Saturday, July 28, 2007
Harry Potter
I have just finished The Deathly Hallows. What have I got to say about it?
Obviously, I won't reveal how it ends, who dies and who doesn't die. If you're here, looking for that sort of thing, all I can tell you is to not be so cheap and and go read it yourself.
Before I say anything else, I should tell you that I never intended to get on the Harry Potter bandwagon. I looked pityingly at the grown men and women on the train absorbed in their books and thinking how nice it would be when they managed to read a real book one day.
I saw the first film with friends and wasn't impressed. The story was too disjointed and there were too many children running around acting surprised. I can't think why I saw the second film. I think my friends wanted to see it and I went along with them.
This was a better film. There was actually a plot this time and less concentration on badly acted surprise. I began, at that point, to be interested in reading the books and my boyfriend at the time bought me three of the books in print at the time for my birthday.
He bought me the special editions: hardbacked books, with gold embossed covers and gold edged pages. They are very nice books to hold. Damned heavy to carry on the train to work but nice.
Rowling has a nice easy flowing feel to the way she writes and, for me, at least, she has that very special talent, that budding writers all desire and few have, of grabbing my attention in the first paragraph. Had she done the same with her agent and her publisher, I wonder?
Anyway, that first paragraph had me hooked and I had to follow the story. Then the next book, and the next. And here we with the last word on the last page read.
It wasn't the best thing I have ever read. There were a few holes in the story, a few points where one wonders how some things are known or something was lacking in the explanation. It could be argued, as with many works of fiction, that there was too much in the way of exposition.
But ... I don't care about that. It was fun, it was dark, people died, people grew up.
The book was a fitting end to the series.
There, I wrote all that without letting on about Ron's father's secret affair with Snape.
Oops.
Obviously, I won't reveal how it ends, who dies and who doesn't die. If you're here, looking for that sort of thing, all I can tell you is to not be so cheap and and go read it yourself.
Before I say anything else, I should tell you that I never intended to get on the Harry Potter bandwagon. I looked pityingly at the grown men and women on the train absorbed in their books and thinking how nice it would be when they managed to read a real book one day.
I saw the first film with friends and wasn't impressed. The story was too disjointed and there were too many children running around acting surprised. I can't think why I saw the second film. I think my friends wanted to see it and I went along with them.
This was a better film. There was actually a plot this time and less concentration on badly acted surprise. I began, at that point, to be interested in reading the books and my boyfriend at the time bought me three of the books in print at the time for my birthday.
He bought me the special editions: hardbacked books, with gold embossed covers and gold edged pages. They are very nice books to hold. Damned heavy to carry on the train to work but nice.
Rowling has a nice easy flowing feel to the way she writes and, for me, at least, she has that very special talent, that budding writers all desire and few have, of grabbing my attention in the first paragraph. Had she done the same with her agent and her publisher, I wonder?
Anyway, that first paragraph had me hooked and I had to follow the story. Then the next book, and the next. And here we with the last word on the last page read.
It wasn't the best thing I have ever read. There were a few holes in the story, a few points where one wonders how some things are known or something was lacking in the explanation. It could be argued, as with many works of fiction, that there was too much in the way of exposition.
But ... I don't care about that. It was fun, it was dark, people died, people grew up.
The book was a fitting end to the series.
There, I wrote all that without letting on about Ron's father's secret affair with Snape.
Oops.
Comments:
Nor did you mention the totally gratuitous appearance of a choir of sinister penguins singing Wonderful World a cappella - or did I just hallucinate that?
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