July 23rd, 2007, 11 Comments »
I haven’t read any of the books, but I’m interested to see how long it takes before the ending is ’spoiled’ for me (I use quotes because, well, I feel fairly ambiguous about learning the outcome). How long before I get, uh, Crying Gamed? A week? A month? Never?
I suspect it’ll be a week or too before I accidentally read something online, or see it satirized in a Saturday Night Live sketch and more or less guess at the book’s denouement. It’ll help, I suppose, that I’m living on a rural Maltese island.
I’ve seen the movies, and will continue to watch them (assuming the fourth one ever comes to Malta). So I’ll eventually learn of the outcome.
And, of course, I’m kind of Heisenberging this test by blogging about it.
If you’re panicked about reading spoilers, here’s an example of filtering your RSS feeds for the dodgy keywords.
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July 19th, 2007, 1 Comment »
My friend Monique is kicking around an interesting project for Harry Potter fans out there. She’s exploring how people’s lives have changed in (not, I think, because of) a decade of discovering and reading the Harry Potter books:
The friendships that I’ve gained because of the books have been deeper than I expected. This is the book series that I feel most passionate about. I hide that passion because when I worked at Raincoast I didn’t want my “outside” friends to badger me about the stories or inside-scoops they thought I might have. Now as the series comes to a close I want to celebrate the fun times that have been the last 10 years.
If you’re a fan, she has a survey she wants you to take. She’s going to post the results on the nascent SinceHarry.com.
I’ll give them another try some day, but on the first two attempts, the books failed to hold my attention.
UPDATE: Doc links to a review of the entire Potter series in The New York Times. I haven’t read it yet, but have tagged it ‘readable’.
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June 12th, 2007, 1 Comment »
Sarah’s written an entertaining post about the many stresses of the book club:
Men can meet up without women to watch, or more rarely, participate in sports. “Book club” equals “the match” in terms of socially acceptable excuses for women to escape children and husbands. It’s a recognised man-free zone and women like it like that so they can talk freely.
You can talk about most things with the modern man but a few taboos remain. Some female conversations like fake tanning, children’s bowel movements and clothes can be discussed in male company with their indulgence. However, the subject of yeast infections is best avoided. They like to believe its all Georgia O’Keefe down there, so one might as well leave them their illusions.
Heh. “Georgia O’Keefe down there”–that’s funny. On a related note, I just finished Nick Hornby’s enjoyable A Long Way Down. One of the protagonists is a bitter, elitist, middle-aged man, and had this say about book clubs:
A few years ago, Cindy joined one of those dreadful reading groups, where unhappy, repressed, middle-class lesbians talk for five minutes about some novel they don’t understand, and then spend the rest of the evening moaning about how dreadful men are.
I’m sure neither Sarah nor Nick are entirely accurate, but they both made me laugh.
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