(And I have no intention of going through the series in one big lump either. Book 1 is fine for their ages, but book 7? NOT EVEN CLOSE. I'm going to stretch it out a bit.)

Reading any of my Old Favorites is like this, and one reason I insist on reading a chapter book with them even as they're outgrowing daily doses of shared picture books. (Well, Ana is, she reads them on her own mostly now, Evangeline still needs it because she can't read yet... but we'll get on this in a minute.) But Harry Potter is, well, Harry Potter. It has had so much massive (massive) discussion.... Well!

And now this leaves me with dilemmas. Should I point out to the nieces the small size of Harry's year (along with the fannish muttering that this implies a massive die-off and lack of births during and just after the first war)? Should I mention all the meaningful names as they show up? Like, if we get to PoA, should I point out that Remus is basically named Wolfy McWolfman? (A name like that is just asking for trouble. It's like Swiper on Dora. WHAT was his mom THINKING? If she'd named him "Giver" or "Sweetie" instead he'd never be a pain!) Should I mention what we know about Dean Thomas from interviews, namely that his dad was a wizard who got killed for turning down the DE? Man, I feel like one of those people who worries that their child might grow up thinking Greedo shot first!

Of course, I can't even remotely do accents when reading, so I feel silly every time I get to one of them whose accent is clearly spelled out (mostly Hagrid). How do other people handle accents when reading, anyway?

As far as Evangeline goes, I asked her teacher what level she is so I can clear out some of our older books (which I'll do when she goes back to school - she and her sister are home sick today), and her teacher said "D". This is pretty much where she ought to be at the end of this year, so I'm not concerned - she's not at all behind, nor is she so far ahead that she's likely to be bored.

Except yesterday I caught her reading "The Fire Cat", which is... not D level. But I'm thinking she may have had it partially memorized.

Ana, for her part, has discovered a profound addiction to graphic novels. She started with Rapunzel and now... sheesh. I know precious little about graphic novels for her age, but I'm learning fast!

Well, that last part was random. Let's get back to what's important - Harry Potter, and also - what are we reading next? (No, really. What ARE we reading next?)

I want people to stop - just stop - with the Healing Power of Luna Lovegood.

I'm so tired of random characters coming across Luna, taking her seriously, and being totally healed of all their prejudices and, incidentally, inner turmoil. Life doesn't work that way.

I'm also tired of everybody who runs across Luna being surprised that other people might ever be mean to this girl, and becoming bestest fwends. Life doesn't work like that either. Most people coming across Luna during school would probably act just like her housemates - hiding her things, taunting her, and generally being annoying bullies. And most people *outside* of school would pretend they were too grown-up for that, yet would still probably exclude her just because she's too different to get along with for most of them. (It's very interesting how in fic nobody is presented who used to bully Luna. No, somehow they were always either mostly oblivious or, at worst, they watched and felt guilty. One wonders why her stuff went missing every year, then....)

I appreciate that a lot of people either see themselves as Lovely Luna, or would like to, but - it doesn't work. (What's more, it turns poor Luna from a character into a kinda annoying, sueified plot device. Why doesn't she get to angst and have inner turmoil and occasionally learn new things? Poor girl.)

I occasionally (very occasionally - but then, I don't seek this stuff out) come across HP fic where, in an attempt to redeem Petunia Dursley we're informed that her husband is a physically abusive dolt. Abusive to her, that is, and sometimes little Dudders as well.

I'll be the first to say that the treatment of Harry, as presented in the books (though I wonder sometimes if maybe it was originally intended as hyperbole, until JKR realized she wanted to write about Serious Subjects), but I'll note that we never actually see him hit the kid. Overblown threats, but no actual violence. (Which is not to say that it didn't happen, and certainly letting your kid beat up another kid isn't exactly being non-violent, but I'm trying to describe what the books say here.)

More importantly, though, whenever Petunia puts her foot down in any way - he listens. Remember that first chapter? He goes through a whole day of trying to ignore the strange happenings before finally deciding, nervously, to bring up the subject to his wife - nervously because he knows she'll be upset. SHE'S the one who pretends she's an only child - she got mad at him! He's not beating her up to maintain this silence. This might, in fact, be the only time in the series that he's presented as anything approaching a sympathetic, three-dimensional character.

We're told later in the book that he would have shipped Harry off to an orphanage, but didn't. Why? Because clearly his wife insisted on keeping him, for whatever reasons of her own.

Heck, when he tried to kick Harry out during book... what was it, five? All Petunia had to say was no, and he dropped the subject.

I think it's great that people want to flesh out some of that family. Terrific. But let's not all pretend that she was secretly a nice woman who was herself being abused. There's no support for this at all in the text, is there?

JKR's flash-only site is nifty, even if it suffers the flaw of being flash-only.

So why on earth is her text-only site so... uh... ugly?

I seem to remember a fanfic I read a while back, and totally forgot about.

Harry and Dudley both had been attacked by werewolves. Other Dursleys killed. Adopted (?) by McGonagall and renamed. Filch was actually believably likable. (There's only one E in that word? Since when?) Everything was going different, but for believable (more or less) reasons.

Title almost certainly had moon or wolf or both in it, but what do you expect?

Help?

I do believe that there are gay people in the Potterverse. I do believe some of those people are not old dead guys who never had *requited* love.

But when I'm reading your fic, and Harry is gay, and Draco is gay, and Seamus and Dean are both gay (and alive), and all the little kidlets are gay, and 5 out of 7 Weasleys are gay, and nobody appears to be bi...

Somebody in this group has to be fucking the opposite sex, okay? The whole of Hogwarts for seven years (and then some) cannot all be gay. Gay is good, but some of you? You seem to have worse math skills than JKR herself....

Make them all bi, whatever. But once in a while, at least some of the characters have to have standard PIV sex, if only to make babies.

I know, Harry needs to have 20 zillion people telling him that it's not wrong to be gay, but they don't all have to be gay to say that.

And some of them are mentioning that the one outed gay character having exactly one unrequited love (who was evil) in his past and, presumably, being celibate the rest of his life is OMG homophobic.

Which it might be, I don't know. But I don't really think that this is a sign of JKR's views about gay people. It's more a sign of how she views relationships in general - you seem to have your one true love, and you're stuck with them. FOREVER. Even if they become evil. Even if you throw a nasty slur at them and they never speak to you again. Even if the fact that he's adopted your mom as a quasi-foster mom gives your entire relationship creepy incest vibes, or your family disowns you, or you just aren't right for each other, pregnancy notwithstanding, or whatever - everybody seems to ultimately end up with just one person.

And this is a very sweet and touching way to look at the world. It is. Imagine - you fall in love, you marry your high school sweetheart, awwwww.

It's not very realistic, but we're talking about a world with magic in it. How realistic do we expect it to be, exactly?

(And why hasn't somebody asked the all-important question yet? Why did she decide to stop calling Hermione waspish?)

She may overuse her adverbs, she may consistently tell instead of show, she may very well need an editor - but damn if she doesn't have a gift for writing fairy tales. I mean, that actually sound like they could be traditional fairy tales!

Wherein Harry Potter thanks everybody for their birthday wishes. Individually.

Spoilery, of course, but still - lots of fun!

( Spoilery )

(And if I'm wrong, somebody please correct me and I'll hie me to a bookstore after the water festival tomorrow.)

( Quote (not very spoilery) )

So, the entire second half of the book is ( Read more... ) But honestly, I kinda expected that, so it was fine.