Does anybody know what time it is? That's right, it's time for a KITTENPAUSE
So a couple of little minimercials before I dive into the meat of this post:
1. Later this week (July 18th to be exact) I'll be appearing as a guest blogger on my friend Aaron's blog, Interesting News, and I won't be around to double post that particular gem of my brain blabber until Sunday night, so this is a little heads up for everyone.
2. I'm going to Otakon this weekend and I'm a little leery of the whole adventure. It seemed like a much better idea back in January. Now I'm not even sure who's going, and I wish it was just a huge Harry Potter Con. I want to go to LeakyCon next year :(
3. All aboard the failboat! I have not succeeded in my plans for YouTube domination! All I have managed to do is post one rather crappy video of a song I wrote in which the sound is terrible and I apparently and unable to change chords in a reasonable amount of time. On that note, does anyone care if I ever post anything on YouTube ever again? Should I become a brilliant skit star? What will boost the rocket of my internet fame? Why am I even worried about that when I have school?
ALL RIGHT - to the crux of this post! Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out tomorrow night!
I am rather excited about this movie, but it has chiefly served as a source of nostalgia for Harry Potter midnight book release parties of awesome (I've been to all of those since the fourth book came out - thanks for driving me mommie :) ), jealously of the actors who get to pretend to be Hermione, et al., and get paid for it and become ridiculously wealthy and just have a generally awesome existence, and finally anger over what the movie is just going to leave out because there simply isn't time in that medium to cover all the details of the book - all the glorious, delicious details.
Normally that wouldn't bother me so much. Okay, the movie doesn't have all the amazing parts that the book has (Hermione and the potions in Sorcerer's Stone, blast-ended skrewts, Rita Skeeter is an animagus, Winky the house-elf in Goblet of Fire, Cho Chang isn't a dirty traitor in Order of the Pheonix...) but it's still pretty good. The problem arises when I meet the people (you know who you are, and I'm mad at you!) who have never tried to read the books, who couldn't care less about Potter mania, and particularly those who love the movie but won't read the books because "reading is for lamebrains."
This just makes me mad. For one, reading is awesome. I am a strong proponent of reading, particularly reading just for pleasure and not analyzing the heck out of books. After all, much of my childhood was spent with my nose in a book. I think the results of my bibliophilia (Is that a word? It should be...) are obvious in my academic record and large vocabulary. But aside from the general awesomeness of reading, Harry Potter is in a class all of its own. J.K. Rowling may take a lot of flack for luring people to the evils of witchcraft, but she does not even remotely decry the beliefs of Christianity (His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman has been known to do this on occasion, but I love his books too. They're works of fiction people! So what if occasionally I want to pretend I can do magic? I'm an astrophysicist-in-training; there are weirder things out there). Aside from that, there has been many a friend of mind who did not enjoy reading but loved Harry Potter. I get it if you aren't a fantasy lover. Okay if you want to read realistic fiction. But if you love the movies and refuse to read the books? You're missing out on so much of Jo's writing style and minor characters that films just don't have the time to which to devote the detail. There are all the funny little lines and bloopers and plot holes (in the first edition of Goblet of Fire, Jo's editor had told her to switch the order that Lily and James came out of the wand. James came out first and then Lily. This led to much speculation about Lily/James Polyjuice potions, as the characters were supposed to come out in the opposite order they were killed).
All I have to say is: Read the books first, they're better. YOU get to imagine what the characters look like. Even if this results in anger when the actors don't look the way they were supposed to look, at least you can still have your separate vision of them. They aren't just Rupert Grint or Emma Watson or Daniel Radcliffe.
On a side note, I have plans to give people copies of books to read as gifts. Then they'll have to read them because they were gifts. Good idea, no?
Thanks for entertaining this little whim of mine. I think I'll probably include a reaction to the movie later.
Oh and if you're in the kittenpause book club and you haven't read Harry Potter, that's assignment number one. Get back to me in a month, I'll graciously accept your thanks :)
KITTENPLAY
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