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Ahem, regarding that Harry Potter book....
Jul. 6th, 2007 10:53 pm[Difficult week. So not worth going into. Work is making me crazy again, enough said.
If you don't happen to read Harry Potter - please skip the following message}
As anyone who has read Harry Potter probably already knows, unless you happen to live beneath a rock, the last book in the Harry Potter series is due to come out on July 20th or thereabouts. When it does - there will no doubt be a race amongst everyone on the net to see who can finish and post on the thing first. Last round someone did it in under two hours - which was a record for a book that is close to 900 pages in length.
I don't understand this. What's so great about being able to read and comprehend an 800 and some page book in 2 hours flat? Who cares? IT can't be that enjoyable. It's over. Then what? Sure you can go back and re-read it - but it's not the same. Don't you want to savor it - the experience of reading it for the first time, seeing the story unfold?? Re-read paragraphs as they cross your eyes, laugh at the inside jokes and sly wit? (Which would be missed on a scan, one would think). Fall into the world? How can you if you sped through the thing? No wonder people re-read the books - they barely read the things the first round. And assuming you did get every nit and cranny, not just the general gist - it couldn't have been that good if you want to rip through the thing, scanning the words? Sorry, I just can't wrap my brain around the appeal of doing that. My Granny does or rather used to do the same thing - she read Gone With the Wind in 13 hours flat - it was over 1000 pages. She timed it. Uh. Okkkay. But couldn't for the life of her remember the details, just the gist. I mean - why does everything have to be a race? Or for that matter a competitive sport? Even reading a book? A book you claim to love no less? It's not like anyone is keeping score...
Personally? I prefer to read books at my own rather sluggish pace, devouring each word, re-reading the bits that make me laugh, pausing over them, maybe even reading them aloud to hear the words echo outside my brain, and letting myself escape if just for snippets of time into the world Rowlings or some other author creates. I might even pause and jump back a few pages, re-read a passage to see how it relates to the one I'm one. Ponder it.
Harry Potter - for me at least - recaptures the nostalgia of my childhood, when teachers read Ronald Dahl to me or I created my own fantasy stories. Rowlings reminds me a great deal of Dahl, except she's lighter in tone, and not as cruel. She seems somehow to like people more - which is odd considering she had a tougher time of it - a welfare mom struggling, while Dahl if I remember correctly was pretty well off and had married a fairly famous film actress - Patricia O'Neal. At any rate - I like to make the experience last as long as possible. I do not want to inhale the book in two hours or twenty four hours or a weekend or two days. I WANT TO TAKE MY TIME! Soo...while it may take some people two hours to read these books, it will take me a week or more.
Reading a good book, a book you love, is no different than eating a really good meal, drinking a lovely glass of wine or for that matter listening to a great piece of music - you don't speed through it - it gives you heartburn, you don't taste it. You sip. You fall back and listen, you chew and taste each morsel. If you speed through it, you barely experience it. It has no time to resonate. If you speed up a music track it becomes white noise. The notes are lost. It's like that old Simon and Garfunkle song - slow down, you move too fast, feeling groovy...
Sometimes I feel as if the world wants to move at the speed of light. Racing each other to the finish line. And I wonder what the rush is about? Is it the rush against mortality? Time? Probably. Everyone says the same thing over and over again - I don't have any time.
Truth is you do. You make time.
I love to while away a few hours in a book. To escape for snippets. To get away from the noise in my brain and in the world. Nothing compares to it.
So why would anyone want to sped up that experience?
To read more books? Is that it? Does it really matter how many you've read? Especially if you don't remember them that well? If you haven't taken the time to savor and enjoy them? If they don't satisfy? I mean, I get speed-reading for knowledge - I do that. I can read a ten page contract in about fifteen minutes. And flist? Very quickly. But a book? A novel?
For enjoyment?
Impatience?
Don't know... only word I can think of is well, shrug.
Long ago accepted the fact that not everyone experiences the world the same way. Once you accept that I think, it's easier to shrug off things people do that you just can't wrap your mind around.
Anywho - you are hereby on notice, flist - if you spoil me - by accident or intent, I will defriend you. No excuses. Got it? Good. Because I'll be damned if I have to stay off the net and lj until I finish reading the bloody thing.
Sigh.
Who am I kidding? I'll probably get spoiled by New York 1 or the little news tv in the elevator at work. Avoiding spoilers for Harry Potter or any pop culture phenomena is akin to attempting to avoid getting wet in the streets of NYC - it rains horizontally here, you can't avoid it. Might as well just shrug your shoulders and accept it.
Hmmm..there's something to be said for not liking the same thing everyone else does. Like the book I'm reading now, for instance - the fourth in the Kim Harrison Rachel Morgan Bounty Hunter series. Fantastic read. And no fears of being spoilt on future entries.
