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This blog would be remiss if one of us didn’t at least mention Harry Potter, so here’s a brief note. Harry and J.K. have weathered some harsh criticisms over the years (and it’s been a decade, can you believe it? If you were eleven like Harry when you read book one, you can read Deathly Hallows at a bar!) but I for one am willing to forgive practically everything (I say practically because I don’t know what is in store for the finale. I hope and pray J.K. will not let us down). I unabashedly adore Harry Potter and turn a conscious blind eye and ear to such criticisms.
I spent the majority of last night ignoring my dirty house, my pets and Tim so I could finish Harry Potter. In preparation for the newest book I used to read the entire series, something that is near impossible nowadays with the number of books and their inordinate length (oh yeah and my lack of time). So this time I settled for a Half Blood Prince re-read. I’m glad I did. I estimate that I’ve read about 200 books since this book came out two years ago (and yeah, I bought it the first day and read it the next day!). It’s hard to keep stories straight when they’re so involved (although one of the criticisms that J.K. recieves is that she offers clues to past stories in each of her books. I say THANK YOU, since I’m an old lady with a failing memory lately – not a vibrant 10 year old with nothing else to worry about. I need the help).
Now I’m ready.
Or am I? Despite my excitement, it’s still hard to believe that the next book is the last book.
To delve into a book completely is, to me, the greatest part of reading. There is great freedom in suspending your own internal voices and embracing a story without reservation. Which isn’t easy when the voices in your head are used to being listened to (as mine are). Oftentimes part of this suspension is allowing yourself to be easily led where the author wants you to go. Which can be exactly where you don’t want to go and sometimes it can be away from something you want to see. They lock the doors and take the lights out on the stairs. All we can do is turn away and go where the path is open.
I make a habit of not reading book sleeve synopses. If I did, I might have been forewarned. Angelica is divided into four parts. I was only two sentences into part two when I realized I had been duped. Part one is centered on Mrs. Barton (Constance) and a pernicious spector haunting her life. I believed it all without reservation – it’s a great ghost story through and through. Of course she’s haunted. Of course she’s unable to remove it. Of course she hires someone to expel it from the house. Of course her husband has something to do with it.
Editor’s Note: [Heh -- fooled ya! I bet you thought there would be a note from an editor here. Alas, it’s just me. But I wanted to explain the following post. This week I have to read a bunch of comics for my lovely job, including manga (Japanese comics). And I’ve never read any manga before in my life. Ever. Just thought you should know.]
Naruto had to be the first manga I read in my effort to learn about Japanese comics, since it’s absolutely hands-down the champion high king bestselling comic book throughout the entire known universe at the moment. Naruto kicks sales ass in ways we haven’t seen in the comics industry since the 1940s, if ever. I had to see what it was all about.
What I want to say before I get too deep into it is that Naruto is a very poorly done comic. The figure drawing and linework is fine enough, but the storytelling — that all-important sequential clarity that all comics require — is sorely lacking. I spent a lot of my time doubling back a page or two trying to figure out what had just happened only to learn that there was no way to tell other than to read ahead and hope I got it in context or expository dialogue later on. The writing is equally bad, by necessity, since there is indeed a lot of expository dialogue needed to explain very simple plot points that I could have gotten on my own if the drawing was better.
With that out of the way, I also want to say that I really liked Naruto, I want to find out what happens next, and I completely understand why kids are gobbling this up like cookies all around the world.
Hunter Thompson does something unique in this book that I wish more political journalists tried. He’ll spend almost an entire chapter writing about the campaign like gripping sports commentary and then, just as you’re caught up in the excitement, he whips out a trail of hopeless vitriol about the sham of the entire process. He’s doing his job, but he’s tired of it, and that exhaustion is worth noting. We can pretend this is a contest or a race, or any of the other terms journalists use to trivialize the most sacred act of our democracy, but we should remember that it’s much more serious than that.
I empathize with Thompson (and I bet most voters do, too). We’re involved in this whole thing because it matters, but we have to pretend that the emperor has clothes on in order to keep our sanity and not punch someone. (And that note of violence isn’t all mine — by this point in the book Thompson has talked about wanting to rip someone’s throat out, throw someone else down an elevator shaft, and a half dozen other such flare-ups. The frequency is increasing the more time he spends away from his beloved Sandy and with the pompous idjits on the trail.)
When Thompson sneaks off of Ed Muskie’s campaign train in Florida because the whole depressing business reminds him too much of a Nixon campaign, he fatefully gives his press pass to a crazy hippie so the guy can have a free ride to Florida. The mess that ensues is incredible, not just for what happened, but for what it says about American politics.
