(TESOL Materials--Storybooks ESL Listening)
Youtube Video HERE
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
BOOK TREK 2021 | Star Trek TOS chat with Steve Donoghue and Michael K. Vaughan
I found this discussion via Steve Donoghue's link to it. I thought it was a lot of fun.
I didn't learn all that much that was new, but I thought it was a good discussion anyway. Warmed my heart as a someone who has a lot of love for the Original Series myself.
There was a brief talk in the video about the Animated Series, and some speculation that it hadn't really been on TV since it's original run in the early 70s. So I chimed in with my small correction in the comments.
A friend alerted me to this post on Facebook: Mississippi governor tries to explain his state's pandemic passivity: What explains Mississippi's passivity on the pandemic? According to its governor, locals' belief in "eternal life" has an effect.
The name on the Facebook Link puts it a bit more direct: Mississippi Governor: No Need to be 'so scared' of Covid if you believe in afterlife
I wrote in the comments to my friend's post: Now that's what I call leadership! That's why he's the governor and we're just ordinary citizens--so that whenever there's any kind of crisis, he can just tell us to calm down and remember everything will be perfect in heaven.
I also thought this Christopher Hitchens video was relevant. I mean, I know Christopher Hitchens often exaggerated the evil of religion, but in this particular case, the shoe fits, no?
So, with the never-ending lockdown here in Vietnam, we're back to teaching online.
I find myself more and more thinking of something Phil wrote last year about his experience delivering his course online. The full post is here, I'll quote the key bits below:
As regards teaching, this is a Them That's Got Shall Have semester. Those students who have arrived in my life--I almost typed "in my classroom" and then noticed the absurdity--with a great existing capacity for self-monitoring, for locating in themselves the wellsprings of enthusiasm and then directing those waters to any given assignment, for interpreting and following directions, are doing great! The students who haven't, aren't....
There are always some people who can administer education to themselves, like a medication. If they are pointed in the direction of more or less adequate books and if they find decent conversation partners, they will learn the thing, assuming they want to know it....
...some students who come to me this semester having not learned how to administer education to themselves in the proper doses will leave me having learned little....
This has been my experience with online teaching as well.
Chapter 1: Chopping Down Trees
[This is cross-posted from my other blog HERE. As I explained in a previous post, I'm eager for any feedback you might have on anything from prose level concerns to story level concerns. Give me your feedback in the comments.] Google: docs, pub
Catherine pushed the door open. The door was one of the strongest things in the house. It had to be, in order to keep the monsters out.
The outside of the door was made of wooden planks standing vertically, but the inside of the door was reinforced by iron bars going horizontally. The wood was plentiful enough in the mountains, but the iron was rare. Her father, Finn, had had to pay a lot of money for it. But he had paid it gladly. They all knew that at nighttime, a strong door meant the difference between surviving the night and being eaten.
“House” was what they all called it, but it was actually more of a cave. It was a small indent in the mountain. It probably wasn’t deep enough to be considered a proper cave, but it was cave-like--a little hollow space in the middle of the mountainside, just large enough for a man to stand up under. Finn had used this space as the ceiling and three of the walls of his house. The only wall that he had to construct himself was the wall at the entrance of the cave, which he had made using wood and whatever large stones he could find.
There were no windows, so when Catherine pushed the door open, she saw the snow for the first time. It seldom snowed heavily in the mountains, but a light covering of snow was not unusual, especially in the mornings. But it was the wind that made the mountaintop so cold. The wind whisked through the open door. Catherine rubbed her hands together to warm them up. Next to her stood her brother, Carlyle, who cupped his hands around his mouth and blew into them to keep them warm.
“Come on then,” said Finn, pushing past them and walking outside. “You two will warm up once we start the work.” As he was stepping outside, Finn turned to call back into the house. “We should be back by noon,” he said.
“I’ll have the food waiting,” answered Margaret. “Be careful now. Don’t strain yourself.”
Finn simply growled in response, and started walking down towards the trees. He walked briskly, and held the axe in his right hand, which hung loosely by his side. His sword was in an iron sheath which was strapped loosely to his back with some frayed rope.
