Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Readalong Post 1

New book! New book! New book!

 Ah Chamber of Secrets, the second book in the series and the first we can actually agree on the title of. The kiddly-winks are another year older, Snape is still their least favourite teacher, and Quirrell has been been replaced by the spectacular Professor Lockhart.

The opening scene with the Dursleys is some of the most absurdly hilarious stuff JK has ever written, I mean when Harry, ever so innocently, says "You've forgotten the magic word" all hell breaks loose...

"Dudley gasped and fell off his chair with a crash that shook the whole kitchen; Mrs Dursley gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth; Mr Dursley jumped to his feet, veins throbbing in his temples." 

And then it ramps up to 10,000 when they go through their plans to woo the Masons. Dudley's simpering "We had to write an essay about our hero at school, Mr Mason, and I wrote about you" and his parent's subsequent reactions had me choking on my snacks. T

The only thing more over the top in CoS is the one and only Gilderoy Lockhart! He's so pretentious, and ridiculous, and wonderful. It's like JK decided after that intro scene that she just wanted to throw subtly to the wind and go all the way out there with this one. I love how he seems to value Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile award over everything - even Harry's small little achievement surviving Voldemort doesn't surpass it. And who else could manage to remain smug even after reducing a student's arm to jelly?

Which guy? This guy!

I kinda see CoS as the book when you realise exactly how awful wizards actually are. First there is Dobby, and while the Malfoys are especially bad, it becomes clear in later books that pretty much all house elves are treated like dirt. Then there's the whole mudblood and squib thing - and it's not just the Slytherins who are bigoted in this way. I mean, Ron and Hagrid are indignant about Hermione being called Mudblood by Malfoy, but Ron then goes on to snigger when he finds out Filch is a squib. It's a rather unsettling look into a world that just becomes more pronounced as the series goes on.

Have you noticed that in this book Hermione seems to be leading the rule-breaking charge most of the time? She seems hesitant when the boys first suggest Malfoy as the heir of Slytherin, but she's the one who suggests the risky polyjuice potion, and when the boys are worried about stealing from Snape's private store she basically peer pressures them into it. She's come a long way from the "we could have been dead, or worse, expelled" days of the previous year. I love her so.

Extra Thoughts:

*On p37 Percy is absolutely spending his time locked in his room masturbating.

*Mr Weasley is grown up Neville.

*I hope the earmuffs they use around the Mandrakes are charmed, because I've never worn a pair that completely block out sound. Especially the fluffy kind.

*Can Lockhart do *any* spells?

*Filch's office is right out of 50 Shades of Gray.

*The trio really need to ramp up their lying, if they're going to break so many school rules they should really be quicker on the uptake.

*How do ghosts write and send letters?

*Maybe if they had more than 4 Quidditch matches a year, Harry wouldn't be so determined to play when a bludger is trying to crush his skull.


I'll be seeing you in the comments dudettes (and dudes?), but until then;

Review: The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkein

The Hobbit

Written by: J.R.R. Tolkien

Published: 1937

Synopsis: Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent.

Challenges: Made into a movie for Book'd Out's Eclectic Reader Challenge.
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J. R. R. Tolkien has his faults (ugh, those songs) but my god he writes a good story. LOTR is amazing, but they're three long ass books and they're not exactly cheery material. The Hobbit on the other hand is short, sweet and manages to create a wonderful and warm story of adventure, comedy, camaraderie, dragons, barrel rides and golden rings.

This reread was brought on because of the film's release and it was looong overdue. It's probably been about 6-7 years since I last followed Bilbo on his journey, and even though I felt like I barely remembered the book at all going in, it all came flooding back as soon as I began the first chapter. It's a rather iconic story, and if you haven't read it yet, well, you probably never will. But you should, because this book is wonderfully wonderful.

So the book begins with one of my favourite introductions ever;

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."

And from there it just keeps on getting better. Bilbo, the timid and proper Baggins of Bag End, is pushed and prodded and forced into the most uncomfortable situations all in order to help a company of dwarves reclaim the treasure of their forefathers. While Thorin and his merry band of dwarves are a big part of this story, more than anything else it is a story about Bilbo. As the group faces obstacle after obstacle, Bilbo is forced to shed his timid shell and become the thief that the group needs, and a valuable member of their crew. Much like Harry Potter, he seems to have some pretty magical luck and rescues the group from countless close calls. I always found Frodo just a little bit whiney, but Bilbo is the perfect combination of the four hobbits in LOTR, a little bit responsible, a little bit fun, a little bit adventuous and a little bit of a worry wart. He's written with such love and care on Tolkien's part that you just can't help but root for him to succeed, even if the dwarves themselves come off a little treasure-hungry and selfish at times.

