Quote:
Originally Posted by jplumey
Interesting, I rather enjoy her writing style. It's fast paced, witty, and detailed. Plus, and this is what I like the most, it's almost entirely from Harry's perspective. I've read books by other authors where the perspective changes every paragraph. Dan Brown is notorious for this and his inability to stay inside one character for more than a single chapter is a major reason why I can't stand his books. Call me a chickenhead, but it was so confusing to read The DaVinci Code, half the time I was saying, "wait, how can SHE say that? Oh ok, now it's HE that's talking...and talking...and talking..."
J.K. Rowling's books use all of the great hooks of a good mystery. She's a fan of the best literature (classic and modern) and their influence is on her is visible, though not overpowering.
It may be a matter of taste, but I really think that in years to come people will go back and read the books after all of the hype has died down and they'll find some hidden jewels.
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"chickenhead" ! ha !! i have to add that to my master list o' insults.
as for harry potter... i usually run in the opposite direction of anything that becomes a planet-wide phenomenon on principle alone, as this often seems to be a more certain garantee of mediocrity than quality. so i was completely uninterested in the harry potter books when every single one of my friends tried in turn to lend them to me (well... at least a solid majority of my friends).
then we had a record-breaking heat wave (this was about 4 or 5 years ago i think, i'm not very good with dates and chronology) and in paris it was too hot to *live* (for about 2 weeks it never dropped below 38°, including at 3 in the morning, and frequently was hotter). the slightest mental effort was out of the question. half way through, the daughter of a friend of mine lent me her harry potter books (i think there were 3 or 4 by then, i can't remember) and told me they would distract me from my overheated misery. to be honest i only accepted them to be polite, but i was agreeably surprised.
i think what i appreciated the most is the fact that rowling is quite clearly very intelligent and this comes through in her writing style, and also that she clearly loves language and litterature and makes innumerable and excellent subtle references, allusions, jokes and plays on words. but, i think this playfulness was lost through the series, and i was greatly disappointed by the last one, which seemed graceless and heavy as if she had written it rather mechanically while checking things she needed to mention off a list. it was so dramatically different than the beginning of the series that if i had not been reading a paper copy of it i would have really wondered if it were the real book, or a clumsily fan-written fake.
so, not on my list of worst books of all time, but i wouldn't go so far as to call them classics either. i suspect that a large part of my appreciation for them was purely contextual, since they were light and easy to read, escapist fiction at its best : just what i needed during that summer.
however, i've just remembered a book which caused me real suffering when i was forced to read it for school :
"La Vie de Marianne" ("the Life of Marianne") by Marivaux. it drags on for a full lifetime, too ; hundreds and hundreds of pages, which feel like millions (and it was never completed ! i shudder to imagine what it could have been...). never has a fictional character made me want to inflict pain on them like stupid, simpering Marianne, who spent the duration crying out that it was all too much for her pure innocent heart and swooning, with her limp wrist flung (melo)dramatically across her forehead. seriously, the whole time i wanted to slap her silly and tell her to shut up and grow a pair (only in much,
much stronger language).
i would like to point out here that Marivaux's style, exemplified in
Marianne, was so completely, unprecedentedly affected and tortuous that it gave rise to a brand new verb,
marivauder, and noun,
marivaudage, which at the time of their coining (18th century) were quite pejorative, and rightly so.
also,
"American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis (although this is mainly because i am a delicate flower and couldn't stomach the graphic descriptions of violence
). another book which was assigned for a class. caveat, i am judging this book without having read it through : i tried, honestly, but when i got to the description (not very far in...) of the knife to the cornea my stomach turned over so strongly that i decided life was much too short to inflict any more of that on myself and told my prof that i would be out ill (never was an excuse so apt) for the discussion of that book.