Carlyle and Catherine both went to get the cart. They each grabbed one of the shafts and pulled forward. The wooden wheels were stuck in the frozen ground, so it was difficult to get the cart moving. The cart rocked forwards and backwards slightly until they gave a final heave and the wheels broke out of their rut and the cart lurched forward.
The journey was downhill, so once the cart was moving, the challenge was to make sure it didn’t get away from them and roll down the mountain on its own. They moved quickly to try to catch up with Finn, but they also braced their backs against the front of the cart as they led it down the slope.
As they were walking, Catherine noticed the tracks in the snow. “They were here last night,” he said. “I thought I heard them.”
By this time they were close enough to Finn that he could hear them. “They were here,” confirmed Finn matter of factly. “They came around midnight.”
Like most people in the mountains, Finn had developed the habit of being a light sleeper out of necessity. The slightest noise now woke him up, and it had been years since he slept solidly through the night
“But they didn’t try to attack,” Catherine observed, looking at the patterns of the tracks.
“I think they thought about it,” said Finn. “But after the fight we gave them last time, they probably thought better of it.”
“How soon before they try again?” asked Carlyle.
“Who knows,” Finn answered. “You two are old enough to try to work these things out for yourselves. How often do they usually try to attack?”
“It depends on how well we defended ourselves the last time,” said Catherine. “Maybe about once every two months?”
“Not quite that often,” said Finn. “I’d say three to four months is closer. But they check the house almost every night. So if our wall or our door ever shows signs of damage or weakening, they’ll know it.”
Finn stopped walking as he got to the first few trees.
They lived right on the part of the mountain where the treeline was beginning to thin out. There were still trees, more than enough for Finn to survive off of, but there was also plenty of space between these trees. These were thin pine trees, and they had a barren look. The lower parts of the trunk were bare, and the upper parts were only sparsely covered with pine needles.
Finn unstrapped the sword from his back and laid it on the ground. In the mountains it was always useful to keep a sword nearby, but it wasn’t always convenient to have it strapped onto your body when you were doing work.
Finn then knelt down in the snow beneath the tree. He raised his hands up before the tree in supplication. In a loud voice, he cried out to the tree, “Forgive me, for what I am about to do. I must do this to survive. If there are any spirits or other beings who have made this tree their home, let me know now in order that I may not harm you unknowingly.”
Carlyle and Catherine looked at each other. They always felt slightly embarrassed of their father in these moments.
After a suitable pause, Finn continued. “If there are any spirits or nymphs in this tree, I beg your forgiveness. I declare that I am ignorant of any beings who live in this tree.”
The ritual then completed, Finn stood to his feet.
“Why do you always do that?” asked Catherine.
“You’ve asked me that before,” said Finn, as he gripped the axe in both hands and carefully planted his feet. “You always need to be careful of the woodland spirits.”
“But nobody else does it,” said Carlyle. “None of the other woodsmen in the mountains ever do it.”
Finn swung the axe, and struck the tree. The first hit barely cut through the bark.
Finn grunted. “None of the other people in these mountains know what I know.”
He swung again. This time with more force. The axehead buried itself in the wood, and Finn had difficulty pulling it out again. He had to wiggle the handle back and forth to free the blade.
“Why do you know so much?” asked Catherine.
There was a cynical tone in her voice. Ever since they had become teenagers, they had started to question Finn more and more.
Finn noticed the tone, and snapped back. “Because I’ve lived a long life. And because I’ve lived in a lot of different places.” He swung the axe again at the tree. “And believe me, if these yokels up here in the mountains knew anything, they would do what I do.” Finn knew his children were beginning to doubt him, and it worried him. He paused from the chopping to point his finger at them. “Don’t listen to what anyone else up here says. You never harm a tree without first checking to see if any spirits are living in it.”
Finn went back to chopping. Catherine and Carlyle exchanged another glance.
“And best not to harm a tree at all if you can avoid it,” Finn said. “The only reason I’m doing this is that we need more supplies.”
