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annathepiperAfter reading the very beginning of the second Harry Potter over the weekend, I blazed through the rest of it on the bus to and from work today. Like the first book, it was a quick read for me; unlike the first book, I think I actually liked the prose better in it. Rowling was a bit more sparing with the ellipses and all-caps; in fact, I can't remember a single place anywhere in the prose where either of those quibbles leapt out at me. For that matter, I like this plot better than Philosopher's Stone as well. Harry's introductory backstory is out of the way, the major characters are all established, and we're free to expand our knowledge of the universe and what's going on in it just a bit.
Plus, this book has Gilderoy Lockhart, and I can't read that character without thinking of Kenneth Brannagh's delightful performance in the movie. Nor, I must admit, can I read Snape without thinking of Alan Rickman--and I really do like that entire dueling scene where Snape's withering contempt of Lockhart is a palpable weight in the air. Draco Malfoy is still an obnoxious little git, and his father's an obnoxious big one; I'm hoping we'll get some character development here to round the Malfoys out some, because they're annoyingly single-noted against the better-rounded other characters. (And no, all you HP fans on my Friends list, I don't want to know what's coming re: the Malfoys in the later books; I'm aware of one or two spoilers, and I want to stay otherwise surprised. ;) ) Harry's still likeable, Ron and Hermione are cool, and I'm looking forward to burning through Prisoner of Azkaban tomorrow. For this one, four stars.
Plus, this book has Gilderoy Lockhart, and I can't read that character without thinking of Kenneth Brannagh's delightful performance in the movie. Nor, I must admit, can I read Snape without thinking of Alan Rickman--and I really do like that entire dueling scene where Snape's withering contempt of Lockhart is a palpable weight in the air. Draco Malfoy is still an obnoxious little git, and his father's an obnoxious big one; I'm hoping we'll get some character development here to round the Malfoys out some, because they're annoyingly single-noted against the better-rounded other characters. (And no, all you HP fans on my Friends list, I don't want to know what's coming re: the Malfoys in the later books; I'm aware of one or two spoilers, and I want to stay otherwise surprised. ;) ) Harry's still likeable, Ron and Hermione are cool, and I'm looking forward to burning through Prisoner of Azkaban tomorrow. For this one, four stars.
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Date: 2007-11-27 05:18 am (UTC)You must read in an awful hurry, though... I *know* how long it takes to get from our neck of the woods downtown and back, and even Potter II is Real Book sized, even if it ain't the 800-page tomes of the later stories...
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Date: 2007-11-27 05:43 am (UTC)And yeah, I read super-fast. Though in this particular case, it helps that Rowling's prose is very readable. As opposed to, oh, say, the Murakami book I read earlier this year, where the prose was thick and chewy and dense and took me a lot longer to get through. :)
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Date: 2007-11-27 07:13 am (UTC)I read the books first, and it's given me some opinions about the movies I might not otherwise hold. For example, I've never liked Alan Rickman's portrayal of Snape. It's not that I dislike Alan Rickman. Far from it. The man is a wonderful actor. But he plays Snape with a lot of camp and a subtle wink, a way of saying to the audience "well, I'm a villain, but you can't possibly take me seriously".
By contrast, Rowling's Snape always seemed me to be a genuinely evil, cowardly bastard: an authority figure who torments Harry and his friends with psychological abuse and belittlement for his own ego, but only when there are no other adults around to notice.
Chris Columbus filmed the first two movies more or less directly from the books, but "Azkaban" was the first movie that started to take some editing liberties. I'll be interested to see what you think of the later books, especially what got left out of the movies.
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Date: 2007-11-27 03:16 pm (UTC)I do agree though that Rickman plays Snape rather more sympathetically than Rowling portrays him--with the possible exception of that dueling scene in Chamber of Secrets. Because even there, in Rowling's prose, I actually almost liked Snape. But this may be just because Lockhart was that damned annoying. ;)