula is its borrowings from speculative fiction. Rowling does not tip her fantasy hand until volume 7. The first six books have an appeal that is taken straight from hard science fiction.
Consider: the magic in Harry Potter works consistently. It operates according to certain laws, some well known, others at the current state of knowledge suspected. People who have at least some talent can, by studying the well known laws and by practical application, extend their capabilities. The laws and their practical application are organized into discrete areas of study, which are taught in a way much like engineering. In fact it is important to remember: Newton was an alchemist. Many of the branches of study in Harry Potter are in fact historical, but obsolete sciences.
The magic in Harry Potter is depicted in a much more scientific way that FTL travel is in most science fiction. The appeal of heightened human control of nature is much the same in Harry Potter as it is in the hardest of science fiction. The only thing missing is any hint of social scientific consistency with the "technology" of magic. For example, if wizards can do magic, why are some richer than others?
There's a lot of things in Harry Potter we've seen before. But it doesn't make the works unoriginal or derivative. It's a brilliantly syncretic work, the product of a magpie like mind that collects the oddball name here, the bit of occult trivia there. They have their stylistic, and occasionally narrative faults, but they aren't something cobbled together from an easy formula any hack could reproduce.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
There is actually a short-term course taught about HP at my University, through the philosophy department. The course is really an introductory philosophy course, with many of the readings that would suggest, but with relations to and commentary about the Harry Potter series made throughout. Of course it is widely derided, but I found it to be interesting and perceptive under the skilled direction of a talented Professor. I think there is little doubt that the series will eventually become prized even amongst the snottiest of literature snobs.
Apparently you didn't notice estimates for 2006, which the National Autistic Society verifies as being 1:100 - somewhat higher than your 36:10000. In fact, how the hell did you get that number from the NAS, when the NAS' own figures (Estimated prevalence rate in the UK, given in the paper linked to above) are stated as being current and a replacement for the 1997 figures you cite.
However, you also managed to miss this little gem from the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University.
Sorry if I sound a little annoyed, but if you're going to question my figures, you need to do better than decade-old discredited reports. I don't mind people challenging my views - I enjoy the intellectual challenge - but I do object to put-downs that are out-of-date, based on flawed methods and demonstrate a lack of site-searching skills. Please! Even in D&D, I'm at a high enough level that the DM has to give the monsters PhDs in physics and advanced library science. (Ever been attacked by a goblin wielding a +20 Shakespere of Doom?)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
At least they didn't do a combined iPhone/Harry Potter 7 release. Man, that would've been a metric butt load of fanatics, all together in one spot, just waiting for a spark to set off a riot. Or something.
I drank what? -- Socrates
After attending the grand celebration of the final book at Harvard Square, I wasn't going to wait in line to buy the book. I simply went home and spend five seconds (literally - that fast) and downloaded it. It took about 12 hours to read.
It's complex. It really depends a lot on the books before it, including some details that may have seemed trivial in the prior books. So, you'd do best to re-read them if it's been a while and your memory of them is foggy.
I was happy to see some of my theories about character motivation born out, though they were slightly different than I had guessed they would be (I mean Snape and Dumbledore).
I wonder how children are going to react to this book. It's very complicated, like I said, and it will probably take them a long time to get through it.
There's also subtle propaganda in it, not all of which I agree. But I admire her propagandist craft. I don't know if my side would ever be able to come out with such a clever counter-propaganda.
You're probably on the right track.
One of JKR's overlying themes is that Riddle was playing with magic he didn't understand, and couldn't discern the fine details of it.
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The English translation is great, but you can't truly appreciate Tolkien unless you've read him in the original Klingon.
Well, in the world of Harry Potter, ownership is not a matter of opinion or convention. At least not always. It is frequently not only a testable property of a thing, but when it comes to magic it is a major determinant of how a thing behaves (e.g. wands, house elves, spells that protect property, etc.)
By the objective standard of magic, Griphook had no right to demand the sword. Although he was justified in taking the sword when he did, he failed to complete his part of the agreement, and agreements are in the magical world not as subject to interpretation as they are in the real world.
This would be an interesting starting point for a story: the conflict between wizards and goblins may be perpetuated by the wizards' refusal to allow goblins to develop their latent magical powers by using wands. This means that magical standards of ownership have no practical value to the goblins. This ensures conflicts over goblin made artifacts passed down by magical transfer of property rights, because you have two different property systems and no incentive to compromise.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Umm, isn't the entire series about magic? In my personal experience, allof the spells, and most of the potions aren't possible to create in this world. Why don't we drop the whole "deus ex machina" argument, since this is a fantasy title...suspension of belief is a necessity to enjoy the books at all.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Mine was Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Stoopid first grade teacher would only read a little to us at story time. 'Course, we were allowed to pic it up during quiet time and read ahead. Damn you Mrs. Hackbarth! Thanks to you, I find my self having to read cereal boxes such at breakfast, if I don't bring a book with me. What a cruel addiction to hook an innocent child with.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I'm 39, married, with child; only reading of paper books happens at bed time and in the 'library'. Can't wait until we have a house with two bathrooms!
