Potter thoughts

[alexxkay]

So I finally let myself be assimilated by the Harry Potter thing. I bounced off the first few books several years ago, but they read rather differently when you realize that you are married to one of the leads :-) My old opinion still mostly holds ("I've read this before, and better done"), but they're enjoyable enough to keep up with, if only to know what everybody else is talking about. So now I'm all caught up... for a few weeks :-)

I wonder if Dumbledore dies in Book 6 or early in Book 7? Mythologically speaking, he can't be around for the Big Fight At The End. Earlier in the series, I was happy in the belief that he was probably clever enough to realize this himself and make plans. But then he spent all of Book 5 acting like an idiot, so maybe not.

Actually saw the movie of Azkaban shortly before reading the book. Thought that the movie was a much better-told version of the story. Goblet of Fire's going to be a trickier compression problem, but I look forward to seeing how they manage it.

I'm still upset that the american editions of Book 1 don't include an illustration for the potion logic problem at the end.

I agree with rickthefightguy that mystics with uselessly vague prophecies (I'm looking at you, Trelawney) should really be shot in the face.

I read these in scanned editions, on my PDA. I'm used to glossing over mis-scanned words, but every once in a while, they achieve a kind of accidental poetry. At one point a cauldron is described as having, beneath it, "crackling names".

Comments

Re: HP

[mickeymao.livejournal.com]

Um, except that the point with Trelawny is that her prophecies aren't magically-enabled, except in extremely rare cases. The fact that Hogwarts has a multi-year required class in her usual brand of quasi-prophecy, is sort of an interesting commentary on / subversion of the predominant "we're real wizards!" party line.

Re: HP

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

What you say is true. But on the other hand, even her two "magically-enabled" prophecies were not useful. This is a problem with most fictional prophets. If the prophecy is only clear after it comes true, it's not of use to anyone inside the story.

Re: HP

[jducoeur]

Hmm. I'm sympathetic, but how many times in all of literature has a prophecy actually been useful? In practice, even when a prophecy is clear, it is almost always delivered to people who aren't prepared to accept it -- so it still isn't useful in the most practical sense...

Useless Prophets

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Again, I acknowledge that most literary prophets have this problem, when viewed from the POV of the people inside the story. But most readers, historically, don't adopt that interior viewpoint. It may be that my exposure to more interactive media makes me more prone to "put myself in their shoes".

It's notable that the discussion with rickthefightguy where the "prophets should all be shot in the face" concept came up kept slipping into LARP territory. He is, after all, a Boston Player, so when confronted with an Unhelpful Prophet when he is within a story, that's his response :-)

This may also have a lot to do with my being a product of a scientific, skeptical (sub)culture. I tend to value ideas based on their predictive power, tested under rigorous conditions. And even the big classical ones, like Delphi, totally fail those criteria :-)

[Even more tangentially, this scientific attitude, when applied to the body of Greek Myth, is what led to Alexx's Principle of How Best To Deal With Greek Gods. "Don't."]