Tag Archives: books: harry potter series

The Magicians

fantasy, fiction January 18, 2018 Leave a comment

I listened to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians because the book I originally wanted to listen to wasn’t available at the time and this was labeled as “the adult Harry Potter.”

I’ll stick with actual Harry Potter.

It’s weird though. I didn’t hate this book. The story was interesting, I liked the premise, and there was magic, terror, and some pretty good actions scenes. I feel like in some ways it was a lot more true to real life – particularly the parts about being in a hyper-competitive, highly exclusive school (studying is something that JK Rowling glosses over in the HP universe – only Hermione’s study schedule is ever detailed and not many words are devoted to that either – and Hogwarts is the public school of magic in the UK, meaning everyone goes whether they’re good at magic or not).

But there was a lot of stuff that was tough for me to get past. Our hero – anti-hero? – is Quentin. And Quentin is suffering from depression. Boy oh boy, is he suffering from depression. And consequently, so are we. In addition, Quentin is selfish, brooding, narcissistic, and an overall miserable prick. He’s not very likeable.

This, in itself, isn’t necessarily a problem. The thing is, everyone at this magic school Quentin attends, called Brakebills, is a huge asshole in some way or another. Seriously. There is almost nobody to like. At all. I don’t mean that they just have some asshole qualities. All of them are fucking awful in almost every way. They are also brave and smart, which makes them just this side of tolerable, but overall? They’re all negative, brooding, asshole-y douchebags who have too much free time and drink too much.

The other thing I struggled with too was the length of the novel. According to Amazon, it’s 432 pages. I don’t remember how long the audiobook was, but by the end I just wanted it to be over. It drags out too long. Grossman crams 5 years of schooling into this novel with much of it not being particularly noteworthy. Magic is hard, complicated to learn, and requires endless hours of practice and study. But I feel like, maybe, we don’t need to go through every hour? It wasn’t well paced. For every good scene of significance, there was one that was bad and could have been cut. Maybe two.

Interwoven into this whole thing is Quentin’s obsession with Fillory, a Narnia like place he read about in stories as a kid that featured a family called the Chatwins, specifically the children. As I said, it’s very Narnia-esque. This obsession eventually becomes relevant (and it takes quite awhile for it to become relevant) when Quentin and his friends discover they can travel to Fillory. I honestly wish Grossman had gone more into the Chatwins. They couldn’t have been worse than the main characters in this story.

Anyway, Quentin manages to be miserable in Fillory too – no joke. The magical land he’s been obsessed with since childhood, and Quentin manages to fucking be miserable there. There’s a villain in Fillory, called ‘the Beast’, who Quentin and his friends end up seeking to outrun and destroy. They’d met the Beast before in school, when (IIRC) a spell goes awry and the Beast eats a student before the faculty can vanquish it.

Magic is much more dangerous in this book than in the Harry Potter universe because it seems to be a lot less…stable, I guess is the word I’m looking for? Or maybe it’s more wild? Anyway, in Harry Potter books, you use the right gesture with your wand, say/think the right incantation, and boom, spell. Intent of the spell also matters. If you’re going to cast an unforgivable curse, you know you’re doing that. In The Magicians universe, magic has a lot of complex variations that change with things like phase of the moon. Messing up a spell near the wrong body of water, even one meant to do good, can be catastrophic. Spells gone awry is hinted at as a possibility in the Potter universe (Luna’s mother dying as a result of an experiment gone wrong) but in this one it has real consequences when the Beast is released and kills a student.

Anyway, the whole thing is eventually resolved in a neat little bow. Okay, not that neat, but a bow all the same. Grossman clearly didn’t know he’d be writing a trilogy. Yes, there are two more ‘Magicians’ novels – The Magician King and The Magician’s Land.

I’m not sure I’m going to get to the last two books of the trilogy. I thought I was. But even though I didn’t hate this book, I can’t really say I liked it either. Plus my favorite character became a freakin’ niffin. And no. I have zero interest in the television adaptation.

The Silkworm

fiction October 9, 2014 1 Comment

As I mentioned in another post, I’ve been on a bit of a J.K. Rowling kick this year.

