Three and a half hours....
^That's how long we have till Harry Potter 6 comes out in my neck of the woods. No, I didn't reserve a copy: I'm waiting till it comes out in paperback, the way I did with Harry Potter 5; though I *MIGHT* try getting it from one of the libraries (Ha. Ha. Ha.). When 5 came out, I remember asking the librarian about reserving a copy, and she told me that wouldn't be possible, since there was a waiting list with three hundred people on it already.
Now, mind you, I enjoyed reading the series, and I think it is one of the best written things in print today, but there's a reason I'm not as wild about Harry as the majority of HP fans. No, it has nothing to do with the fact that Daniel "Wooden!Harry" Radcliffe in the movies looks like a younger male version of me. Make yourself some tea: this is gonna take a little while...
Back when I broke up with my then-fiance -- six years ago on this August 3rd (Strange... same day as Lambert Wilson's birthday, but I digress to keep the bad memories/flashback at bay...) -- I went through a really bad spell of depression: I couldn't sleep, and I could hardly eat (I lost almost fifteen pounds, and I'm certainly not heavy-set), which really worried my mother. About the same time, she read some really negative anti-HP article, which somehow made the books sound dark, miserable, and depressing, merely because they have some dark elements in them, when in fact, they're very funny. (Another popular series, namely Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events", *did* get me so depressed I had to stop reading it, but that's another story and it happened more recently...) For some inexplicable reason, she got it into her head that I was horribly depressed because I'd been reading Harry Potter books. I know what you're thinking: "Buh?!" I had the same reaction when my mother came to me and told me not to read any more HP books, when I hadn't even touched one! I think I even said something like, "I haven't even cracked the cover of one of them, mother; I'm this upset because I just broke up with the man I thought I was going to marry!"
Unfortunately, for this reason, some wierd process of association in my head has caused me to be a little less than enthusiastic with HP.
While we're on the subject of the nay-sayers, I've run across some evidence -- albeit unconfirmed at this point -- which puts a whole new slant on the reason why Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, is/was more than a bit leery of HP. I've heard that at one point, not too long after he was ordained a priest, the then Father Joseph Ratzinger was an exorcist. Now that would be enough to make someone leery of a series of fantasy novels that deal with witchcraft, albeit a highly fictionalized form of witchcraft, since one of the easiest ways for a person to accidently become possessed by demons is to mess around with black magic. Who's to say that some curious kid who reads HP might not get curious about real magic and look into it; my hope, in that case, is that they'd be disappointed to find out that modern witchcraft isn't going to give them the ability to make a pig's tail grow out of the backside of one of their annoying, piggish relatives, nor are they going to learn how to play Quidditch, and thus they'd walk away from it. I'm concerned that some kid *might* start messing with stuff that they reeeally shouldn't play with, since we're dealing with things that are more dangerous than live grenades.
I think the real problem is that some people seem to plunk their kids down in front of books the way a lot of parents plunk the kid down in front of the TV and let them watch any old thing. I think it's okay for kids to read HP, as long as their parents are either reading it with them, or are at least very aware of what they're reading and that either way they're open to talking about the books with their kids. I grew up reading stuff out loud with my mom, and if there was anything in whatever we were reading that seemed a little off, we'd talk about it.
Three more hours...
Now, mind you, I enjoyed reading the series, and I think it is one of the best written things in print today, but there's a reason I'm not as wild about Harry as the majority of HP fans. No, it has nothing to do with the fact that Daniel "Wooden!Harry" Radcliffe in the movies looks like a younger male version of me. Make yourself some tea: this is gonna take a little while...
Back when I broke up with my then-fiance -- six years ago on this August 3rd (Strange... same day as Lambert Wilson's birthday, but I digress to keep the bad memories/flashback at bay...) -- I went through a really bad spell of depression: I couldn't sleep, and I could hardly eat (I lost almost fifteen pounds, and I'm certainly not heavy-set), which really worried my mother. About the same time, she read some really negative anti-HP article, which somehow made the books sound dark, miserable, and depressing, merely because they have some dark elements in them, when in fact, they're very funny. (Another popular series, namely Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events", *did* get me so depressed I had to stop reading it, but that's another story and it happened more recently...) For some inexplicable reason, she got it into her head that I was horribly depressed because I'd been reading Harry Potter books. I know what you're thinking: "Buh?!" I had the same reaction when my mother came to me and told me not to read any more HP books, when I hadn't even touched one! I think I even said something like, "I haven't even cracked the cover of one of them, mother; I'm this upset because I just broke up with the man I thought I was going to marry!"
Unfortunately, for this reason, some wierd process of association in my head has caused me to be a little less than enthusiastic with HP.
While we're on the subject of the nay-sayers, I've run across some evidence -- albeit unconfirmed at this point -- which puts a whole new slant on the reason why Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, is/was more than a bit leery of HP. I've heard that at one point, not too long after he was ordained a priest, the then Father Joseph Ratzinger was an exorcist. Now that would be enough to make someone leery of a series of fantasy novels that deal with witchcraft, albeit a highly fictionalized form of witchcraft, since one of the easiest ways for a person to accidently become possessed by demons is to mess around with black magic. Who's to say that some curious kid who reads HP might not get curious about real magic and look into it; my hope, in that case, is that they'd be disappointed to find out that modern witchcraft isn't going to give them the ability to make a pig's tail grow out of the backside of one of their annoying, piggish relatives, nor are they going to learn how to play Quidditch, and thus they'd walk away from it. I'm concerned that some kid *might* start messing with stuff that they reeeally shouldn't play with, since we're dealing with things that are more dangerous than live grenades.
I think the real problem is that some people seem to plunk their kids down in front of books the way a lot of parents plunk the kid down in front of the TV and let them watch any old thing. I think it's okay for kids to read HP, as long as their parents are either reading it with them, or are at least very aware of what they're reading and that either way they're open to talking about the books with their kids. I grew up reading stuff out loud with my mom, and if there was anything in whatever we were reading that seemed a little off, we'd talk about it.
Three more hours...