Harry Potter and Long-Form Fiction

Finally finished all seven (um, eight) of the Harry Potter films.  Cumulatively they add up to something special!

There's something wonderful about the really long, immersive experience of long-form art.

These exist in many genres: whether that's a series of books like Patrick O'Brien's Aubery/Maturin sea saga (more a single multi-volume novel than a series of sequels) or Lois McMaster Bujold's similarly multi-volume Vorkosign series in science fiction.  Bujold says the multi-volume form is distinct from the standard novel; I tend to agree - just as the short story is distinct from the novel, or the ode from the epic poem.  Sprint versus run versus marathon.  The TV version might be a miniseries like Roots or, more extended, a mythologically dense long-term series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  And there are operas, like The Magic Flute, and operas, like Wagner's Ring Cycle.  Personally, I enjoy the long-form, but I'll admit that some of its satisfaction comes from making it through the whole thing!

The cover of Ace's LotR, center of a copyright dispute

I think creators have a natural pace and style... and some need time and elbow room.

Books - The Hunger Games

I've been hearing about this Hunger Games book trilogy by Suzanne Collins for a while now, the recommendation generally boiling down to: "Exciting! Page-turning!  Can't put it down!"

I've been in exactly the mood for exciting, page-turning, can't-put-it-down.  So I read 'em.

Cover of The Hunger Games, borrowed from Wikipedia

Good.  VERY e, p-t, c-p-i-d... also engrossing, surprisingly violent and, indeed, cruel.  Surprising for what seems to be meant as young adult novels.  (Adults have been reading it.)  The setup is a future where the ruins of the United States have become Panem, a civilization with a tyrannical central region/government and a series of enslaved provinces.  They have this annual game - more or less "Survivor" crossed with gladiatorial combat - played by sacrificial teenagers.  The books' main character is a young girl.  That female protagonist and the need for this game to look pretty (or horrific) for the cameras takes the story from beauty pageant one minute to carnage the next: instantaneously from Barbie to G.I. Spartacus.

I'm still digesting the implications.  But as a page-turning distraction I have to rate these books high: the first book, The Hunger Games, is the most gripping, the succeeding books, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay get, as trilogies tend to, less compelling but since it's cliff-hangers all the way, you'll gobble them all.  Fast!

Listening to Book CDs in Public

Speaking of books on CD...

I was once listening to Diana Gabaldon's Outlander on the car's CD player, back when it worked, before that ugly eating-the-parking-lot-ticket incident... ahem, anyway!  When the audiobook used to loudly recite to me, I'd drive along, listening to the characters troubles and their (Outlander being racy in part), um, romantic interludes.  Except for at the traffic light.  There I was, listening, and as the narrative got warmer, the guy outside with the cardboard sign got closer, and I turned the volume lower, so warmer, closer, and lower, and so on until in pure embarrassment I hit the "Pause" button.

Ridiculous but true.  It's the same flinching that keeps me from reading certain books on the train in case someone looks over my shoulder.

public domain + Wikimedia mashed

An earlier post on books on CD in the car here