As a courtesy for those emerging from under rocks and exiting caves who may not have read the Harry Potter series yet, please know there are plot spoilers ahead.

…….

Thoughts as I read through the series (for at least the fifth time) with my daughter:

1. Cupboard under the stairs, Little Whinging - the persistent owl delivery of Harry’s Hogwarts invitation sweeps us right into the other world that Harry soon becomes part of.

2. Marauder’s Map: GENIUS literary invention.  By far, book three Prisoner of Azkaban is the best written.  Tightly woven, intricate plot, even inspiring, such as when Harry sees himself cast a patronus, believes it to be his father, then realizes he cast it all along.  I teared up a little.  I’ll admit it.

3. What a rampant jerk that Harry is come book five, Order of the Phoenix!  Rowling did a great job of painting the hormonal, obnoxious side of adolescence.  Too great, maybe, as Harry’s character becomes grating.  I lose sympathy for him.

4.  …but gain it back immediately as he and Dumbledore step out into the night to seek Horace Slughorn.  Book six is the scariest, the most adventuresome-iest, and a welcome change from the twit and twaddle boredom both Harry and Sirius experience in book five.  Suddenly, things are happening, and not just the unnecessary death of a fan favorite supporting character.

5. The most memorable parts of book five, Order of the Phoenix: Harry’s sado-masochism at the hands of Delores Umbridge; Fred and George Weasley’s triumphant, chaotic exit from the Umbridge regime.

6. It’s a pity the makers of the Harry Potter films didn’t see fit to include the story of Merope Gaunt.  I would have liked to see her depiction in the films; I also felt it was an important turning point for Riddle when he stole the Slytherin ring from his uncle, Morfin, and managed to shift the blame for the murder of his Riddle family onto his last surviving Gaunt relative - it seems this was left out of the movie, too.

7. Memorable: the handsome young assistant to Borgin & Burkes Tom Riddle charms the old, fat, frosted tea cake Hepzibah Smith, all of a girlish flutter.

8. Book seven: WE GO CAMPING.  I love that Ron takes being hungry hardest, after having lived a relatively squashy, comfortable life.  

9. Pity we learn so much about Dumbledore as a person so late in the series, and after he is dead.  Throughout the series, Dumbledore seemed like another cardboard stand-up adult for the young people to play off of.  A magnificently powerful, wise, blue-eyed stand-up; in book seven, he is a human with frailties, emotions, a past.  A hint of these things might have been nice in previous books.  Not the whole pie, just little tastes.

10.  I loathe the flash forward ending of the series.  I wish we could have just left Harry with his triumph over Voldemort.  Or that we could have seen him that summer, healing and reuniting with friends.  I didn’t need the touchy-feely, everyone’s married and wonderful with children thing.

……..

Book four, Goblet of Fire bored me.  Book two, The Chamber of Secrets, seemed like a good sophomore attempt, but didn’t strike me as brilliant.  Book five, Order of the Phoenix, is the book I love and hate the most.  Books three, six, and seven are the most captivating, in my opinion.

In my opinion.  What’s yours?

Looking through the lists of popular YA fiction, Scott Westerfeld’s name crops up uh-lot.  The Uglies-Pretties-Specials series pops up particularly. 

I read them.  I liked this about them: the examination of surface values versus inner values.  One finds a surprising amount of depth in the struggle of the individual, though brash and ugly, to be free of the hive mind - though glamorous and pretty.  I wonder if this is how the young people feel today, as they’re entrenched in our capitalistic, me-first, beauty-centric society.  The same society that took a naturally pretty young woman - Heidi Montag - and convinced her she had to have multiple alterations made to her body to make her ‘beautiful.’

Before reading/watching Twilight, it was one of those pop cultural things I didn’t have to participate in.  My attitude was, I don’t mind if you like/loathe Twilight, but as for me, I’m good.