After a couple minutes, Finn stopped chopping again, but this time it wasn’t because of his children. His hands were having trouble gripping the axe. It was frustrating growing old. He still had plenty of strength left in his arms, but the aches in his hand and his fingers were becoming worse. He dropped the axe to the ground, and tried to massage away the pain by holding one hand inside the other, and rubbing his thumbs on the sore points. Finn’s hands were wrinkly and splotchy. And gaunt. The skin was tightly wrapped around bony knuckles and enlarged veins.
Carlyle took a step towards him. “Father, let me swing the axe,” he said. “I’m young and healthy.”
But this show of filial piety did not please Finn. “I can do it,” he growled. “I’m not old and useless yet.”
“I know,” said Carlyle. “But I can also do it.”
“Your job is to do the sawing,” said Finn. “I’ll handle the chopping.”
The sharp tone of Finn’s voice made it clear that the discussion was over. Carlyle stepped backwards to where he had been standing. After a minute, Finn picked up the axe again.
Finn’s hands were becoming his weak point. And although he tried to hide it, his knees were also beginning to get sore frequently. But overall, Finn had aged fairly well. The muscles on his arms and chest were still big, and their outline was noticeable even through the thick shirt that he wore. His hair had turned white years ago, but it still looked full and healthy. His face looked worn and withered, but that was normal in these parts. At least the skin around his face looked taut instead of saggy and wrinkled.
The thing that made Finn unique was that he didn’t have a full beard, like most of the other men in the mountains did. This wasn’t entirely a matter of choice--for whatever reason, Finn’s face just wasn’t predisposed to grow breads. There was some prickly white stubble that came around his chin and parts of his cheek, but it was never enough to grow a full beard. Because the scattered whiskers looked ridiculous when they grew too long, every few days Finn shaved his face. In between those days, he just had rough looking stubble, like he did now.
“Stand clear,” Finn said loudly. Carlyle and Catherine moved behind Finn as the tree toppled over.
“Right,” said Finn. “The saw’s in the cart. You two know what to do. Make sure the logs are long enough that I can trade them, but short enough so that they’ll fit in the cart.”
Finn trudged down a little ways further down the mountain, and then knelt on his knees in front of the next tree. He repeated his ritual, raising his hands again, and yelling up to the tree. “Forgive me, for what I am about to do. I must do this to survive. If there are any spirits or other beings who have made this tree their home…”
While Finn was still yelling, Carlyle walked around to the cart to get the saw out, and brought it back to Catherine. Catherine grabbed the handle on one side, and Carlyle grabbed the handle on the other. And then, pulling back and forth, they started sawing through the tree.
Once the air was filled with the sound of Finn’s axe chopping again, and Carlyle was sure that Finn could not hear them, he spoke. “Where did you go yesterday?”
Catherine glanced up from the saw to fix Carlyle with an annoyed look. “What business of it is yours?”
“You left the group,” said Carlyle. “You wandered off all by yourself. I didn’t see you again until dinner time. I didn’t want to ask you in front of mother and father, but…”
“There were things I wanted to see.”
“It’s dangerous to wander off by yourself like that.”
“I know these mountains as well as you do. I can take care of myself.”
“Where did you go?” Carlyle insisted.
“That is my concern. If I go off by myself, it is because I do not desire company. If I do not tell you where I have gone, it is because you do not need to know. Besides,” Catherine added, “I grow bored with you and Alfred the other boys and all the fighting and wrestling that you do. I couldn’t care less about who wins which fights.”
“The other girls don’t seem to mind watching. Besides, what else do you propose we do with our time? If you have an activity you would like the group to do, you can feel free to--.”
“The group bores me.”
“Okay, but you can’t wander off by yourself like that. It’s dangerous. You could run into bears, wolves, goblins, witches, vampires--”
“The vampires can’t come out during the day,” said Catherine.
“Fine. Any of the rest then. You remember what happened to Jack.”
“I remember.”
“Well be careful then. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.” Catherine looked up again. “I mean it,” said Carlyle. “I’m not trying to be difficult, I really--.”
“Stand clear!” Finn shouted out. Catherine and Carlyle ran several steps to the right side of the mountain slope while a second tree fell to the left.
Finn looked with disgust at how little progress Carlyle and Catherine had made. “We’ve got two trees on the ground,” he said. “And you’ve barely started to saw that one. I don’t know what you two are chatting about, but you can talk later. Concentrate on sawing for now.”