I listened to all the Harry Potter books on audiobook, and listened to The Casual Vacancy as well as The Cuckoo’s Calling. I also listened to The Silkworm. It’s the second novel she published as ‘Robert Galbraith’ and it’s the second murder mystery featuring PI Cormoran Strike.

Now, I enjoyed The Cuckoo’s Calling a lot, but was skeptical about The Silkworm, only because I was curious to see if Rowling could keep it up.

I’m just not going to doubt her anymore. There’s no point. I really, really enjoyed The Silkworm. In addition to being a solid mystery story, it was a sharp witted critique of the publishing industry.

The story surrounds the disappearance of Owen Quine, an author who wrote one critically acclaimed book a long time ago and has written mostly garbage since. He is later found dead, but Cormoran Strike is hired by Quine’s eccentric wife, Leonora, to find him and bring him back. He’s disappeared before, having affairs and being something of a douche, leaving his wife to take care of their intellectually disabled daughter, Orlando. He did love his daughter tremendously, and seemed to stay in his marriage for her sake.

Leonora becomes the prime suspect in Owen’s murder – basically because he’s a huge jerk to her, but Strike becomes convinced she didn’t do it, and keeps investigating in spite of being told to back off by the police.

We meet some other people in this book, and I think they were parodies of real people. They were over the top, awful caricatures of human beings, and so many stereotypes were employed you had to assume Rowling did it on purpose. Between Liz Tassel (the chain smoking literary agent whose career went down the toilet years ago) and Daniel Chard (the not-so-secretly-gay publisher who seemed to have a taste for barely legal men) and Michael Fancourt (the successful “literary rebel” who maintains literature should provoke social discussion but is actually using that as a cover to be a raging misogynist), they would be awful stereotypes if they weren’t so detailed.

One of Rowling’s greatest strengths – from the Harry Potter series to The Casual Vacancy to these Cormoran Strike novels – is the world she creates with details, allusions to other things. It’s all these little things that make her characters real people instead of horrendous stereotypes – little twists that make them interesting. My favorite example is Hermione Granger in the HP books. She is a bookish know-it-all, but while she is a raging nerd, she is also quite in tune with her emotions and isn’t socially inept (as many other bookish characters are described in other stories). Further, she’s doesn’t hide behind her books, she uses what she learns in them quite well – she isn’t just an academic, she’s a practical, pragmatic girl who saves her two friends over and over again. She’s just different enough to be interesting.

This is what happens in The Silkworm – details, details, details.

Anyway, the investigation is further complicated by Owen’s last manuscript called ‘Bombyx Mori,’ which appears to be a thinly veiled allegory about Owen and the other literary characters in the story.

Also in the story is Strike’s assistant, Robin, my latest favorite female character of Rowling’s, who is quite smart and a decent investigator in her own right. There is a lot of tension between them because Strike treats her like a secretary for a good portion of the book, brought on by the fact that he knows Matthew, Robin’s finace, would give her a hard time if she was doing anything else. Robin eventually is able to overcome this and join in the investigation more actively.

At this point, it’s clear that Strike is battling a growing attraction to Robin, who he thinks the world of because of her work and her brains and her guts. Strike’s former fiance is also still tormenting him from afar, marrying the old college boyfriend she originally dumped for Strike 15-20 years earlier and sending him messages, to which Strike vows not to respond.

I found the ending of this mystery particularly satisfying as well. I have a problem with mysteries – I tend to guess the end. I didn’t guess the end here, which makes me super happy.

So! J.K. Rowling has another good read out. The Silkworm is even more interesting in The Cuckoo’s Calling, I think. I’m very excited about the next Cormoran Strike story, which I hope comes out next year. Rowling says she has planned out a lot of Strike’s stories, and with the first two being very good, I think we can eagerly anticipate the rest.

Harry Potter on Audiobook

fiction October 3, 2014 1 Comment

As a child of the mid-late 1990s and early 2000s, I grew up with the Harry Potter books. I never did the midnight parties or anything like that, but the books were always pre-ordered months in advance and were delivered to my door the day of release 🙂 …I have a really good mom.

I reread the series every few years, the last time being 2011. This year, I thought I’d do it by listening to the audiobooks at work.