My downfall was gaining inside knowledge of it.  The moment I picked up that book, and read - the instant I pressed play on the XBox.  Now, I’m forced to hold an opinion on Twilight  It is no longer a thing I can walk away from, because I know the depths of its inanity, and it is inanity that enrages me.  That such insipidness can be so richly rewarded in our culture, when there are a thousand better stories just on one shelf at Border’s.  You know what I’m grateful for?  I asked a friend to read Twilight with me and she said, “bran, I love you, but my love can not transcend Twilight.  I’ll pass.”  At least I didn’t bring her down with me.  Thank goodness for her stoicism.

This is the last post I’ll make about Twilight.  It is such a bane to me, I’ve blogged about it thrice.  Also, I just used ‘thrice’ in a sentence. 

Please don’t read Twilight.  Save yourself.

I don’t know if I can do this.  You know how sometimes, a thing is so bad it’s good?  I was hoping for at least that.  I don’t know how this novel made it to publication, much less the series to follow after.  I don’t know how the author was able to glean a degree in English literature from Brigham Young University, either.  Seriously, lady.  You’ve written the template for an even worse novel to come, the one that will rise up and not just kill literature and western civilization as we know it, but kill us all.  Thanks for the dismal future you’ve secured us.

Always a favorite.  Carefully read, and though not marked in any permanent way, rife with sticker tabs that point to my favorite passages - I’ve loved this book since I was sixteen.

I’m about to pass my ancient copy to a friend.  Some of the passages I highlighted for their wit.  This is a favorite for pointing me to Taoism.

The world is hard and cruel.  We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither.  We must be very humble.  We must see the beauty of quietness.  We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us.  And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people.  Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge.  Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them.  That is the wisdom of life.

I like the praise of a simple life in this passage.

Our life is simple and innocent.  We are untouched by ambition, and what pride we have is due only to our contemplation of the work of our hands. 

For the cynicism expressed in this line about moral idealism.

Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.

And Charles Strickland’s perceived cruelty in pursuit of his true being as an artist.

God damn my wife.  She is an excellent woman.  I wish she was in hell.

I read that the books we’re exposed to in youth make more of a lasting impression than the books we read as adults, no matter how wonderful the fiction.  The Moon and Sixpence is one of those books for me.  I afford it more importance than other readers seem to, perhaps because it was among the first to change my outlook.  This novel affected my development as a human.  Are there books like that for you?

Going into Twilight, I know not to expect great literary writing because there won’t be any.  I’ve been prepared by scores of bloggers, columnists, and tweetists not to expect any kind of step forward for the women’s movement, either.  So with that in mind, I picked up Stephenie Meyer’s magnum opus today, and read the first twenty pages.

The writing my be horrid, but I’ve already discerned a big, whopping reason why this got published.  From the prologue on, Meyer somehow managed to maintain a Wuthering Heights-like air of menace.  There’s that gothic horror quality we find so desperately thrilling, from Bram Stoker to Anne Rice.  I’m glad for this.  I was worried I’d have to sit through a nearly five hundred page novel of nothing but Bella breathing and going into ‘crying jags.’

Still.  First day of school with Bella.  I’m hoping the boring play-by-play isn’t standard, and that this section was simply a lapse of inspiration on Ms. Meyer’s part. 

With this I want to let go my usual book of rules and enjoy the story.  Forget Hemingway, just read, but I’m struggling.  My inner voice screams things at the page.  “Why do I care how much meat Mr. Wednesday ate for breakfast?!?”  Bland, superfluous writing: that’s one.  After this, there be spoilers ahead.

I don’t think I like Shadow that much.  He seems dead to me.  There’s no real reason to sympathize with him.  He won’t even sympathize with himself; he gets out of prison to find his beloved wife has died, and yet he’s ready to just move on with life and sign up to work as henchman for some guy he knows nothing about.  He hasn’t even bothered to ask questions.  That’s another thing, this Mr. Wednesday guy Shadow works for.  As far as character goes, he’s got as much as a cardboard cut-out. 

Chapter four, seventy-six pages in, and I’m wondering about the popularity of this book.  Is it because Mr. Gaiman is so accessible, as far as authors go - having blogged, and now tweeted amongst the unwashed masses?  Or, is it wildly popular because the story picks up soon?  I’ll stick with it, for now.  If it were any other novel, I would have put it away by now.