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Quotetastic Friday
(For this photo I edited the photo itself (a photo I took in downtown Denver a few weeks ago) in Pixlr Express. I LOVE the variety of options this site offers! Then I saved the photo and re-uploaded it to PicMonkey for the transparent box and text. I think I’ll be able to survive sans-Picnik, and I’m surprised by the way other sites have stepped up their features lately!)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
The discs in the audio book has similar artwork to this cover.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
by JK Rowling
Scholastic/Scholastic Audio
Audiobook from Public Library
[#28 in my 75 Book Challenge]
First off, let me make it clear that this review IS FULL OF SPOILERS! I’m assuming at this point that everyone has already read the books, seen the movies, or has no interest in doing either (and if that’s the case, why are you reading this?). If you don’t want spoilers, don’t read beyond this point.
Seriously. I’m warning you.
Rereading Harry Potter after all the books and movies are done, over, and available on DVD/in paperback is an interesting experience. I’m not tearing through the novels like I did the first time, so it’s going a little slowly. Let it be known that I LOVE HARRY POTTER and I love how Rowling sets up the series. I love the depth and details in every book. I love the characters and the themes.
That being said, some things annoy the crap out of me. And other things I just don’t understand.
Ten Things I Didn’t Like/Don’t Understand About Harry Potter IV
1.) The length. I feel like we could have chopped out about 50-100 pages and still gotten along just fine. I love the fact that Rowling weaves an epic tale, but this novel in particular feels unnecessarily long.
2.) Dobby. And Winky. And all the house elves. I feel like this whole story line was an afterthought.
3.) The length of the tournament. I don’t quite understand why the tournament has to last all year and why there are months between each task. It seems a little over-the-top to have those Dumstrang and Beauxbatons kids hanging around Hogwarts ALL YEAR for three days of actual tournament. Hold it over a week and be done with it. Geeze.
4.) The logistics of the tournament. Did those Durmstrang and Beauxbatons kids spent an entire year having class on their boat and in their carriage? That seems like a waste. How did they go to class? And is that really necessary? Did the whole school come? It doesn’t make much sense.
5.) Voldemort always shows his mean little face in late spring. Just in time for him and Harry to have a showdown at the end of the school year as a climax to the story. If I were Voldy, I’d show up in October and really scare the shit out of everyone. If I were Harry, I’d catch on to Voldy’s little pattern REAL QUICK.
6.) The portkey. If we are using an object as a portkey to take Harry to Voldemort, why do so much work to make that happen (ahem, Barty Crouch Jr, I’m talkin’ to you)? It seems to me that luring Harry into a portkey trap could be accomplished with far less hooplah.
7.) Voldemort’s LOOOONG graveyard speech. Oh, Voldemort. Voldemort, Voldemort, Voldemort. Is the super-long speech in the Graveyard really necessary? I know you think you are awesome and clever for resurrecting yourself and all, but you go in to a very intense amount of detail for a kid you’re about to kill. I understand the need for narrating the full story here, but no villain (no matter how self-centered) would go into all those random details.
8.) Speaking of Voldemort and random details — why did he expect his followers to come find him in the woods in Albania? Come on! That’s like the world’s hardest game of hide ‘n seek. Needle in a haystack, anyone?
9.) Barty Crouch Jr. I felt like I needed a degree in rocket science to understand the Barty Crouch Jr. situation. I mean, I’ve read the book before and all, but I’d forgotten the details. I almost needed to draw a diagram.
10.) The end. The ending wouldn’t end! I read this as an audio book, and there was a whole disc after the Mad Eye Moody = Barty Crouch Jr. plot is revealed. Rita Skeeter, Fred and George’s joke shop, Hermione and Krum all needed to be wrapped up. But after 700+ pages I was tired and didn’t really need all of that falling action. It’s a series, for goodness sake. I’ve still got three to go!
So there you have it. Ten things that annoyed me about this book. Most of all, though, I did love it. I pick up on different things every time I read the series, and I love the complexities Rowling includes…just not the unnecessary stuff. This time around I definitely noticed how dark the writing is in the scenes of Voldemort’s return, and how scary it all really is. Voldemort is a truly creepy bad guy.
FINAL GRADE: B+ It’s Harry Potter, for goodness sake. The series gets an A+, but I can’t say that this book gets an A on its own. But it’s Harry Potter. You should read (or re-read) it. Everyone. Everywhere. Always.
Have you read Harry Potter? Re-read Harry Potter? How did it hold up on the re-read?
The Hunger Games!!!!!
I am soooo buying some Mockingjay jewelry.