'course, have a bunch of book.txt files at work, to kill time when slashdot's slow.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I'll be 36 in October...you must not be a fan of sci-fi or fantasy books. Actually, one of the most interesting things I noticed on Friday night/Saturday morning was the huge percentage of people in line that appeared to be in the 17-20 age range.
I guess it makes sense, since most of them were between 7 and 10 when the first book came out. They've been reading the books for over half of their lives, in some cases. In the best of all possible worlds, J.K. Rowling may have inspired some future writers out there to create something as engaging as these books (or Heinlein's, Spider Robinson's, Asimov's, Saberhagen's, Piers Anthony's, Stephen King's, Harry Harrison's...)
If you think the books are stupid, that's fine. Just understand that J.K. Rowling didn't get rich because everybody thinks the books are stupid, and understand that the bookstores and wal-marts weren't full of 10-year-olds.
If you ever come across a book or better yet, a series (I highly recommend any of Spider Robinson's "Callahan" books, BTW) that draws you in and makes you wish you were a part of it, maybe you'll understand the allure here. Not everyone has that much imagination, and not everyone can stand being jeered at by people who are "better" than that, but you don't have to be a completely nutty fan to enjoy a good book.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
You're thinking of the wrong hat. Besides, the Sorting Hat was originally Gryffindor's, so it makes some sense that you could retrieve Gryffindor's sword from Gryffindor's hat.
It's not 4chan what rules 1 and 2 apply to. Lurk moar.
I see 57005 people
No.
Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, does NOT mosey.
Wow.
So, uh. Trolling doesn't work so well when it's that obvious. Just a heads-up.
OOTP takes the longest book of the book series and comes up with the shortest movie other than the Cuaron Azkaban. OTOP packs 896 pages into a mere 138 minutes vs. 309 pages into 152 minutes for the Sorcerer's Stone.
While the movie doesn't feature the over-long Quidditch set pieces of the first two movies, the story is still so ruthlessly pared down and rewired for a shorter running time that it is a incoherent in places. They should have pared out more plot elements at the same running time, or give the parts of the book the kept another ten minutes to make sense.
One of the changes they've made actually improve the dramatic punch of the story. Some of guidance Dumbledore gives Harry in the books is put in the mouth of Sirius, where it both sounds more credible, and gives later developments more dramatic impact.
The special effects are very elaborate, but there's only so far you can go with using them to make the story more believable these days. We know anything can be put on the screen that the director imagines. It takes storytelling to make it real. Narrative coherency would have served them better.
It's a shame, because they've got a great cast of character actors, and the principles are becoming skilled enough to do a lot more. At the outset of the movies, Emma Watson's Hermione was quite a bit better than Radcliffe's Harry of Grint's Ron, but by this movie they're far ahead in skill. This may be because they are professional actors taking other parts, but Watson has only done the Harry Potter movies. A lot of British actors are showcased in this movie, but you really wish they had more screen time.
One final thing: I saw this movie in Imax 3D. The 3D section of the movie is about ten minutes. Normally 3D is pretty crappy, but in the Imax format it runs from so so to pretty convincing. I don't think the 3D adds much to the movie. Another problem was that the volume in the Imax theater was far, far too loud. You don't have to crank the volume to the point where the string section is loud enough to make your ears ring.
Overall, I'd say this one's about middle of the pack for the Potter movies. If you generally like them, you'll like this one. Stay away from the Imax, it's not really that impressive.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So the Ministry can detect when and where a certain word is said throughout the whole country? Why didn't they use it before to find out when someone used the Unforgivables? Or when someone mentioned Death Eaters? Or plenty of other ways it could have been used.
Would Death Eaters say "Hi Fellow Death Eater"?
No they would not, so what could would detection of that phrase really do?
As to other uses sure they could set up a watch, but then there's the question of enforcement - the Ministry had many orgazized gangs to respond to the word Voldemort, and why would the ministry previously have basically assembled a standing army to respond to utterances of other things?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
She actually goes into some depth regarding the differing viewpoints on how property is transferred. Simply because Harry chooses to sell a thing does not actually remove the ownership, from the Wizard point of view, from it's true owner; the House of Gryffindor. Griphook may have wanted otherwise, and Potter may have pretended otherwise, but that transaction in no way impacted the deeper purpose the sword had been set to.
You can only really say that Griphook got it fair and square if you assume Harry had true ownership. But clearly Godric had other thoughts, far more potent.