“Yes, Father,” they both answered.
“I need to get the logs loaded in the cart before noon,” said Finn, “because it will take me all afternoon to get down to--.”
Finn stopped talking as he saw a large brown bear lumbering up the side of the mountain. The bear saw the humans at the same time that they saw him. The bear stood up on his hind legs and let out a loud roar.
Finn dropped his axe immediately and scrambled up the mountain to where he had left his sword. He quickly drew the sword out of its sheath, and held it in front of him. “We are armed,” Finn shouted at the bear.
“I wish for no trouble,” said the bear. “I am simply returning to my home.”
“Go in peace, then,” said Finn.
The bear dropped back to four legs, and continued lumbering up the mountainside. Finn kept the sword raised and kept his eyes on the bear until the bear disappeared out of sight. Finn knew that very likely, the bear was telling the truth when it said it was simply returning to its home. However Finn also knew that equally likely the bear might have tried to attack and eat them opportunistically if they had not been armed.
Once the bear disappeared, Finn turned back to his children. “Right, let’s not spend any more time out here than we have to. The sooner we get that cart filled, the sooner I can take off. Get back to the sawing, and I don’t want to hear any more talking until the cart is full.”
Monday, August 30, 2021
My Story: The Castle in the Magic Forest
Google Drive Folder HERE
2. Finn Departs
12. The Meetings
Short Version: I'm going to start posting chapters on this blog from a story I'm working on. I'd appreciate any feedback you can give me.
Long Version:
Even though I'm calling this "the long version", I'm going to do my best to keep this relatively brief. There's a longer version of this same post over here in which I try to sort through all the mixed feelings I've had about writing over my life. But the relatively short version is that I've always had a love-hate relationship with writing fiction which goes back to my childhood.
As a child, I always liked making up stories in my head, and I sometimes tried to write these stories down I enjoyed imaging stories, and I enjoyed the feeling of having a story that I was in complete control of.
At the same time, however, I didn't enjoy the actual act of writing itself--I didn't enjoy the struggle to take the images that I had in my head put them into words that other people could understand. I liked imagining the story, but I hated writing it.
Then there was also the constant anxiety about wondering whether you're any good at it. I got some praise in elementary school teachers for my stories which encouraged me. But I got some criticism from my high school writing teachers which discouraged me.
I have at various points in my life embarked on long writing projects--HERE, HERE and HERE. But I have also gone long stretches in my life without writing any fiction at all.
However, beginning in my mid-to-late 30s, I began to have this yearning to immerse myself more in fantasy. I bounced around my head this fantasy story that I might create about a castle in a forest full of magical creatures and talking animals. After years of thinking about it, I started writing the story in 2018. Even though I'm quite busy these days, I told myself I would only write for 15 minutes a day. (No matter how busy you get, I could always find 15 minutes somewhere in my day, right?) And then I could have fun just seeing how the story unfolded.
I started a new blog for the story: http://thecastleinthemagicforest.blogspot.com/ The story was intended to be only for my own amusement, but I am aware that nowadays almost nobody reads blogs, and so starting up a blog on the Internet and not promoting it anywhere is essentially the same as just writing for yourself.
I wrote myself into a dead-end plotwise, and then got frustrated and gave up on it. But then the desire to try it out again returned, and I started again in July of 2020.
The intention was never to write a structured novel, but rather to just write an unending story. I had in mind the comic book series I read in my youth, where there were always different plots being introduced, but never any resolution of the story.
Or, for you non-comic book fans, maybe daytime soap operas is more familiar comparison.
You have 1 main plot going on, and 2 sub-plots simmering in the background. As the main plot gets resolved, one of the sub-plots starts to increase in prominence. And then as the sub-plot becomes the main plot, a new sub-plot is introduced, and the story keeps going and going.
I wanted a situation and characters that I could just entertain myself with indefinitely without it ever coming to an end.
Unfortunately, the longer the story became, the more convoluted it got. I began to lose track of some of the characters and plot threads. There were some gaps in the plot which I had fixes for in my head, but which I didn't get around to putting down on paper.
