During my recent trip, I read a copy of the first Harry Potter book that I recently purchased. And by “read” I mean listened to the audiobook, and by “recently” I mean it’s been in my possession for months, and by “purchased” I mean it was given to me.
I’m not so much saying that the book was bad. In fact, I rather enjoyed listening to it. Having long ago seen the movie (I always like to see the movie first because the books are always better), I pretty much knew what happened. At times while listening, I searched for small lessons or evidence of racism and intolerance upon which I could pontificate. I didn’t notice too much but there was enough that it should enrage uber-liberals, and the whole magic thing should probably upset the uber-conservatives.
The first problem is the same one I have with most books that are fantasy or science fiction. The magic/technology is arbitrarily and absurdly limited to make the story. The fantasy worlds are really always just minor deviations from what we know. Most of the time, there shouldn’t even be a story because the magic/technology would cancel itself out.
The whole house VS house competition is stupid. Points are given and taken almost arbitrarily. Remember when your big brother would suddenly make up a rule, and assign points, and delcare himself the winner? Yeah, it was ridiculous then. It’s ridiculous now. Why should the houses make an effort to compete when the people assigning points can operate almost purely on favoritism?
Also, think about the tasks to get to the stone. Put the dog to sleep with music. Defeat the plant with a little fire. Get past the goblin (someone else did that, thank you very much), catch a key, play some chess, drink some potion, then figure out the mirror. That sure sounds like a lot, but broken up most of these tasks are very much non-challenging and not worthy of being a difficult to breach security system. The mirror is the notable exception — and if you get past it, you’re not stealing the stone for bad reasons anyway.
The other problem is the story of the book itself. At the point when the stone was destroyed I decided I wanted my money back. I had just listened to a training exercise. The not-so-booksmart-but-bound-to-be-great-via-family-bloodline and wonderfully admirable George W. Bush, er, Harry Potter was practically lead by the hand through a meaningless exercise. Yippee.
the korean Says:
It sounds like you’re talking about book one of that series, “The Sorcerer’s Stone.” I initially didn’t want to read that series but then found myself stuck at an airport during an extended layover in between flights, and it was the only thing in the airport gift shop worth reading. The caveat about the Sorcerer’s Stone, is that it’s the worst book in the series, and the one most directed at it’s target audience – children.
When you start allowing for the idea of “Magic” or technology beyond what exists in modern society, and use it in a story, then that’s going to happen. And if the rest of the story isn’t absolutely well done, then you’ll notice those things even more.
It sounds like most of your issues were not with the book but instead were with the genre. The Fantasy genre is in my opinion the purest example of escapist fiction. Everything from the plot, story, characterization all the way down to the world and different laws of physics operating in the story world. Is designed to take one’s mind away from reality. Rarely is it ever literature. And the genre isn’t something everyone’s going to enjoy.
The caveat for audiobooks, is make sure it’s “unabridged” as opposed to abridged. It makes a difference. And unless you’re a die hard fan of Fantasy or Science Fiction, then stay away from the audiobooks. I’ve always thought that genre doesn’t lend itself very well to the spoken word. For example try explaining out loud to someone who’s totally unfamiliar with the genre a plot-line and you’ll see what I mean.
Next time I’d reccomend something like E. Annie Proulx, “The Shipping News.” The book is much better than the movie and if you’ve already seen the movie and liked it, it makes for a fun exercise to see the difference between what the author wrote, and what the director kept or changed in order to condense the story into what made it to the screen and keep it true to the authors original intent. Joyce Carol Oates, “What I lived For.” is also really good, usually can’t go wrong with anything by Oates.
Good luck..