Potter ACross The Pond!
Hi y'all. Well, it's been said before, but it's just now been proven that laughter really is good medicine for the blues. I've been really so, so blue today, nothing I did was shaking it, and my head was aching like hell. In the end, I stretched out on the sofa, and said to Charles, how about we start that Harry Potter? I've been telling him for ages, you're going to love HP, Charles wasn't really sure, he's really into fantasy and magic, but he's never experienced the Harry Potter phenomenon! Well, he downloaded the books from the NLS Talking Book Program Saturday and Yesterday, while he was out, and transferred them to his trusty VR Stream. So, now I have to get used to an extremely camp American reader, who's not doing a bad job at all, but what's harder to get used to is the way the text has been Americanized! Poor little yanks don't know that Dustbin lids equals Trash Can lids. Or sticky tape is Scotch tape, Fringe equals gbangs, in our book Dudley got a cini camera, in this version he got a video camera for his birthday. I don't know why I find it so amusing, a few of you reading this are American yourselves, and you're going to be thinking huh? What's all the fuss? If Aunt Petunia says someone's on Vacation in Majorca it makes it more understandable for kids reading it than if it was left the British way it was originally written, where Aunt Petunia says she's on holiday in Majorca. But why I find it so funny, I mean, the book's set in Britain, the guy's trying to do a British accent, yet keeps coming out with all these Americanisms, it's just priceless! Poor Charles, he has to keep stopping every few minutes, cos I keep on cracking up, and he's like, what? What? I'm hiding my face in the sofa pillows now and biting my knuckles off so he doesn't hear me! The really great thing is, he's loving the first book. And that's another thing, Sorcerer's stone, not Philosopher's Stone! Why, in the name of the light! But anyway, we're on Chapter Four, Charles is at the I don't want to put it down stage, and because he's piping the reading through his big speakers, I can easily hear, so we'll be able to read Potter over the Pond together. Yay with cherries on!