(1) i assume you meant this as a rhetorical question, and i don't like to claim too much credit since certainly this experience did not cause me to speculate with any depth on the actual human behind the words, but, for what it's worth: i read the casual vacancy, rowling's first novel for adults, not exactly hyped but curious and ready to be won over, and i found it so palpably mean (while simultaneously moralistic in a tacky, melodramatic way - think poor teenage girl with a heart of gold who is the only sympathetic character in the 500 page novel ODs on her mother's heroin after her little brother drowned while she was trying to get knocked up by a rich kid in the haze of being sexually assaulted, and then at her funeral the whole team for whatever sport she played sings rihanna's umbrella in one of the worst final scenes of a novel i have ever read) that it soured the books about the boy wizard for forever - i'm sure if i hadn't read it i would have picked up favorite parts from time to time but i never touched them again, although like you i retain a peculiar sad fondness for some of the characters in them. (i guess daniel radcliffe knowing sondheim handpicked him for the merrily revival does fill me with the kind of feelings i might feel if i learned an old classmate had escaped his parents' cult and was thriving.)
(2) chandler truly one of the GOATs of american sentence-crafting!!!!
This is so fascinating to me because I too read The Casual Vacancy (AND at least the first of her pretty dull mystery novels), and I remember zero plot points, only the sinking feeling of realizing they were not good. But I have no doubt that her derangement is fully on display in there, just as in retrospect it’s not totally absent from HP.
i also loved the boy wizard and feel betrayed, i guess. i don't partake in any related media about it anymore-- it feels morally impossible to do so and directly harmful to real people in my life i love. but i'm sad that i can't because i enjoyed being transported there. it sucks to so throughly lose a passageway out of this world by the most vile of-this-world bullshit imaginable. i don't understand how under all that she made was this nasty, puny hearted person, it feels like a horrible trick.
It’s absolutely a betrayal, and extremely heartbreaking. It’s been hard to totally avoid with kids, it’s so permeated into the culture, to cut off all access to it feels like telling them they’re not allowed to hear nursery rhymes. But I haven’t reread and I don’t know if I could.
So this is the dilemma I am thinking about: is it actually possible to avoid it completely? Especially these days, when it gets read in classrooms/story hours, let alone how it comes up in pop culture, and with a new show coming out, and expanded theme park universes…it feels impossible. I have left it behind and do not engage, as that makes me, but it’s the sort of thing that may just come up when I’m not around my kid. I am a new parent, so things may change, but if my kid *has* to be exposed to it, do I have a responsibility to introduce it to them first with context?
I don’t know the answer! Seems like it would be hard to avoid completely, but it’s currently relatively easy to not let it become a whole Thing (not sure how the show will change that).
Katie, this just about made me cry! My son is almost 10 and blessedly still lets me read to him, but he has a rich and mysterious reading life of his own. Right now it consists of the Wings of Fire books which are so horrifically violent and dark that I can't read them!
I’m jealous! Hoping to convince my son to let me keep going with him, even if it’s literally the Super Mario Encyclopedia forever. I’ve seen Wings of Fire around but never engaged—I’m so surprised they’re violent, they look very jaunty based on the covers!!
(1) i assume you meant this as a rhetorical question, and i don't like to claim too much credit since certainly this experience did not cause me to speculate with any depth on the actual human behind the words, but, for what it's worth: i read the casual vacancy, rowling's first novel for adults, not exactly hyped but curious and ready to be won over, and i found it so palpably mean (while simultaneously moralistic in a tacky, melodramatic way - think poor teenage girl with a heart of gold who is the only sympathetic character in the 500 page novel ODs on her mother's heroin after her little brother drowned while she was trying to get knocked up by a rich kid in the haze of being sexually assaulted, and then at her funeral the whole team for whatever sport she played sings rihanna's umbrella in one of the worst final scenes of a novel i have ever read) that it soured the books about the boy wizard for forever - i'm sure if i hadn't read it i would have picked up favorite parts from time to time but i never touched them again, although like you i retain a peculiar sad fondness for some of the characters in them. (i guess daniel radcliffe knowing sondheim handpicked him for the merrily revival does fill me with the kind of feelings i might feel if i learned an old classmate had escaped his parents' cult and was thriving.)
(2) chandler truly one of the GOATs of american sentence-crafting!!!!
This is so fascinating to me because I too read The Casual Vacancy (AND at least the first of her pretty dull mystery novels), and I remember zero plot points, only the sinking feeling of realizing they were not good. But I have no doubt that her derangement is fully on display in there, just as in retrospect it’s not totally absent from HP.
i also loved the boy wizard and feel betrayed, i guess. i don't partake in any related media about it anymore-- it feels morally impossible to do so and directly harmful to real people in my life i love. but i'm sad that i can't because i enjoyed being transported there. it sucks to so throughly lose a passageway out of this world by the most vile of-this-world bullshit imaginable. i don't understand how under all that she made was this nasty, puny hearted person, it feels like a horrible trick.
It’s absolutely a betrayal, and extremely heartbreaking. It’s been hard to totally avoid with kids, it’s so permeated into the culture, to cut off all access to it feels like telling them they’re not allowed to hear nursery rhymes. But I haven’t reread and I don’t know if I could.
So this is the dilemma I am thinking about: is it actually possible to avoid it completely? Especially these days, when it gets read in classrooms/story hours, let alone how it comes up in pop culture, and with a new show coming out, and expanded theme park universes…it feels impossible. I have left it behind and do not engage, as that makes me, but it’s the sort of thing that may just come up when I’m not around my kid. I am a new parent, so things may change, but if my kid *has* to be exposed to it, do I have a responsibility to introduce it to them first with context?
I don’t know the answer! Seems like it would be hard to avoid completely, but it’s currently relatively easy to not let it become a whole Thing (not sure how the show will change that).
recently finished what I assume will be my last read-aloud of charlotte's web 😭
Noooooo!
My kids are 8 and 11 and I still call them little! I think you can blame them for your fatigue a little while longer :)
Always looking for excuses for my fatigue!!
Katie, this just about made me cry! My son is almost 10 and blessedly still lets me read to him, but he has a rich and mysterious reading life of his own. Right now it consists of the Wings of Fire books which are so horrifically violent and dark that I can't read them!
I’m jealous! Hoping to convince my son to let me keep going with him, even if it’s literally the Super Mario Encyclopedia forever. I’ve seen Wings of Fire around but never engaged—I’m so surprised they’re violent, they look very jaunty based on the covers!!