Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Book Review

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1)
by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Yer a wizard, Harry.” Full stop, there you go, that sums up this, the first year at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I want to be fair here and say this is my second time reading the first of Harry Potter’s adventures and am as biased as the rest of fandom about this series, while maybe not so rabid.

J.K. Rowling is not so much a great writer as she is a world builder. A minor deity weaving a magical land that not only do you want to believe is real, you genuinely hope that it is real. The small and grand touches of magic that she spices the stories with help to immerse the reader with the best effect made in the first installment of the series. The slow introduction of both Harry and the reader to the world of magic is well told, each chapter building on the rest. If it were my choice, Rowling would continually set stories in this world that she has created and shun all others that may be brewing in her mind.

Other stories in this world would and could be fascinating from different points of view, as Rowling shows in the series by giving excellent side characters to play around the main character. These side characters, such as Nearly Headless Nick or the nurse Madam Pomfrey, often caused the main characters and the reader to talk about them in whispers lest they hear. As for the main cast, in this first book I can give them a pass as blank slates that build desires and wants as they move through the story and let them live as the child reader avatars that they are.

The writing of this story has some hits and misses. After it was pointed out to me the number of times Rowling likes to use adverbs when her characters speak, I could not help but notice them everywhere (he types pointedly). Overall, though, the descriptions are clean, the dialog is fun, and the writing level exceeds those meant for this age group.

This book has been banned on numerous occasions for its liberal use of magic and sorcery by children. The concern is that children will read the book and attempt to find a train station that does not exist that will take them to a school they cannot go to with supplies they cannot buy and learn witchcraft from people that are different from them. There may also be some complaints out there from those that can get past the magic thing that the books encourages challenging authority in children as well as wandering in the woods hoping to meet a unicorn or centaur.

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Ready Player One Review

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Wade Watts lives in a not too distant future where just about everyone lives in a craptastic hellhole of depression with only one bright spot: the online MMO world OASIS. Five years after the creator of the game died, everyone on the planet is still looking for the easter eggs planted inside OASIS that will lead to a ton of money. When Wade becomes the first to find the first key, the hunt is on in a virtual world steeped in everything 80’s pop culture has to offer.

This book came around with little fanfare in my library and I find that a crime. Few people talked about it or promoted it despite the fact that it was on the New York Times Bestsellers List for weeks. At the time, I guess my nerd radar was off because I never picked it up until now. So when Ernest Cline, the screenwriter of the funny yet flawed Fanboys, showed up a couple of weeks ago for his second appearance of the NSFW Show podcast, I instantly put this on my to-read list. Add to the fact the contest that is going on based on the book to win a DeLorean and my nerd antenna was tuned in.

The only developed characters in the book are Wade Watts and his fellow “gunters” (egg hunters) Aech and Art3mis. Wade is our narrator, set up to be a brilliant and resourceful kid despite his poverty and social awkwardness. We follow him as he becomes more powerful and famous throughout OASIS and how this changes his relationships and his mental attitude. He is a fun character, but his hero journey has little in way of growth. Wade is a good guy and despite a few moments of grief or pain he pretty much stays a good guy.

Aech, Wade’s best friend, and Art3mis, Wade’s love interest, also get little in the way of growth as characters. The only growth they are given are in the way of information discovery as Wade finds out more about their real lives behind their OASIS avatars. I can blame most of the lack of character conflict in this novel on the avatar structure which sets up pretty good social commentary on how people hide behind anonymity online but little else. Also, some parts of the novel are rushed with almost montage-like scenes (which may fit the 80s themes) where we are told “the characters really like each other because of x, y, and z activities and likes they share.” Not a bad thing to do in an a book heavy on its action and adventure aspects, but I would have liked some quiet character moments.

Final Opinion
I burned through this book in one night and two lunch hours. As a treasure hunt type of novel, when the action revs up, you find yourself turning the pages faster and faster to see what happens next, then going back to see what pop culture references you missed. And that is what makes half this book fun, the references. If you were a child of the 80s that had movies, TV and video games as your primary child rearing devices, this book should hit every chord in your brain bringing back memories on nearly every page. If you don’t know a lot about that kind of stuff... well, the story is enjoyable, just get ready to skip a lot of sections describing in detail various video game scenarios and tricks. A solid book that leans heavily on nostalgia, but still makes you wonder what is going to happen next.