Also, unfortunately the 15 minutes I devoted to the story (which I eventually reduced to 10) tended to be the last 10 minute before I went to bed. Resulting in a lot of this story being written when I was sleep deprived.
Eventually I realized that this thing was never going to be comprehensible to anybody except me.
That depressed me. It's one thing to have a story that nobody will ever read, but at it's another thing to have a story that nobody else could read. I wanted to write a story that someone else could pick up and read, if they wanted to.
Eventually I began to toy with the idea of a second draft. It would still be one unending story, with a very long and convoluted plot, but I would go back and try to smooth out all the plot holes and inconsistencies. I would also try to write readable prose.
I've now decided to go ahead and start writing that second draft. And because the whole point of this second draft is that it's supposed to be readable by other people, I'm going to start posting those chapters here on this blog. (The readership of this blog is small, but there's at least a chance of someone seeing it if I post it on my main blog. Absolutely no one is visiting the other blog --I've got the stats to prove it.)
I would be eager for any and all feedback that you have--on anything from sentence level prose to broader story elements. Because who knows, there might someday be a 3rd draft or a 4th draft.
This is all still only a hobby, but it's now a hobby that has 2 sides to it. The first draft is to just create a long story to amuse myself. The second draft is to challenge myself to write the most readable story I can, while still keeping the structure I've inherited from the first draft.
At this point in my life, I have no illusions about getting professionally published. I know my limitations, and I know my writing is not particularly good. (The evidence is hard to ignore. I've been writing this blog for almost 20 years now, and have not only failed to attract any following, but I've been steadily losing readers as time goes on.)
[Although I guess it doesn't matter anyway, because given the current state of the publishing industry, even if I was talented, I would still have a difficult time getting published (see HERE and HERE). And even if I somehow did get published, I could certainly never earn enough money from novels to make writing my vocation (see HERE and HERE). So I guess it doesn't really matter anyway--whether someone is talented or not, writing fiction is a purely a hobby these days.]
But I would like to create the most readable story that I can--just for my own internal satisfaction. And because this thing will never get published, there's nothing to stop me from endlessly tinkering with it as I go. (Published authors often lament that they can't go back and change things once their book has gone to print.) So give me any advice you have, and I'll try to take it all onboard.
The chapters for my first draft are indexed here--although be warned, after a certain point it probably stops making sense to anyone who is not me, but that's what I'm hoping to clean up with the second draft.
The chapters to the second draft I'll start posting on this blog soon. And I'll index them on the top of this post.
Addendums:
For more of my explanations about this project, see my original post on the other blog from 2018: What This Is and Why I'm Doing It.
I had hopes when I began this project that I would be able to write something relatively readable by just putting in 15 minutes a day, but was quickly frustrated when my prose wasn't turning out as readable at all. So then I wrote a follow-up post 5 days later: Oh Wow! This is Turning out Worse than I thought . And then, in February of this past year, I attempted to write another long explanation of why I'm doing this, but I never finished it. I eventually just posted it unfinished: What This Is and Why I'm Doing It (Unfinished)
So, obviously I'm spending a lot of time trying to explain myself. Part of this is my own self-consciousness. (I'm worried that other people will find it pathetic that I'm spending so much time writing a story that I know other people won't read.) And part of it, as with a lot of the stuff on my blogs, is my own attempt to self-psychoanalyze and explain myself to myself.
From July, I've attempted to make a list of chapter summaries for my first draft and write down any issues that come up so I can hopefully remember to change them later. I've also tried to create a character index, because upon re-reading the first draft, I've found that I've often accidentally used the same name for several characters. So this is my attempt to keep all my character names straight.
Update: Saturday, December 18, 2021
As I indicated on Monday, I had a slip in my writing. I had been doing pretty good up until October--at least 15 minutes a day every day for over a year. But then I had a week back in October when I was really busy teaching and marking, and I allowed myself to go for a few days without writing, and then it was really hard to get back into it. (The lesson is never let yourself take breaks, because it is so hard to get back into it again.)
Part of the problem is that since August I had been trying to do 2 drafts simultaneously--I tried to keep plowing ahead with the first draft for 10 minutes every day, but also work on the second draft for another 10 minutes every day. And that doubled my time commitment. Which made me get burned out faster. Which made me stop.
