…and the Deadly Tedium.
I have to confess that I’ve never read a word that she’s written.
23 thoughts on “J. K. Rowling”
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…and the Deadly Tedium.
I have to confess that I’ve never read a word that she’s written.
Comments are closed.
My nieces were into the Harry Potter books. I picked one up one day at my sister’s place and read a few pages. Not interested in what JK writes about but I think she writes well in the few pages of that book. Somewhat reminded me of 1950s Heinlein juveniles.
I unfortunately started on page one of Philosopher’s Stone, which was rather weak. Aimed only a little bit above the ten-year-old target audience, by an author who hadn’t yet mastered her craft, and with far too much blatant wish-fulfillment fantasy. Case in point: Quidditch. So I washed my hands of the series for several years, despite high recommendations from friends.
Eventually did get back into it, and it picks up dramatically from the second book on. Very much along the lines of the Heinlein juveniles; if anything, even more emphasis on personal responsibility and distrust of authority. It surprises me whenever I find an SF fan, particularly one of a libertarian bent, who hasn’t given Rowling a try.
Does stumble a bit at the end, first from bloat and then from an unwillingness to deal with real tragedy in what must be at least partly a tragic tale, but at very least books 3-6 are first-rate material. I’d prefer more Heinlein, yes, but we don’t have Heinlein any more. We did have Rowling for a while, and we might get her back.
Well, to be fair, while I grew up on SF, I haven’t been reading much fiction at all in the last few years. Just not enough time, and if I were to start up again, wizards and sorcery wouldn’t be my highest priority, particularly if it’s a juvenile.
The Harry Potter series is pretty good. I think you would really enjoy book 5, The Order of the Phoenix. That book has the take over of a private school by a central government. It’s very libertarian. In fact, the last 3 books has the government essentially failing to protect its people, and individuals taking responsibility for their own safety. In fact the government is often seen subverting citizens in order for a couple of bureaucrats to protect their jobs and lives.
My daughter was the right age when they started coming out, so I read them all. Pretty good for a children’s series; she tried (not altogether successfully) to come up with consistent laws for magic. There was a review at the time asking why all the romanticism about the English boarding school.
I’m not sure it’s just the fifth book that’s anti-government–it seemed to me that throughout the series it is more and more obvious that the Ministry of Magic was the real bad guy, Valdemort just a temporary distraction. Depressing ending.
I agree that the anti-government sentiment flowed through most of the books. By the third book, you even see signs of collusion between government and media to lie about events. I just think the fifth was when the government became much less subtle.
Oh, and agree that through the series, it does seem that the Ministry was the real bad guy.
That is actually the one Harry Potter book I bought and read. It’s saying something that I finished it, and was even willing to buy another and do the same. Never actually did though, since I wasn’t looking to read one that I’d already seen the movie (yes, I saw all of the damned movies).
The movies, of course, couldn’t put in nearly all the stuff that was in the books. That might have made some of the movies better–Harry isn’t nearly as much of an ass in the fifth and sixth movies as he is in the books.
I thought they were pretty good kid’s lit; if you liked the fifth you might like others. As with many successful authors, I think her editors got a bit cowed and didn’t cut as much from the later books as they should have–the later books in the series seem longer than they needed to be.
Never read a word, haven’t seen the flicks, not interested, didn’t see anything interesting in either, and until this posted here, I thought I was THE only person on the planet who hadn’t read and loved them. I was certainly the only English speaking person who skipped the whole Potter craze. I’ve even been called a philistine, which I’m sure isn’t the word my attacker meant to use, for NOT liking them, as if it was somehow a failing in me to not love Harry and his magical cabal.
Thank you for having the courage to say you didn’t read them Rand, it made my day.
Der Nicht-Schtupper,
I haven’t read a word of them, because I read the reviews on the Huffington Post, and I know I’ll object to the way they portray government services as somehow undesirable. Now you have to read them.
According to Wikipedia, she’s made big donations to the British Labour Party, so you deprived your fellow socialists of free money by not buying her books.
Though writing about the evils of government and then donating to the party responsible for most of the evils of modern Britain seems about as sensible as Ayn Rand donating money from Atlas Shrugged to Obama’s campaign.
Bob, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the Huffington Post frequently characterizes wasteful and repugnant government services as desirable. So enjoy your read.
An Authority disreccomends something based on heresy and you go along – and spread the word.
That’s an open mind.
This line from Rowling’s attempt at er0tica would guarantee her a Bulwer-Lytton win: ““He retained a vivid memory of her bare pink v*lva; it was as though Father Christmas had popped up in their midst.”
“Shark-o Jump-ius!”
They’re good books. It’s not Tolkien, but they’re good. They didn’t sell billions of copies by accident.
The comparison to the Heinlein juveniles is a good one.
She’s not a great writer, I think, but a good one, and the Potter series was a perfect fit for her strengths and weaknesses. The imaginative detail in her world-building is marvelous, though I’m not sure it makes much sense on a macro-level. Her own work at characterization and plotting were uneven, but with her background in midieval literature it ended up being enough of a respinning of old myths for that not to matter. And as to Harry himself, I think she does do a nice job with the fear and alienation of adolescence, and the working through of that is a big part of the appeal to her audience.
I liked her using Nicolas Flamel as the only known owner of a Philosopher’s Stone in the first book–it was a nice tie-in to the real world. It’s also kind of fun that magic seems to be based on puns–it might help explain why her books were appealing across such a wide range of ages.
It’s kind of interesting that most magic books are so depressing (the lost magic of the ancients is a motif that crops up in many–knowledge is either being lost faster than it is being discovered, or the raw material of magic is being used up (yes, I’m thinking Niven, although an anime that my daughter is watching seems to have the same motif for one of its arcs)). Hogwarts, despite being the premier magical school in England, does not seem to be a research university, and the only person I remember who was actively involved in magical research died as a result.
That’s an interesting point I’ve thought on before (while not getting anywhere); why is it that fantasy novels are always set on the downhill side of a technology development curve? (Indeed, the trope is common, if a bit less pervasive, in Sci-fi as well; leftover technology of superadvanced races and the like.) Does this somehow lend itself to more dramatic narratives?
There might be some sort of loose correlation between optimism/pessimism about the future and science-fiction/fantasy. Many of the fantasy books seem to take place in roughly medieval societies that have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years–for those, you can’t have disruptive technologies.
The Potterverse does seem to have some sort of magical advancement–broomstick technology has improved, for instance. But we learn in the sixth book that Alchemy texts and techniques haven’t changed over generations, even though a talented sixth year student was able to divine on his own and in whatever free time was available to Hogwarts students improvements to nearly every technique.
You have obviously not read Terry Pratchett’s work then.
His Discworld novels started out as somewhat generic Fantasy parody, but his world took on a life of its own, to the point where modern Ankh-Morpork (mash modern New York, medieval London, and plop it on top of Buda-Pest {g}) has become an engine of change to the where even vampires & trolls are welcome, and the dwarves are magnificent smiths. One (named Gunilla Goodmountain) creates movable type. You’ll find (one) gun, rock’n’roll, and even Moving Pictures. It’s a marvelous universe.
From where I stand, Pratchett is one of the finest English-language writers today. It’s sad that he’s become afflicted with Alzheimer’s to the point where he can no longer write dedications during signings, and has to write via dictation or speech-recognition.
There are a lot of magic-as-technology stories; those usually have pretty dynamic societies (most of the ones I read were patterned off of 19th or 20th C Europe or America). On the other hand, the sword & sorcery stuff usually involves fairly static societies–ones that haven’t changed appreciably in centuries.