This is a rather strange sensation. I have absolutely no clue what I should be writing about right now. Maybe that isn’t that surprising, I bet most people reading this wonder if I am just randomly hitting keys using the infinite monkeys principle. Or more likely, that I’ve filled my spare bedroom with a large number of monkeys, a laptop and old tapes of Nick at Nite and I choose the best work each night. But in reality I typically have a few topics I want to talk about each week and usually run out of ideas around Thursday, which is why those posts can range from brilliant to dreadful so frequently. In all honesty, all I want to do is go back to my living room and get back to reading Harry Potter.
So I guess I’ll write about that…
According to my booklist, I read my first Harry Potter book in 2000. 11/16/2000 to 11/23/2000 to be exact. (See, since 1998 I’ve kept track of every book I’ve read including how long it took me to read it. Yes, it’s part of my documenting my life project and it actually pre-dates my writer’s journal by a few months. Trust me, my future biographers have already thanked me for this.) I guess I read it to see what all the fuss was about. I had heard the buzz and was actually in Ireland when Goblet of Fire came out that summer so I was well aware of how big an event it was in the British Isles. Sure, it was a kid’s book but I read C.S. Lewis growing up so I figured this wouldn’t be too bad.
I’ll always say that I’ve been impressed by the world that J.K. Rowling imagined. She created a fully formed mythology with great detail and very seldom did she seem to be lecturing you just so she could get all of the information that was in her notebooks crammed into the novel. Heck, in the first few books the best parts were just finding out more about the history of the place. You never knew quite what was going on but then again, neither did Harry. It’s what made the first Star Wars movie so successful. We followed Luke who was just a farm boy suddenly thrust into this intergalactic conflict and we were happy when he asked “Who the hell are these guys?”
There were problems with the books as well. She does tend to provide plot by having a character read from a book or a newspaper. There is also the fact that she tends to have chapters that seem to serve no other purpose than being fun to write. Those aren’t huge flaws and they are mainly a beginning writer’s flaws. I know I have my own, especially given that most of the characters in my short stories drink solely because I figure that a guy who has been drinking really requires no internal motivation to do anything. Of course, I can’t even get 8 million people to read my blog, much less buy my novel.
Of course, I still haven’t said why I read the books or why I didn’t read the second book until 2003.
Like about every other important thing in my life, it’s all because of a girl. In fact, it was the same girl who got me to start smoking when I was 30 because she thought it would make me look cool. (Actually, a lot of people thought that and we were all sadly mistaken.) Anyway, she was a fan of the books because she had the same birthday as Harry Potter so I read them in, well I can’t say that I was trying to impress her. More like it was something I thought would be cool to do. Then we broke up and I was addicted to the books and now end up at bookstores at midnight wearing a picture frame so I can grab the latest copy. Well, I guess it is at least cheaper than Nicoderm.
Ok, time to get back to the book. Hopefully I’ll have a better topic tomorrow.
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