But I want to try again.
I've been inspired by these Steve Donoghue Writing Videos.
After watching this video, I've decided to do a bit of renaming on my drafts. I'd been calling the draft I've been posting on this blog a second draft, but I've decided that's not really an accurate description. It's more of a first draft on the backstory. All the story in it I'm working through for the first time.
Plus, my so-called "first draft" isn't really a serious draft. It's more just playing around (what Steve Donoghue refers to in his video as being a Pantsers). So I've decided to re-name the so-called first draft as the "zero draft". And the so-called second draft is now the "first draft".
I'm going to try to get back into writing from next week. If I have limited time, I'll try to prioritize working on the first draft instead of the zero draft--this is because of Steve's advice on his video to try to make the writing time a serious exercise in communication, and not just to write an incoherent story that no-one else could ever read.
Cracked.com just published this video a couple days ago: The Deranged Grimms' Fairy Tale About A Half-Hedgehog Jerk Bagpiper | Mike Trapp Goes Medieval
...and I thought "Huh, Cracked.com and I are reading the same fairy tales. I just read this one a few weeks ago.
The fairy tale is, more or less, as Cracked.com described it. There are a lot of these strange fairy tales in The Brothers Grimm.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling
(Book Review--Harry Potter, Children's Literature, Fantasy)
Started: August 17, 2021
Finished: August 25, 2021
My History with this Book
I was too old for Harry Potter when it first came out. I was already in college when this book hit the shelves. (Although my youngest sister was the perfect age for these books, and was the representative Potter fan in our family.)
Initially I wanted nothing to do with these books. Early adulthood was the age where I scorned children's literature, and wanted to be seen as a serious reader of serious books.
But, as you know, the phenomenon of Harry Potter kept growing and growing until it was impossible not to become curious about the whole thing. I had several adult friends who read the books and would tell me about them.
For example, when I was living in the small Japanese town of Ajimu, Ryan, the only other foreigner in the town, was reading the Harry Potter books.
And then the movies started coming out. I saw the first movie as a VHS rental while in Japan (and also listened to my friend Ryan compare the movie with the book.)
Eventually, despite my apprehensions about wasting time with children's literature, curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to check it out.
I did the first book as an audio book. In the English section of a Japanese bookstore, I found the audio book of The Philosopher's Stone and decided that this would be the perfect way to absorb Harry Potter. I'd get to find out what all the fuss was behind these books, and I wouldn't have to waste any time physically reading the thing. (*1)
I had already seen the movie by this time, so everything was spoiled ahead of time. And, as you know, Harry Potter famously started the trend of movies that were slavishly faithful to the books. So there were very little surprises in the book. Every plot point I already knew from the movie. But some of the extra little details were nice.
This was sometime around 2005, before I had started my book review project, and so I never reviewed The Philosopher's Stone on this blog.
This was sometime around 2005, before I had started my book review project, and so I never reviewed The Philosopher's Stone on this blog.
In fact, the first 3 Harry Potter books I listened to (*2) before starting up this book review project, and so my Harry Potter book reviews start with book four.
For years on this blog, I had a policy that I would only review new reads, and not books that I re-read (or re-listened to, as the case may be). And so I never reviewed Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, even though I kept it on regular rotation in my apartment during all the years I lived in Japan (*3). So I listened to it periodically all through 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. Once I left Japan in 2009, Harry Potter fell out of rotation. (*4)
Why I'm Re-Reading It and Reviewing it Now
If you've been following this blog lately, you know that recently my wife has been practicing her English by reading classic children's books, and I've been taking the opportunity to re-read these classic children's books once my wife is finished with them. So far I've re-read (after my wife has finished them) Charlotte's Web, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. My reasons for this are two-fold. The first is to re-visit childhood classics that I haven't read in years, only barely remember, and am long overdue to re-read. The second reason is to just challenge myself to keep up with my wife's reading. (If she's doing all this reading as a non-native speaker, surely I should be able to keep pace, right?)
But in the case of The Philosopher's Stone, the first reason no longer applies. For me, at least, this isn't a book that is lost in the mists of early childhood memories. This is something I listened to, multiple times, during my 20s, and remember fairly well.
