Anual book report 2011

[evalangui]

[41 books] +  [53 short stories = 10 books] + [6 poems] + [56 essays = 5 books] = [56 books]

Fanfic is clearly not included in this list, the numbers are insanely high [equivalent to 109 books of a 100.000 words each], although this year the scales a tipping a little bit more towards books thanks to me starting a degree on English literature. Next

Comments

[evalangui]

Well, we all feel outclassed then, I stumbled upon trinityofone's list of books she's read and I felt terrible! XD. She didn't count fanfic but I bet you can't write fic that good without reading a fair amount as well. You never know, anyway, if you wrote them down it might turn out you're reading more than you think, it's easy to forget the books you read a whole 11 months away! Plus there's size issues, too, HP 1 is not HP 7 XD.

I can imagine your job is very demanding. I corrected one of my roomate's essays on malnutrition the other day and I had to keep asking her what she meant, and we have the first same language and she was right there to explain herself but even very simple scientific concepts would make me stop short and doubt the phrasing. I feel it's sort of like translation, you are reinterpreting what they are saying through and smoothing any rough edges, sometimes basically creating it anew but then, of course, there's the constraint of not going very far from the original. Either way, it's fun the first 20 minutes and I feel all smart because language is something I'm good at and then I'm like: OMG, break now.

Ah, canon, what canon? XD. Nah, kidding, but the HP universe is so big and written as a WIP so some inconsistencies were unavoidable. Sometimes I think about rereading them, especially the first three but I'm afraid those inconsistencies will only grow more numerous if I do.

I definitely like that Sherlock issue, especially because John is obviously a danger junkie who would look for other stupid but less purposeful things to do with his life if Sherlock kicked him out but Sherlock feels so superior and cares for him so much (which it's so unusual for him it's bound to be hard to deal with) he might think himself qualified to take that choice out of his hands. I haven't watched the lattest RJD film and the first episode of series 2 is not as perfect but it was packed with new things, that cannot be denied, and so I'm hoping it will inspire much fic all around.

[pir8fancier]

I've thought a lot about canon and its role in fandom, and I do think that even with the enormous inconsistencies in HP as the series rolled along, once something becomes fact, then a story that has assumed things that have later been proved wrong is now dated. Aside from the truly masterful, classic stories where the writing is good enough for the story to stand on its own two feet, I find I can't read earlier material that has profound canon busts in it. It now has a fuzzy context and the okay writing now seems even less than okay. There really is something of a medias res about fandom, where a mediocre story can have a decent audience because it taps something in fandom that is visceral that takes it beyond its true merit as a piece of writing. But when that piece is rendered dated by a forward moving canon, then it reverts back to its true self as a merely okay.

And as a reader I think you need to do a one-two to get around that stumbling block. That's why I'm always so amazed at the popularity of Politician's Wife, because clearly it is NOT canon, but there are within subsets of the HP community that seem less wedded to canon than others and dramione is one of them. The snupin community is very insular and tight, and I would immediately alienate a majority of them if I just plowed ahead with this canon bust (even though it makes SENSE!).