Gonna nope on out of this... [Harry Potter #8]

[mizarchivist]

So, I picked up the 8th Harry Potter on Sunday, started reading it slowly yesterday/this morning, and I am not likely to continue.

why? Let me tell you under this cut for those who want to read it unsullied by my grumpiness...

First, it's tough because it's a play script rather than a novel, so limited from the start. It's harder to develop the characters and let it have a slower pace. We had the expectation from 1-7 that it was 1 year passing/book. Not this time!

The really big reason why I can't is because grown up 40 year old Harry is not a remotely compelling character. As my colleague noted this morning: he's a high school jock who married high school sweetie, and took his easiest career path of law enforcement. In what I've read so far, he's not remotely intersted in doing the hard work of being an adult. Do the paperwork. Interact meaningfully with your kids, even if it's hard. Don't skate on the fact your friend is the leader of the wizarding community to be less accountable to his obligations. So, he's failing up. Another story of a lazy white hetero cis white man with harping back to the glory days rather than focusing on the hard work in front of you? I really don't think I need to read that. I have worked too damn hard this year on improving my own infrastructure to see a fictional version of what I don't want to interact with in real life.

I'll be putting the book down and finding something else.

Comments

[minkrose]

uggghhhh. I am not surprised but I am still disappointed. Harry never really did have his shit together as a kid (never did his homework!) -- I always wondered if it was due to a lack of healthy relationships with adults, which could still contribute to him not being a good adult but BLEH.

No way I'm reading that, either.

[mizarchivist]

I wanted to yell through the pages: GO TO THERAPY, QUIT SKATING THROUGH!!

By 40, ya need to have done the work, or at least making a good faith effort, you know?!

[drwex]

I'm sorry that something you were looking forward to so much ended up being so disappointing.

[mizarchivist]

It IS disappointing, than you. However, you never know. And I'm enough of a completionist that I want the 8th book even if I think it's shit. Jaime may want to read it.

Further, I am pleased that I'm mature enough to identify shitty adulting, so....

[drwex]

There's a whole long topic thread about the way our developing filters affect our media consumption in general. I started to get into this stuff about 15 years ago when I took Henry Jenkins' class at MIT and there was a lot of talk about high vs pop art/culture. But peel back that a layer and you find an incredible morass of class and race assumptions underlying the whole thing (plus age and gender, at a minimum).

People who go around blithely stating "well, I just like what I like" annoy me in part because that means there's this giant bucket of unexamined assumptions just waiting to get tripped over.

Anyway, not to derail your LJ with this stuff, just saying "I hear ya."