Why Was It Banned?
As far as I can tell, this book has not been banned or challenged in the year it has been published. However, like the video games it references, expect to see this one crop up from time to time with allegations of crude language or adult themes. And it does, just like the movies in the 80s did that showed kids screaming and kicking Wolfman in the nards (10 points if you get that). You may be tempted to slip this into that really cool 11-year-old’s hands like my cousin did with his used copies of Stephen King, but be warned that this book about people playing a video game contains murder, violence, language, and references to Zork that may frustrate even the coolest of modern kids and terrify the adults in charge of them.

The Giver Review

The Giver is one of those books that comes along and just slaps your little childhood in the head. As a young boy, the title sounded so innocuous. “The Giver.” Blah. Give me “The Space Ninja Who Kills Fools With a Laser Sword,” my younger self thought. Then, plowing through the pages in record time, I had my world blown open almost as much as the protagonist, Jonas, does. Now, some twenty years later, I am returning to this book and seeing what all the fuss young me made was all about.

Beware, thar be spoilers.

In the too distant future, Jonas lives in a collective with his family where his life is strictly managed. Everyone in the community over twelve has a job, a function, and on his next birthday Jonas will get his. But when his job turns out to be the Receiver of Memories, a once in a generation position, Jonas is about to learn what his place in the world really is. Cue dramatic lightning, cause they control the weather in this book but not enough for me to have just mentioned it except for the sake of a bad joke. Cracka-boom.

Our main character Jonas is an inquisitive, happy young boy. He stars the book innocent, almost bland except our omniscient narrator gives him thoughts that even without hearing the thoughts of others seem different. He is color in a book of black and white and that sentence means something to anyone who has seen the movie Pleasantville. His family, while playing the roles of caring mother, silly dad and bratty sister, are just as empty of life as the schedules the community keeps. With exception to the compassion they give the baby, Gabriel, the family seems to only respond to each other in accordance to the rules, not by any familial obligation. This is apparent to savvy readers right away while a younger audience will take this in as Jonas does in the book.

The only other stand out character is The Giver, Jonas’s mentor and the one who opens the boy’s eyes with knowledge of good and evil and compassion as that knowledge overtakes Jonas. This man is like a walking, talking tree from the garden of eden, which is an apt description and a nice reverse metaphor for the direction the book takes. As Jonas gets more information, he feels more apart, more naked from society. This culminates when he learns the community’s term “release” means “euthanize” (“killin folk” for those of you without a dictionary or vocabulary) and that this applies to everyone who has been “released,” including the old and noisy babies.

Two things, then I’ll wrap up.

The title. The title is interesting because there are actually two Givers in the book, the old man who gives to Jonas and Jonas who gives to Gabriel. One has to wonder who this story is about then, the small boy coming of age, waking up to the hell that all he knows and loves is gone, or the old man who is watching all this happen. He is the only other person that knows what Jonas is going through, yet Jonas is the only internal voice we hear. Something to think on.

The ending. I have heard the ending has been hotly debated as to what is happening. Me? I think both those kids are dead. Here’s where I am going to sound cold and detached, but I’m analyzing a story not cutting up a frog so give me some slack. Anyway, the ending scene is Jonas carrying Gabriel up a snow covered hill where he finds a sled and they slide down, just like the first memory The Giver gave to Jonas. Too big of a coinky-dink for me to overlook. The larger implications are also kinda staggering. Did The Giver mean for Jonas to die all along? I say yes. The old man was not naive enough to believe that the Elsewhere was a real place that could be escaped to except through release, death, whatever. Neither could he have expected Jonah, basically a privileged city boy, to survive in the wilds by himself. Also, the goal of this escape is to release the memories into the populous so the people can feel again. The only other time this happened, the Receiver gave up the memories when she died, implying that memories are either given person to person or in death they are given en masse. The old man played Jonas, especially in showing him release, into going out into the wilderness where he had no chance of survival. The ending scene, of Jonas and Gabriel sliding down a hill from one happy memory to another, is a death scene as Jonas’s body has already described textbook symptoms of hypothermia.

