I'll get you, Harry Potter

[davidn]

I just went to the BBC News site and saw the headline "Bush to undergo medical procedure". I had hoped the procedure would be "receiving a brain", but it's something far more mundane and really something I didn't want to know. You shouldn't click that. Oh, too late.

Anyway. Apparently a reasonably long-awaited book is coming out at midnight tonight, which is actually tomorrow. For a series that everyone says is horribly written it's doing rather well for itself, and the entirety of Coolidge Corner up the road is hosting a party about it this evening. It's just one of hundreds of things all over the place.

In fact, everything in the world has suddenly gone mad - ASDA and Scholastic had a bit of a falling out about book pricing, with ASDA claiming that the publishers were going for "blatant profiteering" (which is a bit rich coming from Wal-Mart) and pricing their books at £5 for revenge, only to have their order halted by Scholastic. Now they've made up again and things might proceed as normal until 12:01 comes and they can get around to actually selling them to the five-hour-long queues outside.

It's an exciting event, I'm not saying it isn't. But in the end, it's just a book. J K Rowling-in-it happened to have the right idea at the right time (to an incredible degree) and this is what happened because of it. I wonder if the final part of Lord of the Rings would have been received like this if Tolkien had written it today (but if he had, then we wouldn't have had most high fantasy literature until now, and besides, he would be alive after his death, creating a paradox that would put the universe in limbo until we were eventually saved by Doctor Who).

Still, this will be the last one, and after that, all this will be over. Apart from when they release the films in a couple of years' time. And those books are fairly long, so it's likely they'll be split up into separate films so that it takes a bit longer than that. But after that, it might stop at some point within the next fifteen years.

Comments

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

And, if Tolkein had written Lord of the Rings in this day and age, they would be a novelisation of the films, therefore nobody would want to read them.

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

If Lord of the Rings had been written more recently I would have spent the whole of my mediaeval literature module watching a lot of middle-aged men in tweed having an extended bitch-fight. Despite the fact that Tolkien was considered to be one of the leading experts in his academic field, and Chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, the fact that he wrote Lord of the Rings apparently invalidates every word of non-fiction he ever committed to paper (which could get weird if you include the couple of pages of the OED he did). This might have been interesting, because nobody can have a hissy fit like the high ranking members of the academic community, and Tolkien had some fairly epic ones when people accused him of writing allegories. It might also have meant that I got to study Beowulf in an academic field where they hadn't spent 30 or 40 years ostracising anyone who mentioned the monsters in a mythic story about a bloke who fights monsters, just because the last generation of scholars are still bitter about how Tolkien made more money than them.

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

Also, Tolkein would have to defend his work to the slashers.

[kitschyduck.livejournal.com]

well Rowling already did say she was writing a spin off after this one :/

I could never get past the first few chapters of the first book. Saw the first movie, but that didn't seem to grab me much either. It's not like I don't like kid's stuff! I don't think it's very well written either though.

I wish I WAS hyped about it all though. Sounds like fun.

[davidn]

Has she really? I hadn't heard of that. Is there any word on what direction it'll spin off, what characters and so on?

I held off reading them for ages and eventually got up to about halfway through the fourth book in about 2003, but then I somehow gave up. The contrast in the later films, though, is incredible when you compare them to the first one - it's become a whole lot darker, apparently in line with the mood of the books.

And they have Alan Rickman in them!

[kitschyduck.livejournal.com]

well i think it's something like details and background of all the characters and species in her universe.

yeah, the movies look good, but i won't watch them as i keep hoping i'll be able to get through the books still.
I just CAN NOT read a book I'm not into though, no matter how hard I try.

[stubbleupdate.livejournal.com]

I can't take the early films seriously; they all look so young!

[yemminie.livejournal.com]

I have never understood why people go on about the books not being well written. What is anyone basing that on?? Poorly written compared to what? It almost seems like it's generally the people who desperately want to resist liking anything that the masses like, even if the masses have, for once, been sucked into something that actually is quality. I think the stories are great, and I think they're written very cleverly. I also think that the quality has remained consistently very very high across the series. And I have a degree in English, so there! (On the other hand, we all know that my tastes are a bit suspect - romance novels, anyone?)

But seriously, why do people say they're poorly written?

I'll be in line at midnight tonight - I've got my pre-order all set.

[davidn]

That's pretty much what I thought, too. I think that the only real reason backing it up that I heard from someone was that they found it annoying that she TYPES CHARACTERS SHOUTING LIKE THIS as if they're on AOL.

Whitney has a couple of romance novels as well, about immortal Scottish highlanders. They're absolutely scandalous.

[yemminie.livejournal.com]

Would they be the ones by Karen Marie Moning? Because I LOVE those. In fact, I am re-reading one right now!

[yemminie.livejournal.com]

And, actually, now that I've glanced down at the cover, the one that I'm re-reading is called The Immortal Highlander.

[davidn]

That's her. That's it. That's quite a coincidence.

[yemminie.livejournal.com]

Has she read the others? Because Spell of the Highlander and The Dark Highlander are better.

[whinknee.livejournal.com]

I don't want to ruin your post, but in case Scholastic decides to sue you for libel, you should know that it was Bloomsbury (the British publisher of Harry Potter) and not Scholastic who had a big public argument with Asda. They made Asda pay all back billings in order to reciever their 500,000 copies of the 7th book as well as write a public apology. For anyone who knows the publishing industry this is quite unheard of. Its a consignment industry, no one pays their bills.

[tweeasfuck.livejournal.com]

I like to get them and read them asap now because if I don't some arsehole will think it is hilarious to spoil me for them. Alas!