Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Harry Potter musings

I don't want to write reviews of Harry Potter books - I could write about the Croatian translation which I was forced to read when starting the series again as I couldn't locate my English one. It's incredible how a translation can be at the same time brilliant and completely miss the point. The words JK Rowling invented were put into Croatian geniously but the language in which the book is written is in my opinion completely wrongly translated. This is a children's book and is written in such a language (I recommend it to my friends whenever someone wants to brush up on their English) but I cannot read the Croatian one in the same manner. It displays the richness of Croatian language but I have to concentrate on what I'm reading in order to understand, and I keep wondering how are the children reading it managing. And if there is one thing this book has to do, it has to be approachably written (translated) for children. But this is not what I wanted to discuss.

I wrote recently about the depressing turn my life has taken and the first thing I could think of of alleviating that pain and depression was Harry Potter books. And I'm happy to be reading them from the beginning (I usually re-read just the last 3) because the movies made me forget how many things are actually missing from them.

But the point I'm trying to make is, Harry Potter is my therapy. When I need to feel better and want to lose myself in a world where my problems don't exist, I go there (sometimes I go to Middle Earth as well, but HP is more approachable). With each reading, I get more and more from these books. The friendship, the loyalty, the bravery, all in the face of much adversity, human evil and pain (both physical and emotional).

The books are progressively darker (and longer which is a great plus) and even though people start to die, the evil starts to spread, and friends are sometimes not there for you, the reader never loses the thread of hope that being true to the human ideals we should all posess is what will win in the end and bring about a happy future.

I just finished the fourth one and I wouldn't be writing this post but reading the book 5 if only I was able to find it. Like I said, I keep offering them to people. :) So now I have no idea where it is. I'm not really worried about that (although I do wish I could have started with it tonight) - tomorrow I'm off to my favourite bookstore because they notified me that some other books I ordered have arrived, so I'll just add this to the pile. I can live with not starting to read it tonight, but tomorrow I have to go on. :)

10 comments:

  1. I've never read any Harry Potter - although I wish I could. I'm sure in a few years I will be reading it with my children though - so maybe I should wait until then.


    Really interested to know how your English is quite so perfect. Have you spent a lot of time in the UK or the US? Sorry - I'm prying - you don't have to answer.

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  2. How lovely that you have a 'place' to go when you need to escape. Like MPL, I have never read the HP books, either, as I'm a non-fiction junkie. A brilliant memoir is my favorite escape. Hope you're taking good care of yourself.

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  3. I feel the same way about the HP books. Cable TV here always reshows the movies between the Halloween and Christmas seasons, so I end up rereading the series every winter break. I, too, find them very comforting. It's nice to know that aspect of the series is cross-cultural. I truly believe (though you can never really know about these things) that the HP series will last for generations and generations.

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  4. MPL, I already plan on giving the series to my nephews and my boyfriend's nieces when they are old enough (and eventually reading it to my children once I'll have them). :)
    I would really like to hear your opinion once you start reading them to your children though.

    And thank you for the English compliment (coming from a native speaker, it really means a lot).
    You're not prying - I studied English and Slovak languages as my university studies. Although I wouldn't really say my Slovak is perfect... :)

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  5. Josephine, I sometimes think how lucky I am that I have books to make my life easier and less stressed and then I wish I could transfer that love to people around me. So, it makes me happy to hear that there are other blogger's out there (who are not book bloggers) who find escape in books of any type. :)

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  6. Diana, we really do share a lot of same loves when it comes to books (and series). :D
    And I agree with you. I also believe it will last for generations - it has that universal vibe which appeals cross-culturally (like you said).

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  7. The HP books carry many layers of happy for me, not the least of which is the way in which they themselves built from simple to more complex depths of experience.

    My personal twist is that they emerged as my son did. The first one had already been published when he first started in, so he -- a voracious reader even as a very young one -- was able to be a part of the "experience" as it unfolded. And therefore, he matured into being ready to handle the more difficult realities the characters faced as they also matured.

    I'll skip details, but, suffice to say, we went to the midnight sale of the final book of the series, read to 2am, got up early the next day, and sat together in chairs out under our backyard tree until we were done. Because I had to attend to other things, too, he got ahead of me...so he knew when I was tearing up at certain things WHY I was, and to warn me to prepare for worse. We both walked around in a kind of stupor afterward, knowing that what we read wasn't the most profound book we would ever read, but was an important marker in our individual and mom/son lives.

    I am glad Potter brings you escape. Perhaps you will be interested to hear there is a Harry Potter society (?) which has just delivered five planeloads of goods to Partners in Health to help relief efforts in Haiti. The last plane in was called "Dumbledore."

    Wishing you the best, Ines.

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  8. HP as therapy. Yes. Hang in there--we are thinking of you.

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  9. ScentScelf, oh, I wish that once I have kids, they will love reading as much as I do (and I'm happy to hear you have a son like that).
    What you said about maturing into the experience, that is one thing I'm worried about with the kids nowadays - you can start the first one early, but you cannot at a young age go through all of them. Well, I'll worry about that when I get there. :)
    The worst moment for me in the Harry Potter experience was the end of book 6. I was in a sort of a daze for days (after crying my heart out), not believing the end. And I had to wait 2 years for the next one!
    Btw, when the last one came out, I forbid everyone to show me the papers or talk about them because I KNEW that some idiot somewhere was going to publish an article on the way the series ended. And I was right. I'm still upset over it.

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  10. Thanks LBV. Only 2 and a half books to go. :)

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