{"id":492,"date":"2007-03-29T21:53:03","date_gmt":"2007-03-30T01:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=492"},"modified":"2024-02-23T14:54:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T19:54:33","slug":"rowling_01-02","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2007\/03\/rowling_01-02\/","title":{"rendered":"Rowling, J.K.: (01-02) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets<\/cite> (audio)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I’ve done my math right, I should be able to listen to all of the Harry Potter book on audio before the last one is released in July; so I started with the first two, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone<\/cite> and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets<\/cite><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Listening to these was an interesting and revealing experience. I was glad to be reacquainted with the charm<\/em> of Rowling’s prose, the humor and the small touches that get lost for me in the big picture. And I got a better sense of the major characters’ personalities than I had before, again because of the slower nature of audiobooks. So those were definite benefits.<\/p>\n

Of course, the slower nature also gives more time for flaws to become apparent. With the first book, this is mostly limited to a realization that the mythic nature of the ending doesn’t quite come together; some of it fails to resonate (ROT-13 spoilers (decrypt at a webpage<\/a> or via a browser bookmarklet<\/a>): jul dhveery pbhyqa’g gbhpu uneel). The second book, however, I just found more work to listen to. It takes a long time to get started, and tying the books to the school year does odd things to the pacing and tension; the “woe is Harry” sections are a slog; and the structure of the book is neither fish nor fowl (a spoiler-filled post<\/a> on this is over at my LiveJournal). Also, small plot holes are more apparent, like the contortions required to get a teacher-free confrontation at the end, or (more ROT-13 spoilers) jul yhpvhf oebhtug qbool gb ubtjnegf jvgu uvz va gur svefg cynpr. At any rate, I didn’t enjoy it as much, though I will say that Lockhart is so much more fun when performed (as the movie already showed).<\/p>\n

I intend to listen to at least the third book, but I may permit myself to just read the fourth and fifth, as they are monstrously long and seem very likely to suffer in the audio format. (Not sure about the sixth.) I continue to be anxious about the final book: I think there are a number of things being set up by existing books, that I’m not sure if there’s going to be enough room to satisfactorily resolve. These two books, for instance, are built around the fact that things often aren’t as black and white as they first appear: but there are still a lot of received truths in the universe that I’m not sure have been thoroughly debunked. (The one that immediately comes to mind is “all Slytherins are nasty”; somehow this seems implausible to me, and yet all I recall getting so far is “there are bad people in other houses,” which you’ll note does not, actually, negate the prior sentence.) I’ll leave the rest for another time, since they become more explicit in later books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I’ve done my math right, I should be able to listen to all of the Harry Potter book on audio before the last one is released in July; so I started with the first two, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Listening to these was an … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Rowling, J.K.: (01-02) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets<\/cite> (audio)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,15,118],"tags":[367],"class_list":["post-492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harry-potter","category-sf-and-fantasy","category-single-narrator-audio","tag-rowling-j-k"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2834,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/2834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}