The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
Scholastic/Scholastic Audio
Purchased from book fair and audible.com
[#23 in my 75 book challenge]
I did it. I started my re-read of The Hunger Games this week and finished it within 48 hours. I will have it fresh in my mind when I go to see the movie premier at midnight.
For those of you who don’t know the story: 24 kids have to fight each other to the death on national TV. That’s the basic jist. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are chosen to represent District 12 as tributes in these awful “games,” which are just one more strategy the Capital uses to oppress and control the citizens of the futuristic, dystopian country of Panem.
Basically it’s, like, my second favorite book ever. I adored it the first time I read it and I adored it the second time. Re-reading was nice because I could keep track of all the different tributes from each district a little better. Cato, Clove, Glimmer, Foxface, Rue, Thresh, and each of the careers.
This time around I really liked that the games didn’t start until halfway through the book. The first time I was just impatient, but I realize that the reaping and the preparation in the Capital were just as important as the Games. I was surprised by how little I actually remembered from the actual scenes in the arena. The scene with Peeta and Katniss stuck in my head, the landmines at the Cornucopia, and the ending but everything else was like, “oh! Yes! I forgot about that!” Of course, I was also thinking about how some of those scenes will play out in the movie. Now I’m SUPER excited.
Watching this as a movie tonight will be intense. It’s one thing to read the book and imagine everything happening, and it’s another to see it taking place right in front of you. Even though I know it’s not real, it will feel real in a different way than the book did. I can already tell you that I will cry in at least one scene, and I will think the psychological terror of what the tributes experience is terrifying.
FINAL GRADE: A I love it. Duh. It may not be stellar prose, but it’s good. The story, the characters, and the pacing are spot on. Recommended to everyone over eleven (my sixth graders do love it). You can read my review of the book as #2 on my all-time favorites or my review of the The Girl Who Was On Fire (a collection of essays about the series) if you love the book as much as I do!
Are you going to the movie tonight? Friday? This weekend? Do you think you’ll be thrilled or disappointed?
Top Ten Books I’d Save If My House Was Going To Be Abducted By Aliens
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the bloggers over at the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers from all around create lists based on the chosen topics, and post links to the host blog to share our love of books. This week we’re looking at books that we’d save in the event of a house fire/alien abduction/natural disaster/etc. I’ll be picking a few based on their literary value, some based on unique qualities (signed copies, inherited books), and some because they are just my favorites. The photos shown are the actual copies of the books from my bookcase at home. Here they are:
Top Ten Books I’d Save If My House Was Going To Be Abducted By Aliens
[my most valuable books]
1.) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
2.) The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
3.) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4.) A Light in August by William Faulker
Each of these four makes the list because they are my mother’s copies of the books that I have ended up with over the years. Mostly likely I have taken them without her knowledge. At the very least I owe it to her to return her books rather than let the aliens have them. But in my mind, these are irreplaceable. They have my mother’s name (maiden name) on the inside, and one has her old phone number while another has her old address on the inside cover. Nope, the aliens are not taking these suckers!
I’m reading Brave New World right now, and I read the other three in AP English during my senior year of high school. I liked them, so I took them!
5.) The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
6.) Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
Both of these get saved because they are signed copies. I don’t have any other signed copies of books because I’m not the kind of fan girl who seeks such things — but John Green is my nerdtastic exception. The copy of Will Grayson, Will Grayson in particular represents a great memory of my John Green-esque roadtrip to see him speak (and read the first chapter of The Fault In Our Stars) live.
I will not allow the aliens to have these books. They can hunt down their own signed copies. I’m sure John Green would love to meet them and would be glad to sign their books.
7.) Girlfriends by Carmen Renee Berry and Tamara Traeder
I have a few books given to me by friends, but very few with notes written inside. I love and miss the times when we did this type of thing. This book in particular was given to me at a going-away party when I moved from Virginia to North Carolina between middle and high school. I had a very close-knit crew of best friends, and this book has remained on my shelf as a reminder of that. Emma and I are only Facebook friends now, though we did keep in touch for many years, but I remember the days of our middle school friendship quite fondly.
I will never get rid of this book, and the aliens definitely cannot have it. Or the bookmark.
8.) The Complete Grimm’s Fairytales
My Aunt Cris sent me this book in the mail three or four years ago, completely out of the blue. Not long after, my grandmother passed away and this is now one of the few things I have to remember her by. I believe this book did not actually come from my grandmother’s life-long book collection, but rather that it was purchased from a used book store in the late 80′s. However, I have it because my grandmother specifically wanted me to have it, so I’ll keep it forever.
I doubt the aliens would understand my sentimentality on this issue.