[Ego]out
She actually goes so far as to say that the duel held between Dumbledore and Grindelwald was in 1945. And, of course, the prison to which he was sent was 'Nuremgard', a name not far at all from 'Nuremberg', where the trials were held for that war.
[Ego]out
There are books out there that are absolute, unquestioned masterpieces that do almost everything well, and which can not only serve as a good read, but offer some sort of insight on life. The best of these are life-changers, where the reader comes away a different person from when they started.
Sometimes, these can be difficult to get into, or they are so challenging that the reader needs to be at a certain level to really get them - "spinach books".
Those books are rare. Most books - being written by normal, flawed humans, after all - have flaws in them. Some authors are masters of plot, but can't write dialogue to save their life. Others write characters who are so well-realized that they seem likely to step right out of the page, but the plots they find themselves in take sudden, inexplicable turns in the last 50 pages or so that are so sudden as to be physically jarring (I'm looking at YOU, Stevie King!)
And readers being human as well, one man's flaw is another man's treasure. I *love* Stephan R Donaldson's command of vocabulary and how he uses it to set tone - any man who can use "roynish" in a sentence and make it feel like it belongs there is a man who can craft prose. But others find his exotic word-choices utterly irritating and simply cannot get past it to the deeper story.
One man's ice cream is another's spinach.
Rowling's prose is servicable; "sturdy", not beautiful. So what? The story is solid, the jigsaw puzzle intriguing, and the way the themes and tone of each successive book get increasingly adult as her protagonist grows up is borderline genius. These are *good books*, independent of the hype.
Sometimes popularity can be an accurate measure of quality - at least in some aspects. Not everything popular is de facto bad.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Realize that Harry's parents bought it in 1980, making it 1991 when he first attended Hogwarts - but there is no mention of the fall of the Soviet Union. Few of the 'Muggle World' incidents filtered through to the Wizards, though the parallels between the two are interesting and will no doubt support many future theories.
[Ego]out
What was Heinlein's take on it?
Autocracy; One man is smarter than a million men.
Democracy; A million men are smarter than one man.
Come again?
Ok, is paraphrased; has been 15 years or so since I read Time Enough for Love
I drank what? -- Socrates
Out of curiosity, do you consider yourself religious or secular? Personally, I liked the Chronicles of Narnia at the time, but as I grew up and understood some of the allegories he was making, I found them to be more and more trite. As an adult you're capable of considering something trite much more easily than if you're a child - children simply don't have the experience and therefore the catalog of stories to check against. I thought Rowling, though, had an entirely different focus than Lewis. She wasn't interested in the metaphysical, but the physical; hers was far more an existentialist point of view - humans are, therefore humans must be the focus of humans. Their doings and choices were far more important than grand otherworldly forces' desires - Potter was not acting within a divine scheme, but within the motivations and lives of real people. That set apart her story, I think, from Tolkien or Lewis or that 'old school' crowd of British writers. Far more James Joyce, really. In short, I think the two different stories are going to appeal to different audiences, depending on their personal philosophies and life focus. And if you're not sure it's for you, remember that you don't even have to buy it; libraries still do exist, and still do lend books.
[Ego]out
Indie Rock Pete called; he wants his position back.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I didn't read Tolkien aloud, but I read Rowling's works aloud (except the 7th) - and they were excruciating. Especially the 5th one. I think she was making a conscious effort to maintain a high many adverbs-per-sentence rate for some reason.
Tolkien is poetry by comparison.
One thing I noticed as I re-read Rings before the movie release: RoTK's prose was markedly different. It was almost like a different person, or maybe he was doing a lot of bible reading at the time, I don't know. It was very stilted, and not as pleasant as the first two books. I know that it was overshadowed by very dark plot happenings - but when you're reading the work of a linguistics professor, you tend to pay attention to details. (when I read Rings the first two times, I admit, I didn't notice or pay attention to style at all. I was just a dumb kid though.)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I still have my Pet Rock, though the box it came in, with bits of straw, has fallen apart. Still, the rock's held up well. Good craftsmanship that is.
I drank what? -- Socrates
For what it's worth, I don't think that people are necessarily reacting to your not liking it, so much as they are reacting to their sense of rejection. When one enthusiastically declaims their love for a book, and another responds, 'eh, it didn't do it for me', it can be tantamount to saying, 'I do not find worth in the things that you found worth in.' That is a form of rejection, and when argued over becomes a discussion of values. It is one thing to say that two people don't hold the same values, it is another though when, in the heat of discussion, you feel that the other person not only does not hold your values, but will not see them and find them worthy. I really think that humans are socially dependent creatures and this irritates them far more than they realize or want; implicit or explicit rejection.
[Ego]out
heh. with Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, and the Narnia series under my belt, AND HHKTTG, I tried to read Rings aloud to them. They just don't have the patience. Kids these days.
