OS Book Club Pt II

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Ron wasn't completely disloyal. I think he had some good qualities, but the choice of best friend is really only justified from the fact that he was Harry's first friend. While he did always come back to Harry in the end, his loyalty sometimes floated with the wind. In a way that made him a more realistic character because he truly was the average person with tons of insecurities caught up in something bigger than him, but it also makes him an odd choice to have been Harry's best friend. Especially when you consider that the other member of the golden trio never left his side (further complicating that pairing but I digress). It just always left me irritated that we're supposed to believe this person is such a great friend when he abandoned his "best friend" multiple times when he needed support the most.

I think we get enough tid-bits on Ginny to formulate an idea of her character, but there isn't enough there to justify what a major part of the main character's life she becomes. Also, while it has been some time since I read the books if I recall correctly HBP is the first instance where Harry is shown to have any kind of thought to her that isn't strictly platonic (not all that surprising since she literally had about a dozen lines of narrative dedicated to her in the first 5+ books). Their "love" came about because J.K. Rowling decided to flip a switch in HBP turning Harry into this hormone obsessed teen with his "best friends" younger sister.. A character who he has been in close physical proximity to nearly every day for the last 6 years.

For Percy, there is definitely a difference between book smarts and cleverness. I don't disagree with that. However, he has to have a level of competency if we're to believe he achieved so many things. If he didn't then that creates an entirely different problem with his character and the story. If he had truly been career driven willing to forsake everything for his career (a rather Slytherin quality I might add), then why did he ever go back to try and get his family to turn away from Harry? I will say that of the ones I've mentioned Percy was still the most believable as a character, but even then isn't it oddly convenient that so many different plot points are being driven by this one family?

Molly's relationship, like was the case with several of the Weasley family members, was just too convenient. The first time Molly meets Harry is on the platform where she spends about 30 seconds explaining how to get to the train. Her 2nd meeting with him is a year later after her kids have basically helped Harry run away from home where she opens up her house to him without question. Isn't that just a bit odd? I would say that even a "Best Friends Mom" would want to know the kid a little before she becomes a motherly figure to him.

Then there is the overarching issue I have with the Weasley family. Their relationships and how they drove the plot was just too convenient. Ron is the first friend, Molly is the mother he never had, Ginny is his love interest, Percy is the antagonist (well one of them), etc..

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I feel like one could easily dislike this book, but I loved it and it's probably my second favorite book in the series behind Order of the Phoenix. The action passages are the best of the series. The full circle these characters have come has been great to read and I'm happy to see they all stayed true through the end. Neville. Dobby. Hell, even Kreacher had a bunch of great moments.

I don't really want to get into a lot more detail since I don't want to spoil anything and diving deep would result in a series-long analysis. I can see how some things would throw some off (the inclusion of the Deathly Hallows for one), but the end result was overwhelmingly satisfying even if some things are kind of "explained" away throughout.


I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Did anybody else get a small library like I did?

My 2017 Jolabokaflod book is Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. It is a doctor's look at how the end of life is treated as an illness - something curable - and the lengths society will go towards prolonging death for the sake of prolonging it. Not necessarily pushing for quality of life, but just pushing to extend it no matter what. It also looks at aging in America and how the burden of the elderly has shifted to dependency on paid strangers. It sounds fascinating to me.

Christmas haul:
The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West - Peter Cozzens
Empire of the Sun Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History - SC Gwynne
The Apache Wars: The Hunt for Geronimo, the Apache Kid, and the Captive Boy Who Started the Longest War in American History - Paul Andrew Hutton
The Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn
It Can't Happen Here - Sinclair Lewis
Batman: The Golden Age omnibus volume 1

Suffice to say lots of Native history this year. I'm still working my way through Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee so once I finish that I'll jump into one of those.

Apart from finishing up Lord of the Rings I'm trying to pick a series or two to invest in for 2018.

[DJ]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I'm going to make an effort to read - and finish - more books in 2018. Really disappointed in myself that I've pushed reading this far on the back burner.

I did pick up Stephen King's "On Writing" and am working my way through "Wicked" right now. I've seen the Broadway musical, so the novel is doing a good job of filling in gaps in the story and answering questions I had.

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

"The Rap Yearbook and "Basketball and Other Things" both written by Shea Serrano are both entertaining and fun reads. And if you've read some of his stuff on The Ringer, then you'll definitely enjoy these.

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I feel like one could easily dislike this book, but I loved it and it's probably my second favorite book in the series behind Order of the Phoenix. The action passages are the best of the series. The full circle these characters have come has been great to read and I'm happy to see they all stayed true through the end. Neville. Dobby. Hell, even Kreacher had a bunch of great moments.

I don't really want to get into a lot more detail since I don't want to spoil anything and diving deep would result in a series-long analysis. I can see how some things would throw some off (the inclusion of the Deathly Hallows for one), but the end result was overwhelmingly satisfying even if some things are kind of "explained" away throughout.


