Overheard on the Upper West Side: Are you sure you’ll feel good enough to go out tomorrow? You sound windy. I have never heard “windy” used in that context and was left with endless thoughts on what it could be.
If you read me through Google reader or an RSS feed, I take posts down. I edit endlessly on occasion, usually when I have something much more pressing to do. They stay cached in Google. I don’t find myself to be endlessly fascinating. I probably take down the best posts. I’m also going through a “who cares what I think” period which is death for a blogger.
Who cares if I don’t think that Harry Potter or for that matter Oprah made the world read again? I can’t imagine life without books but I’m older and thus old fashioned.
It makes me sad that I want to write about how the whole Harry Potter thing is a crock, but feel I will be demonized That kids who like to read other genres are actually at a disadvantage because Harry is so stressed, fawned on and read.
Sara Gruen just got a five million dollar book contract because she relates well to animals and writes half decently.
Animals? We care more about pets than people. I have nothing against animals and hope to have some pets when I move.
I gave up on the Stephanie Plum books after the second or third as they all began to feel like one, but I will take a female bounty hunter over any animal.
I like the animals I read about to have two legs and not be cavemen. Or fantasy creatures. There’s something reasurring to read about human foibles. I am partial to good mysteries because they explore the human condition so well. Good memoirs and good fiction do the same thing. Good is of course subjective.
I think we have lost something basic in our zeal to embrace the Internet era. We have lost the face to face encounters that are basic to our need to grow. We have lost true solitude that can also be necessary to regroup and face the world again.
Our choice of reading materials shows that disconnect. We don’t care enough to read about basic human interactions. Instead we chose fantasy and animals.
I can’t be held to a schedule this summer but I will have an interview with a woman who wrote a memoir I really like this coming week or the next.
For what it’s worth, I love the Harry Potter series, though certainly not to the exclusion of other books, and I would never think of demonizing you for disliking them. Yeah, there are probably those who would. To heck with ’em.
I don’t read the HP books. Personally, I think it’s been taken a bit too far…
Rowlings is dull and boring and contrived. HOWEVER, she has sold so many books because:
1) She had a vision to write about
and
2) She made the time to go into her “other world” and bring it back to us in words.
You gotta respect that. I know I can’t do that with 2 screaming kids under 5 and a 9 year old (and a full time teacing job and and and . . .)
I’ve never read any of the HP books, nor had any desire to.
Rowlings story is inspiring though, especially in this day and time, knowing that something like that can happen for a writer.
I haven’t read the last few Harry Potter books. Not enchanted with them. May read the last. I already googled the ending.
No schedule…ah…those were the days.
I never liked the series. I took a class in college that made it required reading, and I hated every minute of having to read through that book.
There is so much better literature out there, and yet this is the top seller.
Nice to see that people are reading again, but if that means they are reading trash instead of say…Noam Chomsky or something more important, it’s all for nothing.
What I dispise about the HP than is
a. they reinforce all of the old class stereotypes
b. they are a product of Word grammar check
Ultimately there is very creativity involved, there is no stretching of he imagination.
I care about basic human interactions! I’m reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I just finished Atlas Shrugged.
My kid’s reading the Deathly Hallows – which I think is great! He reads a lot of different things, and he’s learning.
As for the internet, if we can count faceless engagement as meaningful, then people can have fulfillment. Online communication cannot take the place of social and family ties, but at least we read about the lives and interests of others, like Courting Destiny’s Pia!
I’ll forever wonder if she ended the series on her own, or simply because the kid who plays Harry in the movies is like 25 now 🙂
This is odd, I was trying to comment on another post that disappeared. You should find a way to put back the line about “I was a sweet girl but not a good one.”
I’m a Potter Agnostic.
Observation : Harry Potter made the world buy books again.
Result : there are millions of unread Harry Potter books all over the western world.