My revenge:
Their kids won't have the patience to sit through Jackson's LoTR movies.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I would rather watch "Ichigo Kurasaki and the Deadly Hollows" than sit down and read the bajillion page "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".
Harry couldn't begin to even approch the power of a soul reaper. He wets his pants over dementors. Not to mention Ron crying like a little girl when anything slightly scarry happening.
Meanwhile, Ichigo's sidekicks are badass mo-fos who can kick some serious ass in both the living world and spirit world. One can fire energy bows that destory shit like instantly, the other can transform his arm into a kick ass fist of death (just like the one Chuck Norris has under his chin). Plus their girl, Orihime is far nicer and less of a bitch than Hermaphoditey.
Harry is like "I've got Magic", and all sorts of fruity spells, Ichigo just draws his sword and cuts the enemy in two.
Plus Captain Aizen could frickin vivisect ol' MoldyButt in his sleep.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Ah, Eco's just a misogynistic hack who can write a nice essay.
At least that's what an ex-girlfriend who was going to college for women studies told me, when I brought up his books.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I find it far more annoying when books go into great lengths to replay events that happened in previous books, because they assume I cannot remember - I would far rather be treated as someone who can take in a book and appreciate details and plotlines that span books, without excess verbiage that takes me out of the story.
Even if you didn't remember the exact details, I thought what she had in there was enough.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ummm...
/. demographic. So is a story about the launch of the latest HP book. Inviting a discussion like this is a reading club is, i repeat, outside the scope of the site, even when a story would end up the same way.
Yes, and? CmdrTaco is still Editor-in-Chief or whatever. He is in charge of maintaining and directing Slashdot.
Oh, for fuck's sake. I sad discussions. Discussions. A story about the end of BS is interesting for most of the
We agree there would be no practical difference if a story about Harry Potter were posted or not. So what was your point again? Unless you're an investor in Sourceforge, Inc. (the current owners of Slashdot -- Andover got bought out), you don't have much of a say in the sites' scope.
After all, I am strangely colored.
He's 19 years old!
He can't move out and live on his own as an adult?
Was just discussing how mechanical the magic in the HP books is and how there's not much sense of wonder, even among the characters going to school for magic. You could transpose the characters and plots from the HP books to the Star Trek universe pretty easily. Replace magic wand with phasers and tricorders, etc. Really seems pretty straight forward.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Conan the Cimmerian and his axe wish to express their objection for that claim.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Rule 34 is now in play...
As the series progressed? I've not read the books so I can't really say. But you've got to wonder. I don't think this was an issue w/Tolkien.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
I'm a fairly big Potter fan, but The Dark Is Rising was much superior. Didn't care too much for Over Sea, Under Stone - the first book - although it only suffers from the same malady the first Potter book does. The rest of the series is amazing.
- and now this weird little Irish chick, Evanna Lynch - I will watch them.
Emma is becoming a serious hottie at 17.
And Evanna really is like her character, Luna.
The only thing that irritated me about the latest movie is killing off Gary Oldman's character, Sirius Black. They could have done so much more with him, given Oldman's acting ability.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
you forget that it is mentioned that wands are used for potions too
I've read the series, I liked them as light reading, but they will never be classics. Rowling just isn't a good enough writer to ever produce a classic. Actually I quite amazed at the improvement that started in book 5, if someone told me they were ghostwritten I'd almost believe it. I'd place her in a category with Horatio Alger, Jr rather than Twain.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Stunning. Yes, that was absolutely brilliant.
I state an opinion; you respond with malice. The experience DOES get spoiled by mass consumption. That is my opinion. You feel different. Should I retort with profanity, too? Does everyone have to subscribe to your notion of what is and is not enjoyable.
If you ever do happen to make into one of my new-found circles, I hope to hell you have the decency not to turn it into a commodity.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
No, I would never read a Stephen King book. Good guess. He's a hack.
Again, I am not an elitist. You have completely misunderstood me. Elitist are smug in their high-brow world they manufacture. I am simply happiest doing things few others do. There is no smugness there. Hell, you can even join me. when it gets crowded, I'll simply move on and leave the crowd. I don't want you to say "Oh, look at me". I'd rather you didn't notice or say anything if you do.
Finally, I am not part of the masses. Of course, that only works for so long. Sooner or later people are going to start doing what I now do in droves. That will be a sad day. Until then, life is good.
Doesn't say anything about programming only
I come to Slashdot for the programming threads. The HP stuff just got me mildly curious.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Still, Slashdot readers remain a very small segment of the population. But that's not why I'm here.