9.) The Norton Shakespeare
I took a course in Shakespeare in college, and this was my textbook. I still have all of the plays marked that we read, and even a few notes/highlights on the plays. This is a pricey volume and it reminds me of learning great things during my wonderful four years in college. It’s the kind of book that will absolutely sit on my shelf for years to come. Also, I think the aliens won’t be sophisticated enough to understand the Bard’s humor and the importance of his work…in their hands, this book would go to waste.
10.) Eloise by Kay Thompson
Eloise represents all of my childhood books. I ended up being able to only pick one for my list, so I picked this (runner up: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume). It’s important enough for me to have it my blogger picture in the sidebar! There are no personal notes or anything in my copy, but it has great memories attached and I want make sure the inter-galactic aliens don’t get to touch my fantastic childhood favorite.
Okay, so there’s my ten books that I would take with me if my house got abducted by aliens. They can have Harry Potter and my Onion books. Take the Alice series and my old college textbooks. These books have value beyond the written words on their pages and they are going with me when I run from the alien apocalypse.
Which books would you grab?
Looking back on Looking for Alaska
Looking For Alaska by John Green
Looking for Alaska is the tale of Miles Halter as he heads off to boarding school at Culver Creek, in search of “the great prehaps.” Miles is obsessed with the last words of famous people and his new hall mate, the troubled and sexy Alaska Young.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a John Green book without the nicknames. In this one we’ve got Miles “Pudge” Halter and his roommate, Chip “The Colonel” Martin. Interestingly, Alaska Young is actually named Alaska.
I first read this book in the spring of 2010 in a young adult literature class for my master’s. I wasn’t reviewing books formally then, but I did keep a list of the ones I’d read with notes about each (can be found in the “50 Books 2010″ tab above). For Looking For Alaska I wrote, “Sad. But no crying. Just very very sad.” I wrote a post about Looking For Alaska and Paper Towns last February when I listed my 15 favorite books of all time. I ranked them (together) as #6. You can check out that post here.
What I love about it
This little gem won the Printz Award in 2005, and it definitely deserved it. Looking for Alaska was the very first John Green book that I ever read. I was hooked. Green manages to speak to the teenage experience without downplaying the real emotions that teenagers feel. Are these characters a little pretentious? Yes. Too quick-witted? Yes. But I’ll tell you right now that these kids do exist in the real world. Believe me, I hung out with them.
What kept me going in the story was the use of the countdown to the mysterious event. I wanted to know what the story kept counting down to. The book is divided into two parts: before and after. The before part was typical ya angsty boarding school fiction (which I love) with lots of smoking, drinking, pranks, and sex. The second part is what made the story great, taking it beyond the typical to a book about life and death.
This book sticks with me because of the event in the middle. I think about it a lot. There are many questions in my mind, but they will never be answered and I’ll have to stick with my own conclusion about what really happened. That’s why I love to talk about it with anyone that will listen!
Quotes
“Thomas Edison’s last words were ‘It’s very beautiful over there’. I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.”
“I just did some calculations and I’ve been able to determine that you’re full of shit.”
“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
John Green Week!
Guess what, guys? It’s John Green Week!
John Green week celebrates the fabulolosity that is John Green in the week leading up to the release of his new novel, The Fault in Our Stars, on January 10.
Green’s books are full of smart, quirky characters, friendships, unrequited love, and the philosophical questions that we experience as we grow older and wiser. His books appeal to teens and adults alike because we’re all searching for love and meaning in life, but we also like to laugh while we’re doing it!
My tasks for this week will be as follows: revisiting my favorite John Green novels and moments, posting some vlogbrothers videos, and (finally) finishing/reviewing An Abundance of Katherines, the only John Green novel I haven’t yet read. My copy of The Fault In Our Stars probably won’t arrive until Jan. 17, but I can’t wait to start reading!
John Green Week is hosted by YA Bibliophile. Click here to read her post about the celebration, to see a list of other blogs hosting, and all the blogs participating.
May the odds be ever in your favor…
I watched this today at school and squealed like a little girl. Now I really can’t wait to see the movie.
I love that the trailer ends after the final countdown before Katniss enters the arena. I love that it, and hopefully the movie, focuses more on the characters and emotions than on the action in the arena. I think Jennifer Lawrence is an interesting choice for Katniss, but it appears that she can act and I’ll be interested in how the role comes across in the final product.
I also think the Mockingjay notes at the end are perfect.
But most of all, I’m super excited that kids might have a kick-ass girl like Katniss as their role model instead of Bella Swan.
…and if you want a good laugh, go read the comments on the YouTube video from the website. I thought I was getting a little too giddy-fangirl about it, but those people are on a whole different level.