Sure there are people who like it, but not that many and they don't really talk about it.
If you don't happen to read Harry Potter - please skip the following message}
As anyone who has read Harry Potter probably already knows, unless you happen to live beneath a rock, the last book in the Harry Potter series is due to come out on July 20th or thereabouts. When it does - there will no doubt be a race amongst everyone on the net to see who can finish and post on the thing first. Last round someone did it in under two hours - which was a record for a book that is close to 900 pages in length.
I don't understand this. What's so great about being able to read and comprehend an 800 and some page book in 2 hours flat? Who cares? IT can't be that enjoyable. It's over. Then what? Sure you can go back and re-read it - but it's not the same. Don't you want to savor it - the experience of reading it for the first time, seeing the story unfold?? Re-read paragraphs as they cross your eyes, laugh at the inside jokes and sly wit? (Which would be missed on a scan, one would think). Fall into the world? How can you if you sped through the thing? No wonder people re-read the books - they barely read the things the first round. And assuming you did get every nit and cranny, not just the general gist - it couldn't have been that good if you want to rip through the thing, scanning the words? Sorry, I just can't wrap my brain around the appeal of doing that. My Granny does or rather used to do the same thing - she read Gone With the Wind in 13 hours flat - it was over 1000 pages. She timed it. Uh. Okkkay. But couldn't for the life of her remember the details, just the gist. I mean - why does everything have to be a race? Or for that matter a competitive sport? Even reading a book? A book you claim to love no less? It's not like anyone is keeping score...
Personally? I prefer to read books at my own rather sluggish pace, devouring each word, re-reading the bits that make me laugh, pausing over them, maybe even reading them aloud to hear the words echo outside my brain, and letting myself escape if just for snippets of time into the world Rowlings or some other author creates. I might even pause and jump back a few pages, re-read a passage to see how it relates to the one I'm one. Ponder it.
Harry Potter - for me at least - recaptures the nostalgia of my childhood, when teachers read Ronald Dahl to me or I created my own fantasy stories. Rowlings reminds me a great deal of Dahl, except she's lighter in tone, and not as cruel. She seems somehow to like people more - which is odd considering she had a tougher time of it - a welfare mom struggling, while Dahl if I remember correctly was pretty well off and had married a fairly famous film actress - Patricia O'Neal. At any rate - I like to make the experience last as long as possible. I do not want to inhale the book in two hours or twenty four hours or a weekend or two days. I WANT TO TAKE MY TIME! Soo...while it may take some people two hours to read these books, it will take me a week or more.
Reading a good book, a book you love, is no different than eating a really good meal, drinking a lovely glass of wine or for that matter listening to a great piece of music - you don't speed through it - it gives you heartburn, you don't taste it. You sip. You fall back and listen, you chew and taste each morsel. If you speed through it, you barely experience it. It has no time to resonate. If you speed up a music track it becomes white noise. The notes are lost. It's like that old Simon and Garfunkle song - slow down, you move too fast, feeling groovy...
Sometimes I feel as if the world wants to move at the speed of light. Racing each other to the finish line. And I wonder what the rush is about? Is it the rush against mortality? Time? Probably. Everyone says the same thing over and over again - I don't have any time.
Truth is you do. You make time.
I love to while away a few hours in a book. To escape for snippets. To get away from the noise in my brain and in the world. Nothing compares to it.
So why would anyone want to sped up that experience?
To read more books? Is that it? Does it really matter how many you've read? Especially if you don't remember them that well? If you haven't taken the time to savor and enjoy them? If they don't satisfy? I mean, I get speed-reading for knowledge - I do that. I can read a ten page contract in about fifteen minutes. And flist? Very quickly. But a book? A novel?
For enjoyment?
Impatience?
Don't know... only word I can think of is well, shrug.
Long ago accepted the fact that not everyone experiences the world the same way. Once you accept that I think, it's easier to shrug off things people do that you just can't wrap your mind around.
Anywho - you are hereby on notice, flist - if you spoil me - by accident or intent, I will defriend you. No excuses. Got it? Good. Because I'll be damned if I have to stay off the net and lj until I finish reading the bloody thing.
Sigh.
Who am I kidding? I'll probably get spoiled by New York 1 or the little news tv in the elevator at work. Avoiding spoilers for Harry Potter or any pop culture phenomena is akin to attempting to avoid getting wet in the streets of NYC - it rains horizontally here, you can't avoid it. Might as well just shrug your shoulders and accept it.
Hmmm..there's something to be said for not liking the same thing everyone else does. Like the book I'm reading now, for instance - the fourth in the Kim Harrison Rachel Morgan Bounty Hunter series. Fantastic read. And no fears of being spoilt on future entries.
Sure there are people who like it, but not that many and they don't really talk about it.