Cheers, Tim.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
So you're admitting that her writing got better in Book 5 but that she probably didn't write it by that logic so she still fails.
if someone told me they were ghostwritten I'd almost believe it
by that logic I'd think the first four written at about a 6th grade reading level would be right up your alley.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I'd note that despite your sarcasm, web browsing includes reading.
A blog about stuff.
See the problem is you are an elitist, even if you choose not to believe so. You take pride in being one of a few people who has found this special something. That sir is almost the dictionary definition of elitist, feel free to check dictionary.com to see for yourself.
Your earlier example about the hidden lake you found becoming overcrowded is a poor one. There is a very fundamental difference there in that the things that attracted you to that lake, can be changed by the other people. A book or a painting isn't subject to that problem.
I can already imagining the basic response of but all those unknowing people talk about it. Well ignore them, enjoy the beauty for what you find in it, you don't have to like something for the same reason other people do.
Me too, I've been carrying PDA's and now PDA phones explicitly for this purpose since Weasel Reader (used to be GutenPalm) on the PalmVX, whenever that was :). :)
uBook on an imate pocketpc mini is the weapon of choice at the moment.
Horcruxes consist of the wizard splitting their soul then having the part split put into something. He accidentally split his soul and put it into Harry, he didn't transfer it.
A blog about stuff.
How do you compare the Harry Potter and the Discworld books?
I'm genuinely interested in your opinion. (And more book recommendations.)
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Do not want.
Was this in Baltimore? Otakon (anime convention) was taking place this past weekend. I know a number of people at the convention went to the midnight book release
Why are things of entertainment always considered 'uncivilized?' Video games, sports, movies, music. What is considered 'civil' entertainment? MMO's?
Digged story I was just reading the book when I reached this paragraph, I was wondering how it is describing bill gates ;) "You don't understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser...
Be like shadow in the light or darkness.KMZ
No...West Michigan.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
The sword can only be obtained if the obtainer does so in a brave manner, which I would say the gobbo did not do.
A blog about stuff.
You're only seeing the conspiracies they WANT you to see ...
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
I never said Video Games, Sports, Movies and Music were uncivilized. Really, I think movies and music can be the poster children for civilization in many ways. Video games and sports strike me as more base because most of them seem to cater to the reptile brain more than higher functions... Don't get me wrong, I like 'm that way too. Still, they are not uncivilized. Quite the contrary, good sportsmanship is also a behaviour I would call civil.
What I said was "as long as adults get unduly excited about these things" we can't claim civilization. In my eyes, this alludes to football fans who kill and maim for their team. It alludes to all kinds of misbehaviour associated with fan-dom which I find thouroughly lower class and uncivilized. This extends to the people that root for a certain view on life or religious faction and are willing to misbehave in the same manner to enforce their clan's views.
I guess it's just jolly bad sportsmanship that irks me.
I don't view Asperger's as a biological "problem" as much as a social problem. I think it goes in-hand with ADD/ADHD. But it's not biology's fault, our society has just changed too rapidly to being paranoid, home-bound suburb folk.
if you look at what was the type of person that would have strong beliefs to strike out on their own travel 1,000 miles and start a farm from scratch with no supermarkets or hardware stores, the ability of a child to grow up bouncing around helping out, learning little bits of 100 different things a day (ADHD) is a necessary survival feature. The "hunter-gatherer" mindset. It would also explain the Asperger's, as the ability to spend large amounts of time, basically alone, working fields tending animals was more important(and later craftsmen and tradesmen that lived in their little corner of small towns), and those more social oriented simply couldn't stand the farm and moved away... leading to some genetic stratification. 50 years ago it simply wasn't as important to be as socially mobile... let alone 100 years ago...
I would say that it's always existed in grumpy old men, but not until we've tried to push children into a specific mold that we're starting to see biology outright rebel against our social "order"... or what a small class think it should be. Realize children get less free time to wiggle in school than any adult job... tell me you can sit at your desk and work 6.5 hours a day with only 45 minutes of break time... including time to eat and play, but we expect it of 5-10 year olds!!! Think about that an how many kids really need to be medicated?
Sorry, wrong series...
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
No, I would never read a Stephen King book. Good guess. He's a hack.
Um...ok. If you never have read Stephan King, how do you know he's a hack at all? Again, no matter how popular he is, the books are still books. You have no idea how he writes or anything about him with your statement that you would never read him. I'm a fan of Cormac McCarthy, who wasn't that widely read until recently. Should I stop reading his books now because he's become somewhat popular? Of course not, I'm depriving myself if I were to think like you do.
You should stop now, everything that you've written so far is just digging yourself deeper and deeper. No one is reading what you're saying and thinking "wow, you're so cool...you're so anti-establishment"...which seems to be what you're going for. For someone that says they're not elitist, you sure define the term.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Look, you just cited 2 unscientific sources there - the BBC and the Guardian, who themselves are quoting from an unpublished study. What I cited were a range of published scientific reports (I'm sure you know what peer review is, so if you think these are discredited you should be able to provide me of evidence to this).