It is very much a kids book, from the style of writing and description that Tolkien chooses to use, to the 'small man makes good' story but it takes a pretty dark turn at around the three-quarter mark. The fun adventures grind to a halt and the everyone-ever-is-going-to-die takes over. If you have plans to read this to your kids, maybe skip ahead and check whether you think your 7 year old is quite ready for the desolation of Smaug and the battle of the 5 armies. It's still a phenomenal story, but I wonder what made Tolkien charge at such a destructive conclusion.

Gollum is terrifying, the dragon is greedy, the elves (of Mirkwood) are assholes and Rivendell sounds like the dream location to retire too. It's the perfect fantasy story for a first-timer looking to get into the genre, and a book both parent and child will obsessively read long into the night. There really isn't a whole lot more to write without deconstructing all 300 pages (which I will totally do with you guys in the comments if you wanna) but if you haven't reread this one in awhile, you probably should get on that right now, and if you haven't read it before? Well, I don't know if we can be friends. If you promise to read it asap I guess we can, but it's a bit of a deal breaker to be honest.

Monday Links

*^The Stark kids beat-box and rap over the Game of Thrones intro. Utterly adorable.

*Fabbity fab authors play with pets. Mark Twain with a kitten on his shoulder is my favourite (Via Flavorwire)

*Neil Gaiman's dog, Cabel, died and Gaiman wrote an amazing article in memory of his canine buddy. Grab some tissues. (Via Neil Gaiman's Journal)

*Like Murakami? Like being organised? Like apps? Well if you have an iPhone/iPad you can combine all three. I would really, really, really like to purchase this but apparently people still aren't aware of the fact that android has over 50% of the market share. Whatevs. (Via The Bookseller)

*Were you aware Ryan Gosling was almost a Back Street Boy? That's about all there is to the story, but follow the link for the most amazing Baby Goose (get it? get it?!) gif. (Via uproxx)

*A member of the opposition in NZ has decided to demand that Peter Jackson pay NZ back for the tax subsidies they were given for filming there. Apparently he doesn't understand how tax breaks or politics work, so par for the course for a politician yes? (Via Stuff)

*A great new (to me) tumblr that'll surely make you giggle. (via Lousy Book Covers)

*Literary themed graffiti found around the world. I love Hemingway's eyes. (via flavorwire)

My favourite time of year - Lifeline Bookfest

I love a lot of things in life, but very close to the top of that list is the Lifeline Bookfest. Twice a year the wonderful charity organisation Lifeline gathers all the lost books in Brisbane together and tries to give them a home AND raise a bunch of money to support those less fortunate. 

I'm sure you're all thinking, "I'm sure it's big but really, how big could it be?" Well I'm glad you thought such a specific question. There are three sections, high quality, priced and unpriced and each section is at least the size of a basketball court. The unpriced section is about 2.5 times that. Yeah, there are a lot of books. A LOT.

When you walk down the aisles of books you can see a real pattern of what was popular the year or two before. This year? Tonnes of Twilight. Like 80-90 copies - at least. Also, I'm hoping it was a joke by a browser and not an actual choice of the organisers but the majority of copies of Twilight were not in kids or fiction. They were in the literature/classics section. Disturbing.

We were a little more conservative with our purchases this year, mainly because we still have 85% of last year's purchases unread but also because there was a bit of a drought of our usual buys. We normally come home with 3-5 Stephen King books but this year they were in short supply. Weird. But anyway, here our new books are, in all their awesome bookish glory.

Rose Madder - Stephen King
Koko - Peter Straub

Red Dwarf: Backwards - Rob Grant

Weapons of choice - John Birmingham

Without Warning - John Birmingham

After America - John Birmingham

The Dark Half - Stephen King

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

About A Boy - Nick Hornby

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Son of Rosemary - Ira Levin

The Passage - Justin Cronin

Aaaaaaand, perhaps most exciting for all I made this little purchase.

