I feel so left out...

[sinanju]

All over LiveJournal-land and usenet, people are talking about Harry Potter.  Spoiling it, or carefully not-spoiling it, or ranting about wanting spoilers or not wanting spoilers, or critiquing it or ranting about this awful/wonderful novel and the fandom that's grown up around it, or speculating about what will happen next.

*sigh*

I read the first couple of Harry Potter novels to Twoson.  Or parts of them, anyhow, when snippy wasn't the appointed reader of the evening.  Or before Twoson got impatient and started reading them for himself.  Maybe it was my haphazard introduction to the series...but maybe not.

Whatever the cause, I never became a fan of Harry Potter and the Interminable Adventures At Hogwarts.  I have no animosity toward those who are--it would be nice if I had this to look forward to reading.  But I don't.  I found them too...precious.  That's probably not the right word, but I can't think of a better one.

In some ways it's like my reaction to Pratchett's Diskworld novels.  I read the first couple because friends/fellow gamers raved about them.  I found them mildly interesting, but most of the stuff I found amusing wasn't new to me--I'd already grokked the ideas from being told about the stories.  What I was left with was silly, stupid people doing silly, stupid things and mildly amusing wordplay that didn't begin to make up for the lack of other things.

I hated the damned wizards.  Sitting around polishing their knobs (yuk yuk) and being very serious about their wizard-ness and always yammering on about magic... while never actually DOING anything of note.  It was maddening.  And apparently a lot of people found it hysterical.  I just found it tedious.  The whole diskworld milieu struck me that way.

Harry Potter seems to resemble that in my experience.  Not as strongly, since it isn't a comedy, but whatever I look for in a novel that makes me eager for more...I don't find it in the Harry Potter novels.  I think I've had more fun reading parodies and pastiches and (in some cases) pornographic HP fanfic than I ever had reading the original novels themselves.

Not that I don't have my own inexplicable fandoms.  The lovely and talented snippy is baffled by my enthusiasm for Firefly, for instance.  I love that show; she has no interest in cowboys in space ("...and Space Hookers!" she would no doubt remind me, if I mentioned it right now).  Different strokes and all that.  I'd like to enraptured by the latest Harry Potter novel...but I'm not.

Comments

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Firefly, my friend, is the shit. I lurv it, and have from day one, and I hate the cowboys in space idea. Tianyu is trying to find a way to accellerate the space program so that we can be flying around bounty hunting before we get too old.