1 of those was from 2004 and another was 2006. This is not out of date information here, you've just focused on the 1 study. It's also maybe not occurred to you that NAS is is always going to use any 'higher prevalence' figure they can lay their hands on to support their cause.
"This little gem" you quote doesn't support your figures. Neither do the NAS figures.
They're listing on the NAS page prevalences of 77-116:10000 for ALL autistic spectrum disorders (of which Asperger's is a subset). The only figure I took umbrage with was your Asperger's prevalence figure which was ridiculously high, even by the sources you now quote. I'm not sure you appreciate the difference between the prevalence of Asperger's and that of Autistic Spectrum Disorders, which is what both NAS and The Guardian are talking about.
You can be annoyed all you like, but it wont make you correct.
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Maybe it's just personal taste, but I couldn't disagree with you more about the strength of this ending relative to the Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower books felt complete to me; we knew how the characters had wound up, and we had a sense of what lay before them, even if it wasn't a part of the story we would be privy to.
Deathly Hallows, on the other hand, left SO much unmentioned. So, fine, Harry and Ginny get married, and so do Ron and Hermione. But what about everything else? How does the Wizard world react to this second war? Does the lack of wizard regard for other forms of magical life (which was exploited to great effect by Voldemort) change? What happens to the "rounded up" Death Eaters--back to Azkaban? In short, given that Rowling's strength was in her ability to create such a huge and realized world, she really failed to provide any sense of the big picture in her ending. It felt half done.
She could write she didn't mean to. Writers write things they don't understand, always.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Suspension of disbelief is one thing. Suspension of foreshadowing is a completely different matter.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
I can't decide what's funnier here: the comment, or the fact that it was modded +1 Informative.
The combination of the two gave me the giggles though.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
Quoth wikipedia, " Prepared for death, he allows Voldemort to strike him with the Avada Kedavra curse. However, Harry awakens in what appears to be King's Cross railway station where Albus Dumbledore explains that Harry cannot die while the blood carrying Lily's protection resides in Voldemort's body."
How? How would blood outside of Potter shield him? Can anybody clarify?
Who did write 'The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod'?
P. J. Farmer
I'm a little puzzled at those four being linked together myself. Hofstadter is, I'm assuming, Douglas R. Hofstadter. Yes, intellectually challenging, but generally non-fiction. Douglas apparently appreciates Umberto Eco, but I've never seen much overlap between the people who like Hofstadter and the ones who like William Burroughs and George Orwell. These are four authors who have generally been divided into two camps by the 'elite', as in Snow's "Two Cultures". People broad minded enough to read all four might want to broaden a little more and figure TV can't all be a vast wasteland, and popular fiction just might be an OK read, etc.
Who is John Cabal?
I was trying to sound pretentious and it would appear that I succeeded. I do think I'm smarter and better read than most of the chattering classes. So thanks for saying I hit exactly where I was aiming at.
Well done. Now you can go home & tell your cats just how clever you were today.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
Okay...but "suspension of foreshadowing" (which is a phrase I am unacquainted with) has nothing to do with deus ex. If we're going to argue in a pedantic, specific way about a specific literary crutch, then we should at least do it in a way that makes sense.
You could say that all of her books rely too much on it, but then so do most sci-fi and fantasy books, simply because the worlds that exist in most of them center around fantastic and impossible items and events. Saying that a fantasy book is poorly written because of that is pretty silly.
Your complaint was:
So, bearing in mind that the genre typically requires this type of plot device, why the criticism on that point?
I'm not trying to be difficult, I just want to understand your argument well enough to decide if it seems sensible to me.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
It has nothing to do with the setting of the story. Being a fantasy doesn't excuse deus ex. Let me add some emphasis: "... the author uses a mechanism hidden from the audience (until it happens) to make something happen that shouldn't be possible (within the setting of the book)".
/should/ happen. But that's not what I mean; it's whether its happening is consistent with prior events. It doesn't even have to seem impossible; an "off-camera" character showing up just in the nick of time to save the day, with no real explanation how and why they got there just so, is a deus ex, for example.
"Shouldn't be possible" perhaps isn't the best phrasing either. You could argue that anything the author makes happen,
A fantasy novel can have internal consistency. If it doesn't, its being a fantasy is not a valid excuse.
It's always a long day... 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
I think I'm close to understanding your argument (and thank you for actually responding instead of just screaming "I'm right and you're stupid!!!" like so many slashdotters do).
What was the inconsistency that inspired your initial response?
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Sorry; I meant as adults. That was the original question.
I see no reason why adults would lose the ability to do magic on their own.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"You're saying that Robert Jordan has less "just pulled this out of my ass"?