Everyone raved about the Jim Dale narrations of the books (the American versions). He supposedly came up with something like 70 different voices for all the characters and whatever. I got the Stephen Fry narrations (the British version) except for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I like Stephen Fry a lot, and I also didn’t suddenly realize it was him – it was mislabled as Jim Dale. Anyway, I realized the swap when I finally got to PoA.

I hated the Jim Dale narration. HATED IT. I hated it so much that I tried to find to find the Stephen Fry version of PoA to have instead. Dale won awards for his reading, but I found all his voices raspy. Hermione had a lisp – I was unaware of just how many times she said “Harry” until Dale was pronouncing it “Hawwy.” And he pronounced “VoldeMORT” as “VoldeMORE.” Now, I get that this might be the intended pronunciation/original pronunciation, but it is 7 books, 8 movies, my life from ages 11-19, and a major theme park later. Nobody uses that pronunciation. Hell, I don’t think JK Rowling even uses that pronunciation anymore.

So, yeah, I struggled to get through PoA. But I got through the summer (a particularly dull time at work and on sports radio) with these audiobooks. Stephen Fry does a good job even though he doesn’t have a billion raspy voices for all the characters. And I learned that British students don’t study, they “revise.” (For a minute, I had no idea what it was talking about.)

Overall, it was a great time investment. I always feel sad when the series is over, and this was no different.

The other thing I realized is that I wish JK Rowling would write some of the textbooks she mentions in those books. I really want to read “Hogwarts, A History” and “A History of Magic.” Yes, I know about Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. MOAR TEXTBOOKS PLZ.

So yes, I enjoyed the Stephen Fry version of the Harry Potter books and highly recommend them. They are great!

Meme: 10 Books That Have Stuck With You

fiction, humor, memes September 16, 2014 Leave a comment

This meme is going around on Facebook, and I thought I’d share my list here.

In your status, list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take more than a few minutes, and do not think too hard. They don’t have to be the “right” books or great works of literature, just books that have affected you in some way.

01. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
02. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
03. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
04. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
05. Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
06. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
07. Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs – Dave Barry
08. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
09. Rebecca – Daphne DuMaurier
10. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

new Harry Potter-verse film series

fiction September 15, 2013 Leave a comment

As everyone has probably heard by now, J.K. Rowling is making her screenwriting debut based on the ‘textbook’ she wrote – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – which originally appeared in her Harry Potter novels.

Along with Quidditch Through The Ages, Rowling originally wrote Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to benefit the British charity Comic Relief.

As a Potterphile, I’m super excited about this. There’s so much room to play in the Harry Potter universe, and this will be fun! Some of the my favorite things about Harry Potter are the mythological creatures she uses/creatures she makes up.

Anyway, yeah, I’m super excited about it! I hope they skip the acromantulas and focus more on chimeras or something.

Book Madness – 1984 vs. Harry Potter

fiction April 9, 2013 Leave a comment

I’ve been keeping up with Out of Print Clothing’s Book Madness competition. I entered. I’ve done pretty well, but I won’t win.

I had The Hobbit beating some other story in the final four and then going on to beat Harry Potter in the final round. That didn’t happen. 1984 beat The Hobbit in the final four. I think I had 1984 out in the second round.

But I have to say…I think I seriously misjudged how much people love 1984. As I look around more and more on the web, it seems clear that this book is BELOVED. And I have to say…I don’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong. 1984 is a compelling book, very interesting, more and more relevant as time goes on, and a worthwhile read every once in awhile.

But I didn’t close 1984 and love it. Not like I loved The Hobbit or Harry Potter when I closed them. There isn’t anything particularly loveable about 1984. There isn’t. In fact, it’s one of the more hopelessly spiritually crushing books I’ve ever read.

There is no real hope at all in 1984, and the hope that Winston does have is crushed under interrogation and torture, and he’s certain in the knowledge of his own eventual death at the hand of the always watching government.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have to feel something besides utter despair at the end of a story for me to really love a book and for that book to find a warm spot in my heart. Maybe it’s because I spend a lot of time feeling enough despair in reality that I don’t want it to be all consuming in my fiction, and it’s the opposite for other people? I don’t know.

Whatever it is, I seriously underestimated the love other people have for 1984. Unfortunately because of this, I will not win a $500 shopping spree at Out of Print Clothing.