So the remaining rationale for re-reading this book was only the second reason--just to challenge myself to read more by keeping up with my wife's reading. (Given how many unread classic books are sitting on my shelves, I did have some mixed feelings about re-reading a book that I didn't really need to re-read. But at least it was a short and quick read.)
That, and because I never reviewed this book on my blog, so this was an opportunity to plug a hole in my book reviewing project. (Starting with the Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which I re-read and then reviewed last year, I've changed the rules on m book reviewing project. Books that I re-read now get full reviews as well.)
The Review
Right, so what is left to say about these Harry Potter books that hasn't already been said, huh?
There's a temptation to talk about these books in superlative or polemical terms. When they first came out, these books were over-praised by their fans. And, perhaps as a result of that over-praise, there then came a backlash against these books that over-criticized them. When in fact these books are neither the best thing ever nor the worst thing ever. They are kids books, that do a perfectly fine job of entertaining their target audience, and that's how they should be viewed.
It's also hard to cut out all the extra cultural baggage when reading a book like this--the legacy of the sequels, the movie franchise, and of course, J.K. Rowling's' own recent political controversies. But I did my best. I tried to read this book as if I was a 12 year-old child when it first came out in 1997.
There are some problems that develop later in the sequels with tone, continuity, and repetitive plot devices. But I tried to forget what I knew about the sequels, and just read this book on its own.
The first 6 chapters (pages 1-120) are absolutely brilliant.
Harry Potter is living with the abusive Dursley family. (Oh, spoilers by the way. But you know the story as well as I do, so let's start talking about plot points.) The Dursley's are ridiculous caricatures right out of a Roald Dahl novel, and indeed, this whole beginning section has a very much Roald Dahl type feel. (Think the aunts in James in the Giant Peach, or Trunchbull in Matilda, or the orphanage in The BFG). It's pure silliness. The reader neither expects nor is given realistic characters. It is just buffoonish bullies whose cruelty and stupidity is exaggerated solely so that the reader can derive satisfaction when they eventually get their comeuppance.
But it is (dare I say it?) Dahl done better than Dahl. J.K. Rowling is able to make these scenes really really funny--the frustration of the Dursley's, who get so annoyed by anything magical, and the way that they always try so hard to avoid magic disrupting their lives, and then the way that magic inevitably always does disrupt their lives, and then the way they get so angry that they can't speak properly--it had me laughing as I read it. (Even though it was a re-read for me.) If you ask me, J.K. Rowling doesn't get enough credit for these sections.
In later books, the increasing seriousness of the series is going to create a tonal inconsistency with the cartoonishness of these early sections. But like I said, I'm not reviewing the whole series here. I'm going to try to stick to just this one book. And in this first book, the tonal shift is still there, but it's not as dramatic as it will get in later books.
Once Hagrid arrives to pick up Harry, we lose the buffoonish Dursley's, but fortunately we don't lose the silly whimsical tone as Hagrid takes Harry to places like Diagon Alley and Gringrotts bank. There's an interesting combination of epic fantasy worldbuilding with silliness. We are being introduced to the world of wizards and witches, and learning the rules of the world and its institutions, but everything is also being played for comic effect. Logic, in this world, is clearly taking a backseat to spectacle and jokes.
(It's strange how many things in the wizarding world seem to be deliberately designed to make the wizards as miserable as possible--Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, for example. But then, that's the whole joke, isn't it?)
Where the book started to lose me was at chapter 7, where the silliness started to take a back seat to the plot. And then from here on out it was all about which house at Hogwarts was winning the trophy, Quidditch tournaments, feuding with Malfoy, and of course the MacGuffin of the philosopher's stone. I found it a bit tiresome, but then, I found it tiresome partially because I already knew where it was going. (And also because I knew that all these plot points would be repeated ad nauseum in subsequent books.)
I will admit to being hooked on the mystery when I first saw the movie in 2001 (*5). And I will also admit to being surprised when the movie revealed Snape wasn't the bad guy all along. (A good old-fashioned twist ending--well, it certainly got me on my first viewing.) And had I read the book first instead of seeing the movie first, I imagine that I would have been more interested in those climatic chapters.
