Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is certainly better than its predecessor and may well be the best of the lot, though I’ll leave that assessment until I finish my re-listening/re-read. Based on listening to the audiobook, I think there are a number of reasons why I liked it more. First and least objectively, there’s much less “woe is Harry.” Second and perhaps more useful, however, is that the plot fills out the structure much better. The combination of a school story structure and a mystery plot tends to leave the middle of the book very open, and here the Dementors and what they make Harry hear are a much better way of filling that space. Also, the denouement is quite lengthy, and so the various bits of mystery-solving and action don’t feel like an anti-climax. Third, the core story of this book is a lot meatier, more textured, and more interesting.
Other notes: Ron really needs to work on anger management. Hermione is not actually Supergirl, despite the movie’s changes. Plot holes (ROT-13): jul qvq gur gvzr gheare zbir gurz sebz gur ubfcvgny jvat gb gur ragenapr unyy? fubhyqa’g fancr, nf n grnpure, xabj gung urezvbar unq n gvzr gheare (rvgure bssvpvnyyl be guebhtu tbffvc)? jul jnfa’g untevq chavfurq sbe ohpxornx’f rfpncr, vs gur boivbhf rkcynangvba vf gung ur qvqa’g gvr ohpxornx cebcreyl? naq, abg ernyyl n cybg ubyr, ohg v abgvpr gung uneel jnf nobhg gb nfx untevq jul ur arire gbyq uvz nobhg oynpx naq gura jnf qvfgenpgrq ol ohpxornx’f cyvtug, orpnhfr gur nafjre jnf “gur nhgube qvqa’g jnag uvz gb xabj lrg.”
(I am definitely not listening to the next two, but will re-read them sometime in the nearish future.)
META: The ROT13 link doesn’t work if you’re viewing the entry from someplace else (like LJ’s feed), probably because it is relative, not absolute. The other link in the entry also doesn’t work, and the category links don’t show up in the feed at all.
Konrad: The relative links should now be fixed, and I think the feeds should also display category & tag information, but Bloglines hasn’t refreshed it for me to check. Keep me posted?
The links are now absolute (on LJ), but each inserts a “2007/04/” after “weblog/”. Checking the page source here, I see they’re still relative; are you trying to cheat by adding that bit in the feed script? It actually may work if you leave off the year and month. Tags still aren’t showing on LJ, but that’s no big deal.
1) I’m not sure that LJ’s feed has updated itself, because it’s *always* done that;
2) Looking at the feeds themselves (see the sidebar links), the links are properly being output as absolute;
3) I installed a plugin that allows me to take the entries, with their relative links, have MT turn them into absolute links, and then output that in the syndication feeds.
Okay, LJ has updated and now the links all work. And then LJ decided to repost a bunch of your entries from earlier this year.
Yeah, that can’t be helped; adding absolute links to the entries in the feeds modified the entries, and they were old enough that LJ thought they were new.