Of course, part of me wants to believe the old man did all this to take over the community and this is some sort of Wizard of Oz prequel. He outright states to Jonas he has to stay back to comfort the distraught people. What if he talked his first receiver into suicide as a test run and Jonas is the atom bomb to give the most memories out at once? Then he stays behind and is all “Don’t worry, wussies, I been through this, no biggie, just let me teach you how to deal.” Just because you love something does not mean you will not give it away for greater gain. Villains have been doing it throughout literature and history forever. That’s pretty freaking dark.

Why was it banned?
There are several reasons as to why this work has been banned. For one, it kills a baby and implies the systematic extermination of anyone who steps out of line. That’s, as I said before, pretty freaking dark. Also, there are fairly graphic depictions of war and death in various other forms in the memories Jonas receives, not to mention the deep sadness that Jonas feels towards them.

For another, the book can establish mistrust and rebellious attitudes toward authority figures. Let’s face it, this book does not treat the government in a good light and paints parents as subjective pack animals. Some parents may object to their children reading this book and suddenly viewing their jobs and place in society as worthless, not to mention religious and other overlording collectives in society.

Finally, this book could be seen to some distraught children as a go ahead for suicide. The actions of various characters that learn the truth could be internalized by a mind that is filled with grief and delusion. The book outright states that those that cannot fit in are either taken out or take themselves out and gives little counterargument. The overall theme is hope in humanity, in love, but it gives little reward for these ideals. Even the happy ending is a bit of a fridge horror scenario when one thinks about it too much, as I demonstrated above.

Final thoughts
It’s good. Sometimes the writing is a little dull and the lessons are kicked into your head, but this is an effective dystopian narrative that ends up asking more questions than it raises. What do you do when your world falls apart? Is this what growing up feels like? What is the nature of man? All valid and worth asking.

American Gods Review

American Gods by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

American Gods is a love letter to old mythology and America as a land and people. Told with Gaiman’s unblinking eye, the story follows Shadow from prison to the wilds of Georgia, crisscrossing the country in an apologetic view of how old myths can survive in the modern world. This review is based on the 10th Anniversary Author’s Preferred Text.

Be warned, thar may be spoilers.

Summary
Shadow gets out of prison to find the love of his life dead and a job offer. Taking up with Mr. Wednesday, he meets a menagerie of oddball folks who wish to either smash his brains in or smash his groin in while recruiting for a war Shadow knows nothing about. Side trips to a small, frozen town and eclectic San Francisco are just a small taste of the amount of locations Shadow and Wednesday pass through on their recruiting effort. Behind them are a shadowy government-type agency and a dead woman. It’s a hoot.

Our protagonist Shadow is a mess of a person. We get little of his backstory, even his name is secret. At first, I found him unbelievable. He accepts this new world a little too well, going along with all the weird dreams and god talk as if, hey, that stuff happens, right? But then I looked back on how he was introduced to us. Gaiman breaks this character from the start like a prison bitch, blank slates the man with horrific news of his wife’s death and then the worst funeral one could imagine. Also, looking back, there is some fridge logic in how Shadow’s heritage might give him a more aptitude for the weird.

As for the secondary characters, all of them are a little shallow but entertaining. This book sets them up as a horror movie would set up a group of teenagers, all worse than the last, waiting until the big bad comes along to stuff them into sleeping bags and beat them against trees. I admit that is unfair because I did say they were entertaining. I enjoyed seeing how Gaiman constructed each ancient deity and placed them in modern day but wished we could have stuck with a core group rather than the pantheon presented.

The plot and setting of this book go hand in hand. It’s right there on the cover, a dark road with lightning crashing down on a solitary figure. This book is about America, the American Dream, hopes, ideals, identity, et cetera and so forth. And in that vein it is scattered and different. Sections of the book are rich with characters and people bouncing off each other while other sections are lonely, desolate places I wished Shadow would simply run from. My personal favorite were the quiet moments with a couple of folk just sharing time and a beer. I think that if you have traveled this land enough, spent time on the back roads and cities of America, you will also find your favorite part of the book corresponds with your favorite places in this country.

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