When I left home I was Harry Potter-less, since apparently it was important that my sisters had copies to read and since mum bought them they'd stay in Cairns. Whatever, didn't make sense to me either. Anyway, I treated myself to a boxed set of the books a couple of years ago, but the adult's editions were the only ones that came with the final book included, and I hate mismatched sets so they're the ones I bought. It always made me sad not to have  the colourful children's covers I grew up with, so what the heck, now I have TWO sets of HP. Twice the fun!!

And I found this nifty edition of The Chamber of Secrets which I haven't seen in stores before. 

So happy! 

In other news, it was Tom's birthday yesterday and I made him this cake. I'm pretty proud of the awesomeness I produced so I hope you don't mind my shameless self promotion/bragging.

Harry potter and the Philosopher's Stone: Readalong Post 2

Heck yes, let's do this!

Week 3 is upon us people, and I promise I'm not going to disillusion your HP experiences with more talk of toilets and organic compost. PROMISE.

So.

Harry has a broom! And not just any broom, a Nimbus 2000, TAKE THAT MALFOY.
The best thing about Harry getting a broom though? It means Quidditch begins, and besides the Quidditch scenes being some of my faves (Lee Jordan = only person to make sports interesting ever) it means Oliver Wood. Which means Sean Biggerstaff in the film versions, and HOLY SHIT I had a crazy crush on Biggerstaff when the film came out.

I mean, look at him!

I was so infatuated that I was *this* close to being the creator of the Australian branch of the Biggerstaff fan club. Me and a school pal used to come to school each day with lists of websites that had the best photos and interviews and would just squeal at each other for twenty minutes before school started. It was a thing. 

*ahem*

How upsetting is the whole Mirror of Erised thing? I mean, when you know where the series heads, and certain...things...are made clear, this chapter just becomes crazy tragic and sad. And even without the knowledge of future events, Harry just sitting there staring at his family for nights on end....ugh, crazy sad. I've always felt sorry for Harry, but talking through this book has really cemented just how miserable his early upbringing was. He had no one for so long, and I think I forget that sometimes.

Buuuuuuut, when he's looking at all his family, it refers to them as "The Potters" but he describes people having his green eyes, which he got from his mum. So did JK mean both sides of the family are being shown, OR is the real reason Petunia hates them so much because they're secretly cousins or something?

It's time to talk about Ron. The internet seems full of Ron hate, this readalong included. Now I'm not going to say you're wrong but, well, yeah you're wrong.  Personally I think people conflate book Ron with movie Ron, because movie Ron is pretty stupid and mostly a waste of space. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact it's Rupert Grint (who I looooove) I'd probably be leading the charge. But book Ron is different. Sure he's sarcastic, a bit of a pain and has some major self esteem issues (thanks to his 10 000 successful older brothers) but that's basically a description of me - ESPECIALLY when I was 11 years old. Also, he's super crucial - at least in these first few books. He's the only one out of their group who lives in the magical world. He knows the laws, so while Harry and Hermione are still all "OMFG dragons" he can contextualise why Hagrid having a dragon is a majorly bad idea, and what it would mean to be caught.

Also, he's a redhead. Which gives him automatic immunity from hate.

Bulletproof arguement. Done.

Come at me in the comment section bro(s)

Lastly, can we address how sending 4 first years into the Forbidden Forest with a guy who can't (legally) do any magic is as mental as leaving a 1 year old on a doorstep? And why four 11 year olds are expected to have spent all day in class, only to spend all night in a dangerous forest before apparently going to class the next day with no sleep? Filch doesn't need his chains, that's freakin' torture right there! I mean, what's wrong with writing lines? Or giving them an additional essay or project to do? Or, if it has to be manual labour - get them to follow Neville and clean up his messes for the day (although I don't know what Neville would do for detention in that case).  If you know there are giant spiders, and centaurs (we'll get to them in a later book post) and werewolves and things dangerous enough to make it forbidden DO NOT MAKE IT THE LOCATION FOR A TINY BARELY MAGIC CHILD TO BE TAUGHT A LESSON IN DISCIPLINE.

Bonkers.

A few stray observations:

*McGonagall is crazy harsh - 150 points off Gryffindor is insane. Also, Malfoy only gets 20. THAT'S NOT OK MINERVA.

*How do you get 112% on a test? Clearly math isn't being taught at Hogwarts.

*The devil's snare scene always cracks me up. I think it was  tension + capital letters that = comedy when I was younger.