I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Did anybody else get a small library like I did?

I got the first few books in the Kris Longknife series by Mike Shepherd. There are like 15 in total so far in the series, and so I'm hoping I'm not turned off by the first couple.

Regarding HP & the Deathly Hollows. I'm one of those people who didn't love the book, but I do agree it did a great job of keeping everyone in character. I took issue with a few plot decisions, but I think the thing that killed me for it was the way the final battle ended.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

What did you not like? That was one of my favorite parts honestly.

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

So I feel like 10 years after the book was released is enough of a grace period for spoilers, but just in case I'll wrap the below.

Spoiler

The final confrontation

There were a few things in the final battle that seemed kind of silly, but the one that really bothered me was how Harry's expelliarmus (sp?) defeated Voldemort's killing curse when the spells collided. I understand the whole bit about the elder wand, but it just seemed like a very juvenile way to end a conflict that had grown progressively darker over the course of the series.

Major characters are being killed/maimed left and right, the horrors of war are being displayed (as much as a YA novel will take it anyway), and the most powerful curse in existence is defeated by a basic disarming spell that students in their first year learn simply because there is this (conveniently) unbeatable/mythical wand.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

So I feel like 10 years after the book was released is enough of a grace period for spoilers, but just in case I'll wrap the below.

Spoiler

The final confrontation

There were a few things in the final battle that seemed kind of silly, but the one that really bothered me was how Harry's expelliarmus (sp?) defeated Voldemort's killing curse when the spells collided. I understand the whole bit about the elder wand, but it just seemed like a very juvenile way to end a conflict that had grown progressively darker over the course of the series.

Major characters are being killed/maimed left and right, the horrors of war are being displayed (as much as a YA novel will take it anyway), and the most powerful curse in existence is defeated by a basic disarming spell that students in their first year learn simply because there is this (conveniently) unbeatable/mythical wand.

Spoiler

That didn't really make an impression one way or another on me. Several characters reiterate "its the Wizard (not the wand)" throughout the series. To me it's not necessarily the specific spell that matters as the "strength" of spells are dependent on the wizard not the wand or the actual spell.

Plus, the Elder Wand was Harry's so it rebounding off it's owner makes sense, too.

I'm not disagreeing with your perspective because reading other comments/reviews after I finished it's easy to see how some would interpret details differently and process additional macguffins and plot developments in negative ways. The end to this series had to have been hard to develop and write. I think it's tremendous that it doesn't falter or make ill use of all the goodwill that was received through the series.

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Spoiler

Yeah it was always going to be hard to write a believable ending to an 18 year old Wizard who never really committed himself to studying magic defeating the greatest dark wizard of the age.

I remember re-reading that passage about a dozen times, and even going back a few paragraphs to start over because I legitimately did not believe I had read it correctly.

Despite my criticism I did love the series.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Finished Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee.

Did not disappoint. Follows a family from a young girl in Korea in the 1910's getting knocked up by an older half-Korean, half-Japanese Yakuza member and the journey their family takes as they move to Japan, deal with the discrimination that Koreans dealt with there during the Japanese occupation, later dealing with the changes from rural Korea to more urban Japan, reckoning with the realization that the country that they considered their homeland had been conquered and split. I thought Korean East of Eden when I saw the description and it was very much that. Just brutal at times, but believable. Everything feels earned. It was dope to see the differences in culture, and later on the way America comes into play during WW2. I also didn't know anything about Korean-Japanese relations so that was kinda fascinating. To see how they dealt with the way they would never be accepted in Japan but also couldn't go back to Korea because they would be looked down on for moving to Japan in the first place...Don't want to say too much, but it's great.

Spoiler

The first line of the book is: "History has failed us. But no matter." Awesome opener.

“You are very brave, Noa. Much, much braver than me. Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.”

"Hansu never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to Noa that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor."

"There was nothing else he could think of, and he wanted to spare her the cruelty of what he had learned, because she would not believe that she was no different than her parents, that seeing him as only Korean—good or bad—was the same as seeing him only as a bad Korean. She could not see his humanity, and Noa realized that this was what he wanted most of all: to be seen as human."

"Every morning, Mozasu and his men tinkered with the machines to fix the outcomes—there could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones. How could you get angry at the ones who wanted to be in the game? Etsuko had failed in this important way—she had not taught her children to hope, to believe in the perhaps-absurd possibility that they might win. Pachinko was a foolish game, but life was not."

"Beyond the dailiness, there had been moments of shimmering beauty and some glory, too, even in this ajumma’s life. Even if no one knew, it was true. There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned."

66 on the year. I want to read The Enchidirion by Epictetus, one of the 3 major texts of the Stoics, before New Years to get another short nonfiction out of the way to set me up for IJ at the top of the year. That might take the entire month of January.

