Comments | soupytwist: Booklog 6: Choose again, and change.

soupytwist

Booklog 6: Choose again, and change.

Jul 01, 2011 09:11

I read more than I thought I did in June! I am quite pleased about this. I do love books.

( The Battle of Little Big Science - Pamela Rentz )

lewis, potterania, books, game of thrones, le random

Comments 9

loneraven July 1 2011, 10:59:56 UTC

Memory, oh my god. It's honestly one of the best books I've read, I think - I just love Simon and Miles and Ivan and Gregor and, just, everybody. The bits where Alys, Ivan and Miles are sitting with him while the chip fails - they break me.

soupytwist July 1 2011, 11:17:33 UTC

It's astonishingly good on a topic that is really difficult to do even vaguely well and OH MY GOD it hurts to read. It's brilliant - from yelling at Miles to not send the report to the bits where it becomes clearer and clearer that something is Wrong, to the utter gutwrenching reality of the hospital bits, I couldn't put it down. I sometimes wanted to, but oh my god.

loneraven July 1 2011, 11:28:18 UTC

And somehow it manages not to be unremittingly grim! It has so many funny, adorable bits - like Gregor, driving his staff to distraction because he wants to impress Laisa, and Ivan, upon discovering his mother is having sex with Simon! I have so many feelings about this book!

soupytwist July 1 2011, 11:31:53 UTC

"Simon Illyan's sleeping with my mother and it's all your fault!" LOL. And I really like Laisa!

amaterasu July 1 2011, 11:37:27 UTC

Wordy McWord on your Harry Potter thoughts - I haven't gone back & re-read them since book 7 came out, but watching Deathly Hallows, pt 1 brought back most of it back, and you've hit on a lot of the things that made me feel so disillusioned about the end of the series. On the one hand, there were flashes of the wonder and delight that pulled us so deeply into Rowling's world... and then, there was Harry Potter Spends the Book Camping... And the Character Assassination of Remus Lupin... And the Plot that All of a Sudden... Some things she got SO RIGHT (Neville!!), and then others... not so much. I think you've hit it right on the head about the origin of the Hallows. ;-)

Anyhow. *ahem*

(How have you been, anyway? It's been so long since we've talked - I miss you so much!)

soupytwist July 1 2011, 11:52:55 UTC

NEVILLE NEVILLE NEVILLE. I don't actually mind the camping - it doesn't last as long somehow when you know what happens next and aren't just reading the camping bits going "COME ON, SOMETHING HAPPEN, SOMETHING'S GOT TO HAPPEN" - but yeah, definite ups and downs.

(I have been okay - I am tired and currently looking for a job, but otherwise trundling along fine. :) How are YOU, my dear? Married life still treating you well?)

michelle_ravel July 2 2011, 15:04:46 UTC

"Also, Tonks losing her powers because of LOVE OF REMUS, as opposed to, y'know, the fairly seriously awful shit that's going down including her cousin DYING, remains just totally dumbass..."

Really? I have always noticed that being rejected in love is probably one of the very worst things that can ever happen to a person. Also, Remus loved Tonks too, so it was probably even worse: he was probably sending her mixed signals the whole time. That just DESTROYS you in an interesting, joy-killing way that sort of fit with how Tonks was acting.

AGREED about the Hallows thing, though. She did such an incredible job of preparing everything else, but that just came out of nowhere. Someone should have mentioned "the Tale of the Three Brothers" in passing or something somewhere.

soupytwist July 3 2011, 18:08:59 UTC

Oh I don't doubt that it would suck really badly to be in that position. And it's true that even being in a war wouldn't make that any less true. But given that they're in a war, and Tonks is effectively a soldier, I would have expected it to be far more about her trying to keep going and kicking ass regardless. And in a story so much about love and affection being good things, something just bothers me intrinsically about the idea of love making her lose her powers. In real life, love can and does have downsides, but rendering you incapable isn't one of them, and that bothers me. I don't particularly want there to be a Tonks/Remus romance at all, which is probably colouring my view here, but if there has to be I'd have preferred one done differently.

And yes, even one small mention - even just a joke by Ron about really powerful wands or something - would have made a lot of difference!

mooetta July 4 2011, 19:56:40 UTC

Ah, Harry Potter. I might re-read the series sometime when it's less fresh in my mind...say in about 10 years...

I can forgive JKR for not mentioning the Deathly Hallows specifically before, but it does seem weird that we'd heard nothing of Beedle the Bard and hardly anything about wandlore. Still, this doesn't bug me as much as Harry's unexplained knowledge of Godric's Hollow at the end of HBP, or even the non-mention of Hogsmeade before POA.

As for Remus, he was never meant to be perfect (remember his failure to tell the authorities how a convicted murderer was breaking into a school), and he has a history of beating himself up, so I don't think it was out of character for him to fool himself into thinking his wife and child were better off without him. I think he redeemed himself with that adorable birth-announcement scene. What I can't stand is that he lost his subtlety in DH. Whyohwhyohwhy did he explode at Harry, after being so cool (in both senses) when he confronted Wormtail who treated him far worse? Gah!