Wow."
Well, not if you count by the word...almost nobody can drag out a book more effortlessly than Jordan. Most author's books are done after 300 pages but Jordan is just warming up and getting the exposition out of the way. But you can tell he is setting up long plot arc's 1 or two books in advance base on the slow, drawn out plots. I don't get that same sense of interbook pre-planning from Rowling, with the exception of books 6 and 7.
Ah. So instead of six horcruxes and the seventh part remaining in him, which would be a magically significant number and stuff, he divided his soul in seven parts, put six somewhere else, and then accidentally divided the remaining part again so he was only running around with 1/14th a soul or something.
Which not only screwed up the 'divided into seven parts' significance, but he ended up with much less soul in him than if he'd just divided it up into eight parts to start with.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Those 2 novels have only one thing in common: they create an imaginary world that you may(at your own will) be plunged into while reading.
:)
And to be precise both started out as a bedtime story for a child
Comparing HP book 1 and book 7 is same as comparing The Hobbit to LotR, first one is a children's book the other one is nothing like it.
And yeah, the amount of work JRR Tolkien put into LotR is in no way equal to what JK Rowling put into HP.
Just the fact of count of languages that are used in books I think is enough to prove that point.
#1
I believe that Severus Snape might have survived Nagini's attack. Think of this: we know a couple things about the nature of the headmaster's office. When Umbridge and Fudge ousted Dumbledore, the office closed itself; and when Dumbledore died, McGonagall was able to simply walk past the statues.
Yet, after Snape dies, his password is still intact. Why?
#2
House elves may be able to apparate when others can't, but Bill and Fleur's is supposed to be protected by the Fidelius Charm. Now, come on.. If you can use a house elf to get around Fidelius, that means that the charm is pretty much useless. Why didn't Voldemort or his hundreds of Death Eaters think to find one of their house elves and say, "Take me to the Potter residence in Godric's Hollow!" Or even later, when they're staking out 12 Grimmauld Place? Dark wizards are not (always) stupid; they must know some tricks like this house elf loophole.
#3
What happened to our proper in-the-book explanation of "REMEMBER MY LAST, PETUNIA." All we have is a crappy explanation on JKR's faq, and it doesn't make very much sense.
#4
There is an implied connection between Grindelwald and Hitler. Grindelwald is for the extermination, or at least, extreme segregation of, non-magical people. Hitler is for the extermination and segregation of Jews. Does this imply that all Jews are non-magical? Please don't take this as a troll or flamebait question.
#5
Is it just me, or did Harry's blood and Lily's love not matter as much to the final battle as we were always led to believe? Why is this? If any love saved Harry, I'd be more likely to say that it's Narcissa's love of Draco, or Snape's love of Lily.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Which is a much more detailed way of saying he more or less invented the genre as we know it."
No, it isn't. In fact, it is saying the exact opposite of that. I do not think the word "invent" means what you seem to think it means. To invent something means to create something new. Making something that is already there famous and stately is not invention by any stretch of any imagination.
Tolkien gave the genre legitimacy, but the all of the foundations for high fantasy was placed by other people. If you want to give credit for inventing the sort of fantasy that Tolkien wrote, then it's William Morris, Lord Dunsany, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard who deserve the credit. In fact, much of the memorable material in the genre owes a great deal to Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and L. Sprague de Camp. Michael Moorcock is a huge formative force, and he took his cues from Howard, not Tolkien.
Tolkien is A father of modern fantasy - many people were inspired by him and followed him, and the Lord of the Rings is a work of literature of great merit that will stand the test of time, and that is something - but he is not THE father of modern fantasy. There is a long line before him.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
There's Dicworld, that series does have the mentioned effect. I also prefer it over harry potter... anyone who read it would understand why ^_^
more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I might jump in here, I think I can clarify some things about Deus Ex Machinas. As I said, the term comes from the ancient Greek plays, primarily from the writer Euripides, one of the three great Greek tragedians (the other two being Sophocles and Aeschylus). Lets use his play Medea as an example:
The story is this: the great hero Jason has returned from a quest to find something called the Golden Fleece. This marks him as one of the greatest heroes in history. With him he also brought a wife, Medea, from the eastern lands, who gave up everything and even betrayed her own family to follow him. They settle down in a city called Corinth and have three children. After a while, Jason falls in love with the daughter of Creon, the king of Corinth. As men are want to do, he leaves trades in his wife for a younger model. Medea is understandably upset. She decides to get revenge. This being a Greek tragedy, this means blood. She poisons and kills Jason's new love and her father Creon, killing them in an instant. That's not enough, however, so in what is certainly one of the most horrific plot twists in the history of drama, she also kills her own children.
