Friday, August 10, 2007

Harry Potter and the Suspension of Disbelief

Yes, I finally finished Harry Potter Installment the Seventh. I know, I’m the slowest reader in the world, but remember, I just got reading glasses, and that helped me speed things up.

I won’t give anything away; however, if you haven’t read it yet, you probably don’t care if I give anything away or not. You probably don’t really care to read my review of the book, either, so I’ll keep this brief. I like the Harry Potter books, but as I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m simply a muggle when it comes to getting into these things. Every time, I really have to force myself through the first half of the book, and then, every time, I’m simply gaga-pants over the ending. What I enjoy about the books are the puzzles that Harry and his friends have to solve, and I always like it if there’s a good violent climax at the end.

Harry Potter books, however, ask me to suspend too much disbelief. It all boils down to page 20 of Installment the First: “He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose.” Okay, I can understand the glasses before he finds out he’s a wizard, but he wears the dang things for thousands of pages! Dumbledore wears them too. They can restore the bones to Harry’s arm, but, what, they can’t make a simple adjustment to his eyes?

My wife says it’s no big deal, but it is. It’s symptomatic of the entire book. The author has created a world that just has so many inconsistencies that it takes me half the book, always, before I can start to buy into it.

But once I do buy into it? Oh, what a return on investment. Thank you J.K. Rowling for showing me Hogwarts, regardless of how long it took me to open my eyes to see it. Maybe I just didn’t have the right pair of glasses.

Now about that cheesy epilogue…

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