Somewhere along the line of Harry Potter books, I began reading them aloud to Margie. It was sort of a fun, together-time thing to do on long car trips, at night in bed, so on and so forth. This all predated the first movie, so I started off with some odd accents and pronunciations — but was more than happy to include my best Alan Rickman imitation for Snape once that piece of inspired casting was announced.
Well, somewhere long the way in there, we had a kid, which cut severely into both long car trips and casual early-evening lounge-about-and-read-alouds, so we’ve been running further and further behind on the books, much to Jackie’s annoyance (“You still haven’t opened up the Amazon box for the last one?! What’s up with that?!”). And with the realization that they were finally issuing the teaser trailer for the book I hadn’t yet finished, I decided to go ahead and forge forward with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Which I finally finished, giving me a month or so to finish the next one before the next book comes out.
As for the book I just finished? Hrm. I’ll be the first to admit that the disjointedness of my reading through it probably didn’t help, but, again, each of Rowlings’ books comes out more and more as works requiring (and lacking) a strong editorial hand — if for no other reason than I cannot imagine the movie picking up on more than a quarter of the narratives contained therein, and thus being the weaker for it. I mean, when you need pretty much a full final chapter (or two) of the bad guys spilling the beans as to What’s Really Been Going On, you probably have a problem with your story (unless you’re writing an Agatha Christie novel). And I say that as someone who tends to overconvolute as well.
I give it a B-.
The trailer for the movie, on the other hand, faces (literally) squarely up to the issue that has had moviegoers scratching their heads over the HP series — how to deal with actors who are growing up a lot faster than the characters in the books (given the 18-24 months between flicks vs. 12 months per term). I don’t know that they’ll resolve it (especially for the next go-around), but they at least admitting (or even highlighting) it.
Ahh…good.
finally, So Jackie and I can start to talk about it with you.
Yes, Rowling is not a P.D. James calibre mystery writer, but she doesn’t need to be.
Yeah…Not reading it all the way through probably hurt some on the continuity. There were lots of fun bits in the book though, and it’s going to be interesting to see what got chopped out. I would guess mostly the Hermiony and Snape parts (my faves).