The other day I was reading an article I came across on Fark the other day that said that Harry Potter was bad for readers. In fact, I went through and dug up the article so you can read it here. Although there are a couple of things I don't really agree with this guy on, such as his assertion that everyone in America is somehow "required" to bow down and praise Harry, he does make some interesting observations. Such as "[W]e're experiencing the literary equivalent of a loss of biodiversity. All those people carrying around an 800-page novel looks like a great thing for American literacy, but it's as ominous as a Forbidden Forest with only one species of tree."
I'd never thought of books (or any other media) in terms of biodiversity before. But at the same time I always shrink away from anything that would take out the diversity of things. Like this thing with AT&T and other companies trying to become the gatekeepers of the internet. There is a lot of crap on the internet. And there is a lot of stuff that is superfluous. But if the sites that pay money to giant companies are the other ones that come up in a Google search, then we've lost the essence of the internet.
So in a way it's the same thing as this Potter-mania. Though no one is really blocking out other books, all we see when we type in "book" is Harry Potter. I guess what it goes to is something else the guy in that article said, something I'd heard before but blocked out. Half of all adults won't read a novel this year. Half of them! Not a single one! I think I've read about twenty books since January and I constantly berate myself for never getting any reading done. I go out and buy more books than I know I'll have time to read just to make sure that I never have an excuse not to be reading. And it's easy to get distracted, what with the internet and all, but still, not a single book? So if the only book you pick up in a year or two years or however many years is a Harry Potter book, then you are left with the distinct impression that Harry Potter is the largest literary achievment of our times. If I had stopped reading when I was 14 I would still be under the impression that "Shadows Of The Empire" was one of the top literary achievments to date. I re-read that book a year or two ago and I could barely get through it. Not that it sucks, really, but it isn't that well written, the dialog is goofy and forced, the plot is weak, and the characters are so simple (even Luke and Leah) that they barely seem worth my time to read about them. As a fourteen year old it was fantastic though. I read it five or six times the first year I had it (and still have the occasional flashback to my fantasies of Leah in that transparent green dress with the black body sleeve she wore under it). The point being, without other books to show me what I was missing as far as fiction was concerned, I never would have grown away from thinking that was as good as a book could get. And Harry Potter is definately in the same category as Shadows of the Empire. All action with a basic good v. evil plot. Listen, we have Star Wars. We have The Bible. Do we really need a third massively popular good v. evil?
I hope I haven't given the impression that I hate the books or the popularity. I like that books are still being read. I just wish that people read enough to know that Harry Potter books are what they are marketed as, kids books. It's fine to read and enjoy them, but don't hold them up as great literature. I've read two or three of the potter books and they are so lackluster in the way they are written, so empty of emotion and real human drama, that I can't, for the life of me, remember a damn thing that happened. And I've seen the movies. Or, I think I've seen all the movies. Whatever, the point is that I can't remember a damn thing about them. And you may be thinking "why blame a book for your bad memory?" but the point is I can't remember anything about them because there wasn't a single part in the books that was worth remembering. I read the books in about a day each and by the day after I couldn't remember what the hell had happened. A few summers I was on vacation in tahoe and my mom had some books and I read two of them in a row and I couldn't remember a damn thing about them by the next day. My aunt started asking me about something that happened in one of them and I was like "oh, yeah, that was, uh, neato." These books are not food for the brain, but candy, soft chewy candy that hurts your teeth and makes you sleepy once you start crashing from all the sugar. But then you wake up and you see half a bag and all you think is "oh, candy!" and you have finsh it off, because you didn't bother to even try to remember that you ate candy already, because it didn't seem important at all at the time.
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3 comments:
that was an interesting article. when he was talking about how high schoolers now just tend to read about the book instead of actually reading the book itself, i was thinking back to our ap english class heh heh.. yeah... bastards... i was pretty bad about reading the books back then, and i was terrible about it in CH. but you know when i actually did take the time to read the book (even if it was in an all-nighter) i was generally glad i did and enjoyed it very much. there have been very few books i've read where i've felt it was a waste of time.
its interesting though, the past week i've been staying at my grandmother's house (which is completely filled to the brim with books) and i've spent a lot of the time here just going through books (partly because we were cleaning, sorting and boxing up some in the garage) but you know, i could just spend all day going through books. mor you would probably have quite a time here.
which reminds me, i'll probably send something to your email, but you and whoever else is interested should check out shelfari.com ...i actually haven't looked at it too much yet because my grandma's computer is very... very... slow, but it looks pretty cool. kinda like a myspace/facebook type of thing except for based around books.
Of course, the first thing I saw when I logged onto Shelfari was "Seven Days of Harry Potter(!!!1)"But it still looks interesting.
I'm defenitely not above reading summaries of books for class myself. But it really doesn't compare at all to actually reading a book/play/poem. I mean, if it did then there wouldn't be any books longer than a few pages in the first place, since all we'd need to know could be boiled down to a summary.
In a way, that is where the Harry Potter books could be useful in getting people to read more. Since they at least force people to sit down and read it makes a connection to them. And hopefully if you've made a connection to at least one book you will know that summaries and what not aren't even close to the experience of reading a book.
Speaking of books, there is a new used book store in Reno called Zephyr Books at the corner of Mt. Rose and Virginia. It's fucking huge. By far the biggest used book store in Reno now. They even had a five set of Flash Gordon books there, which stirred up so many emotions I can't even begin to describe.
cool i'll have to check that out
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