So now she's stuck in Corinth with Jason and the entire armed forces after her (she having killed the king and all). There is no escape, she cannot survive. So what happens? Out of nowhere, Helios, the sun God, descends on a carriage, scoops her up, and takes her to Athens (where King Aegeus has promised her refuge). This is a Deus Ex Machina. In the amphitheatres, they had this huge crane which they lowered down the carriage with the actor playing Helios in it. Literally, "A God in a Machine".
This is considered bad writing, because suddenly having a God appear and save the day is cheating. It doesn't follow the rules. It's a miracle that completely breaks the reality of the play, a plot device introduced to magically solve everything because the writer has painted himself into a corner and couldn't come up with anything better. That is precisely what JK Rowling does in Goblet of Fire (at least I think so). Voldemort is pointing his wand straight at Harry. For four books Rowling had pounded in that the killing curse is absolute and unblockable, if someone does it, you're a goner. Suddenly, she introduces a completely new plot device that we've never heard of (not the specific effect) that magically saves Harry skin, for very obscure and strange reasons. It's cheating.
See, any time you read a book, watch a play or see a movie, there is a contract between the writer and the viewer. We accept that impossible things can happen so long as the story maintains a certain internal logic. This is how we can see a Die Hard movie and not complain that McClane should die after five minutes or read a book about magicians. The name for this is suspension of disbelief. When the writer breaks that contract (by violating the internal logic) we say "Oh, come on! That doesn't make any sense!" This breaks the suspension of disbelief and diminishes the work. This is why you should avoid Deus Ex Machinas like the plauge.
I hope that makes it a little bit clearer :)
You are welcome on my lawn.
No. He was suppose to create the seventh horcrux that night and *did*, but didn't realize it because he was "dead". So Voldamort was working under the assumption that he had only five horcruxes, thus he was worried about the snake dying when he knew he only had the snake as a horcrux left. the snake was the final horcrux voldemort knew of, but it was not the final horcrux.
A blog about stuff.
Well, again, I get that. It wasn't really unclear what happened, even in Goblet of Fire.
I'd say we had a hint of it from the very beginning, in the fact that Harry survived as an infant. We knew from the end of the first book that there was something unusual between Voldemort and Harry, and regardless of the fact that the killing curse is unstoppable, Harry survived.
Yes, if you disregard the fact that Harry's an odd duck, it doesn't make sense, but the fact that he survived as an infant wouldn't have made sense either, had it happened to a different, random infant halfway through the series. Harry's a superhero in the books, and as a given, I think it makes it hard to know what to expect period.
Going back to your thought about the book (in this case) maintaining a certain internal logic, it seems to, from my point of view. Half of what made the books interesting was the wondering about how Voldemort and Harry were tied together and what would happen when they met each time. The uncertainty about whether Harry would be able to be killed by Voldemort (or could defeat him somehow) was central to the plot of all 7 books, especially since it was evident that Harry was brave, but not especially gifted at magic. The discovery of why he wasn't killed at the end was exposition for me, rather than a Deus Ex.
I do appreciate the historical explanation, though. It's nice to get that type of information.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
An appropriate comment to these would be "Oh tempora! O mores!" I'll leave Slashdotters to track down the quote, but inventing a new phrase by mis-spelling a 4-letter word in this context is almost guaranteed.
That Tolkien's language is easy and rich to listen to should come as zero surprise, considering that he was a professional philologist, specialising in the etymology of words, which would require him to have an 'ear' for how people hear and modify words over the centuries, and that he was consciously trying to set out to write an epic mythology for the British peoples which would compare with the great Nordic sagas and specifically the Finnish Kalevala. And it's no surprise that in the 30-something years that he spent working on his pet languages, he managed to give them a history of war, loss, grief and victory. After all, his day-to-day working tools were stories that themselves had survived for millennia by being memorable, inspiring and repeatable (I speak of the likes of Beowulf) ; so in his decades of work, he had wonderfully effective material to emulate.
(I should point out that I was actually introduced to Tolkien courtesy of a teacher covering for an absent colleague by simply sitting the class down and reading to us. If I thought there was something shameful about this, I could ripost that Douglas Adams often pointed out the the colours on the radio were always much brighter than on the television. So, logically, the voices in the books would be clearer than in any recitation.)
Having just this afternoon finished Deathly Hallows
According to the Wikipedia article ... Rowling herself has stated that the last chapter of the seventh book was completed "in something like 1990". Well, excuse me for not being bowled over with astonishment.
One should take PTerry's comments on the "grab bag" nature of fantasy writing into account when comparing fantasy writers.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
It's mentioned that Voldemort intended to divide it's soul in 7(a magical number) pieces: 6 horcruxes and himself being the 7th pice. By trying to kill Harry as a baby it's soul was divided again in a total of eight pieces, thous the unbalance of is remaining soul.
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!