Top 10 Fiction books I read this year:

Spoiler

1. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
2. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
3. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
4. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
5. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
6. The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison
7. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
8. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
9. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
10. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

Top 10 Nonfiction:

Spoiler

1. The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois
2. Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius
3. Shadow and Act, by Ralph Ellison
4. The Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan
5. Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin
6. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
7. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace
8. The Mis-Education of the Negro, by Carter G. Woodson
9. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter
10. Night, by Elie Wiesel

Overall

Spoiler

1. Invisible Man
2. The Souls of Black Folk
3. Meditations
4. Beloved
5. East of Eden
6. The Bell Jar
7. Shadow and Act
8. The Demon-Haunted World
9. Blood Meridian
10. Notes of a Native Son

A good year of reading, hopefully next year will be the same.

[mattlanta]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II



https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Jorda...michael+jordan

Just finished this. Pretty good biography of MJ's career. Long read but captivating. I'd say it's a must read for any MJ or NBA fan.

[KSUowls]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Just finished
Kris Longknife: Mutineer by Mike Shepherd.

This was one of my Christmas gets, and I came away pretty happy with it.

It's a sci-fi space adventure set in the 23rd or 24th century.. Humanity has colonized the stars, and there is some tension between the core Earth worlds and the outer rim worlds. The story follows Ensign Kris Longknife who is the daughter of the Prime Minister on one of those outer worlds. She joined the navy to get out of her family's shadow, and in this book she's basically fresh out of officer's school.

There is a very slow buildup. This book was only about 380 pages long and the first 120 or so were quite slow. In fact it really doesn't start picking up until the end, but it does enough to keep you interested in Kris.

I know there are those who don't like seeing a powerful female lead in a story, but I've always found it intriguing. Primarily just because 99 out of every 100 action movies/books you find the lead is a male so it's kind of a nice change. The problem with most of those that do feature a female is that the characters often become a contradiction of themselves. For instance, the first half of a story may prop up the female protagonist as being the most hardcore bounty known, but then she falls into "damsel in distress" mode at some point in the story. I'm very happy to say that this writing failure did not happen in this book.

We learn early on that Kris Longknife is athletic and finished top of her class. She has the qualities that you want to see in a good main character, especially one who is supposed to intelligent and good with a gun. She has plenty of faults to keep her realistic though, and this is what I loved about the book. I won't go into any of the potential plot spoilers, but I'll just say that it does a good job of eventually setting up for a larger conflict. There were some hints at potential character sub-plots that I will be very unhappy if they dive into, but overall I'm excited to continue the series (there are like 15 books from what I've seen).

[mattlanta]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II



On my list of books to start reading this week to help me with my OOTP trade negotiations!

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

I did finish The Enchiridion by Epictetus about 2 hours before the ball dropped. Took maybe 45 minutes, it's title translated is The Manual and that's pretty apt. Just a basic set of rules and guidelines to live like a Stoic, which is to basically understand that the entirety of a situation often isn't in your hands and the only thing you can control is how you react to it.

Spoiler

"Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things: for example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have seemed so to Socrates; for the opinion about death, that it is terrible, is the terrible thing. When then we are impeded or disturbed or grieved, let us never blame others, but ourselves, that is, our opinions. It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself."

"For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part, belongs to another."

"If a man has reported to you, that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make any defense (answer) to what has been told you: but reply, The man did not know the rest of my faults, for he would not have mentioned these only."

"These reasonings do not cohere: I am richer than you, therefore I am better than you; I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better than you. On the contrary these rather cohere, I am richer than you, therefore my possessions are greater than yours: I am more eloquent than you, therefore my speech is superior to yours. But you are neither possession nor speech."

Solid stuff, finding out his story was kind of cool (former slave, taught Marcus Aurelius) but I think the way Aurelius took the teachings and applied them to his life as an emperor when the number of things actually in your control are much more than an average person hit me harder. It's hard to be a good person, but I think it'd be magnitudes harder to be a good/benevolent leader, so that example sticks with me. Anyway, on to Infinite Jest.

Another random thing, I wanted a superhero novel. I searched the web for recommendations of books that actually follow a superhero...there are surprisingly few. Something that kept popping up was a web serial called Worm, which sounds like it's up my alley given the effusive praise I kept finding for it. Ripped it, converted it, and it's 5000+ pages on Kindle lol. I don't know how I'm going to go about it, but I want to get this done by the end of the year. I'll probably be reading it alongside every other book I read this year, so hopefully it's good.

[DieHardYankee26]

Re: OS Book Club Pt II

Day 1 with Infinite Jest and what in the world is this book?

I'm 70 pages in, which is really 140 pages, which is really 200 pages. Normal Kindle pages are 2 turns to 1 page in the book, this is 4. Also, there are footnotes. Yes, footnotes in a fiction book. I knew about this before but really getting into the book I actually started laughing at one point. I was in like the 3rd page of a 15 page footnote, and I realized that the footnote had a footnote in it. This will be fun. I would say this is my white whale but I think it'd actually be much easier to read Moby Dick than this.