*Why will Flamel die? Does the Elixer of Life have to constantly be drunk? Because if so, it doesn't grant immortality, it's simply a life extender. Or is it that when the stone is destroyed, anything it created is also destroyed?

*What happens to Quirrell? Dumbledore says that Voldemort left him for dead, but it doesn't actually say he died. If he did, was it the love burns or Voldemort leaving his body that did it? Or both?

*Which reminds me, how crap is it at the end of the film when Quirrell turns into ash and crumbles away when Harry grabs him. So stupid.

'Til next week nerds,

Book Review: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair

Written by: Jasper Fforde

Published in: 2001

Synopsis: There is another 1985, where London's criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave's Mr Big.

Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.

Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn't easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

Challenges: Action/Adventure for Book'd Out's Eclectic Reader Challenge
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I picked up this book before heading off on my beach holiday because it seemed like the ideal beach read - light, fun, and a little bit clever. It was everything I had hoped it'd be and I had a great time reading Thursday Next's adventure as I sat on the beach after a swim. Sorry, have I completely angered all of you suffering through dreary winters at the moment? It wasn't my intention, I SWEAR!

So if you're like me and have either never heard of this book or avoided it then here's what you need to know. Thursday Next works as a LiteraTec in the Special Ops - she's tasked with hunting down the guys and gals who have taken to stealing, forging or destroying literature - a crime that seems to be more rampant than any other. She has a pet dodo (cloning is big), an upsetting ex, a time travelling dad on the run, a love of Jane Eyre and a hatred for England's role in the 130 year Crimean War.  After a disastrous stake-out on an old college lecturer turned villain (Acheron Hades) ends with most of her team dead and she's visited by herself in a hospital, Thursday decides to return to her home town of Swindon.

It's back in Swindon that everything ramps up to 11. Far from being the quiet home she remembers, Thursday finds herself squared off against Hades again, only this time he's managed to steal a manuscript of Jane Eyre and he's threatening to erase the lead characters if his demands aren't met. With her LiteraTec team mates (who are used to much quieter existences), Thursday struggles to keep up with Hades and maybe even get a step ahead. Of course, that isn't easy when Hades is...well, you never really know what he is. He's able to detect when people use his name, he can walk past video cameras without being seen and bullets don't hurt him...so he might be Voldemort, or he might be anything really. Though this world is very different to our own, the exact parameters are never actually set. We know there are vampires and werewolves (they're very briefly mentioned) but does magic? Is that what Hades is? Magic? Or is he a god? A demon? A very good criminal? You never really know, and it never really bugged me, except when it did. I mean, in Harry Potter you know why Voldemort is invincible - he's an evil ass wizard who played with some black magic, but Hades is only ever explained as a man who really, really enjoys being bad and can also do a bunch of crazy magical things for some reason.

And that right there is my one real annoyance with the novel. Fforde paints himself out of any corner he finds himself in with a neat little flourish of "this is an alternate England and things are different" while not really saying why certain things happen in particular ways. It doesn't quite go deus ex machina but there are several moments of father ex machina and even Rochester ex machina. It's a fun book and I was more invested in keeping an eye out for the literary hints and clues (and there are hundreds!), but it's a weakness of the author and it may harm the potential of the rest of the books in the series (assuming that doesn't get better with practice). The only other annoyance is the romance plot, it's mental how bad it is. I outwardly groaned in the final few chapters of the book and it was almost, almost, bad enough for me to dismiss the book completely. I mean, after setting Thursday up as this independent and strong female (kinda) who has been haunted by a past relationship for over ten years I was hoping Thursday might learn something and use that to her benefit, rather than just predicably do what was set out from page one. But I have issues with relationships in any book that's supposed to be about a strong female character, especially when that book skates pretty close to failing the bechdel test (and in my opinion does fail).

But complaints aside, this was a fun book. I enjoyed picking up on the literary hints (mostly in the names) and the inclusion of weird little sub-plots about door-to-door Baconians, art terrorists and French revisionists who are playing with time and history. The Jane Eyre side of the story I can't really comment on since I haven't read Jane Eyre, but I liked way Fforde created the world inside the book which is very aware that it's a world that only exists in a book. It's a brilliant concept, it just isn't always executed as well as it should have been - but it performed more than well enough for me to be interested in seeing where the rest of the series heads - even if it means dealing with the whole relationship debacle again.