New Stuff - a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This review was originally published by me on LibraryThing.com. There's a link under the books on the left. Yeah, down there somewhere. Keep looking...


This book, like so many recent books, has fallen prey to some sloppy copy-editing: wrong words, incorrect articles, misplaced modifiers, and one glaring error of consistency (in Bagshot's house when she speaks from the parlor). While this book is by no means rife with such errors, the fact they exist becomes distracting. One would think that with such an anticipated book the publishers would pay stricter attention to such details.

In this final installment of the series, Rowling delves into the darkness further than she has in the previous six. There is death and dying and war and rumors of war on almost every page, and in the midst of it all is Harry, who is finally using his brain. There are those moments, almost obligatory in light of the heaviness of the story itself, where there is happiness and homecoming. These small bits of light do indicate that there is life still happening out there.

I found that in this book, as in the previous books in this series, there is much detail in the moment with long interludes passed over with little mentioned except the passage of, "a few weeks," or some similar placeholder. While this does, indeed, mirror real life, I can't perceive of the long intervals of time where these particular characters are just hiding out doing nothing and not getting caught while doing it. Sure, it is a lot like war, long intervals of doing absolutely nothing punctuated by instances of extreme brutality, but I can't believe with all the resources brought to bear on them that they could elude capture. (Osama is doing it, but we don't have magic.)

Hermione and Ron really take a back seat to Harry in this one. Harry calls all the shots and the other two are riding as support. While this may have been strictly true for the entirety of the series, I would have thought that it would have been more of a blending of talents in this final book. There doesn't seem to be the cohesion or melding that I felt should happen in order for the three to complete their task - namely to defeat Voldemort.

The whole of the story deals with death and is quite reminiscent of the strictures of mythology as set forth by Joseph Campbell. It is the quintessential Hero's Journey with the highs, lows, love, hate, birth, death and the aftermath of death that our three must deal with. It is this archetypal journey that Harry takes in this book.

The final chapter is quite disappointing. I would have expected a chapter before it describing the colossal clean-up after the war. The cost on lives is not the only cost of war; the society itself is often changed. Questions are left unanswered. While we can surmise some things from what we are given, such as the continuing schism within the wizarding world, what of the other magical creatures with which they deal? Since this is the last book, we may never know. ( 4 stars )

You Have a Job? - Americans Prove to the World They are the Dumbest

Okay, I admit it: I watch American Idol. I appreciate good singing. Although they don't always show the best singers at the beginning, they always have the better singers making it to the finals. Last year I picked Paris and Hicks as the finalists right from the beginning. Although Paris showed some personality problems later on and showed that she had some broadening of her talent to do, Hicks proved through that he had the talent and a unique voice and brought the prize home.

I hate what the producer did to Taylor and his voice on his first album. The tone and phrasing on it, for every single song, was just plain wrong. Instead of allowing Taylor to sing the songs as they should be, with the full emotion that Hicks can convey with his voice, the producer, apparently, felt it necessary to prove that he [the producer] knew almost nothing about music except where all the knobs, dials, and slides were located. Of course, that's my beef and not pertinent to why America is the dumbest country on the planet.

This year America proved to the world that, collectively, they couldn't think themselves out a the proverbial wet paper sack.

Melinda Dolittle, the most talented singer American Idol has ever had on its stage was voted out by the same people who actually think Britney Spears has talent. These are the same people that think Rolling Stone magazine and MTV still know music. The same people, in fact, that can't seem to rise to the challenge of voting in political elections. 60 million votes cast is more than in any political election for president that I can think of. I'm not going to delve into the records - I might be wrong.

The whole point of the show is to award the best singer of the competition a singing contract. America hasn't got a single clue what music is let alone be able to judge a singing competition. To oust Dolittle is like saying, "Um...Aretha Franklin wasn't any good either."

Jordin, while good, does still have some vocal stretching to accomplish before she's as good as Melinda. In 2 to 5 years she will likely be where Melinda is now, so let's wait for that to happen before giving her a contract. Blake, while an interesting talent, has a single octave to his range and can't emote to save his life while singing. At best he is a novelty act and is definitely not unique enough to warrant a full contract.

Why am I so adamant about this? It's another notch on the dumb-o-meter for America as a whole. We can't do Math - tick. America's engineers aren't good enough so workers from other countries must be hired - tick. America's collective ignorance of geography leaves much to be desired - tick. Most Americans don't know the difference between Monet and Manet - tick. The books we cleave to most wholeheartedly are formulaic and most wouldn't know how to determine if that was so - tick. Americans don't actually vote in elections because they feel that the vote will not count - tick. Americans that go to college would rather party and get easy grades than actually learn anything - tick. Americans don't really believe anything a politician says, but will believe anything from the party office to which they belong - tick. Americans, as a whole, don't know what a war is - tick. Americans wouldn't know real talent if it walked up to them and hit them, hard, between the eyes because almost none of them have any that they can lay claim to - tick.

It's bad enough that our President is a dumbass, but the voting that occurred on this years' installment of American Idol proves to the world that we are a nation of dumbasses, so it is only fitting that we be led by one.

It is highly unlikely that I will watch any further episodes of American Idol. It makes Americans look too stupid.

Returning after much time away

I know I've been gone and you miss me.

What? You never noticed? I'm crushed.

After 2 years of non-activity, I return to add something to my sidebar. Just under all that advertisement (which I might put above it, but then again it ain't that far to scroll) I've added some random books from my cataloged collection at LibraryThing. The link is below the books, so I won't put it in here. Sometimes ya just hafta make tha reader work for it!

This may be the beginning of a full return. Then again, most of the comments I got 2 years ago were advertisements. Not something I'm looking forward to. It was very disappointing. Back then, I was thinking of posting the offenders IP addresses, but thought that I'd let it slide since they just move and do the same dumb crap anyway. Who knows what I might do now.