The big appeal of these books was trying to marry this very funny and silly story about strange wizards and cartoonish Dursleys with an epic high fantasy story about a battle between good and evil. You can see where this combination would draw kids in--you get all the fun of a comedic story, but you also get all the excitement of the good wizards versus the evil wizards. It does create a bit of tonal inconsistency, but sometimes a changing tone can make the book more interesting--it keeps the reader guessing as to what to expect next.
(The tone will be more of a problem in the sequels, but like I said, we're not reviewing the sequels here.)
One last note on the characters:
Now that the movies are so iconic, it is impossible to imagine these characters without thinking of the actors who portray them in the movies. Admit it--when you picture in your head Snape or Hagrid or Malfoy, you're picturing the actor from the movie.
It's interesting to go back and read the book and realize how much the movie characters match the book. Now admittedly I'm biased, because I saw the movie first, so I was already pre-disposed to imagine Hagrid as Robbie Coltrane and Snape as Alan Rickman, etc. But still, I think most people would agree that the portrayal of the characters in the book and in the movies sync up very well. The movie producers deserve a lot of credit for the excellent casting but that they did, but J.K. Rowling deserves credit for creating such colorful characters in the first place. The characters are just as vibrant in J.K. Rowling's book as they are in the movie.
Some fantasy books have a cast of characters that are difficult to distinguish from each other, but J.K. Rowling definitely does not have this problem. J.K. Rowling knows how to write distinctive, memorable characters.
The flip-side, though, is in exchange for being memorable, her characters sometimes become caricatures. Over the course of the 7 books, many of these characters never grow or develop at all. Malfoy's development over the series is a perfect example of a static character. But here I am criticizing the whole series again! I told myself I would only limit myself to this one book. And for this one book, they work great.
(*1) If memory serves, I got it from a bookstore in Nagoya city when I was living in Gifu. And I think I paid a pretty penny for it back then. It was back in the days when people actually bought audiobooks on physical media, and it was a set of around 10 CDs.
Although the actual production cost of a single CD is only pennies, there was a popular illusion back in those days that a single CD had to cost at least $15 each, because that's how much you paid for a CD when you bought a new music album. So audiobooks were often priced accordingly--the price was often about $15 per CD, as if you were buying multiple music albums instead of just one audiobook.
(I haven't actually paid money for an audiobook in years now. Does anyone know how much they currently cost? Has the cost of physical media gone down any?)
Part of the reason I parted with the money to buy the audiobook was because in my view it was more than just entertainment. After several years of living in the Japanese countryside, and speaking either Japanese or a very simplified form of English, I noticed that my productive vocabulary was becoming very simple. When I got together with other foreigners, and tried to speak English, I often had the feeling of not being able to find the words I wanted. It was a phenomenon that the other foreigners observed as well. We were able to communicate our meaning well enough, but we often had the feeling that there were more sophisticated words then the ones we were using, but the words didn't come to us readily.
Having had some - literary - ambitions, I was worried about losing my language ability in English, so I started playing audiobooks in my apartment or in my car to keep up my literary vocabulary.
I was also at this stage in my life big into audiobooks. I viewed audiobooks as a very simple way to increase the number of books I was able to read.
I've since then become disenchanted with audiobooks, because I've come to realize that there are some books I didn't fully absorb when listening to by audio. Particularly books with complicated plots or subtle prose. But Harry Potter was not one of those books. In this particular case, I feel like I absorbed Harry Potter just as well by audiobook as if I had physically read the whole thing.
(*2) I actually only paid full retail price for the first Harry Potter book. For books 2 through 6, a friend of mine who was big into pirating everything off of torrent sites on the Internet downloaded the audiobooks, and burned them all onto a CD-ROM for me. (This was back in 2005, so book 7 still hadn't come out yet.)
Back in those days, I didn't even have a computer at home, and I couldn't play the CD-ROM on my normal CD player. So on weekends when I spent a couple hours at Internet Cafes, I would just bring the CD-ROM with me, put on the headphones, and play it on the computers at the Internet Cafe. At the end of every Internet Cafe session, I would write down what chapter I was on on the CD-ROM jacket, and then pick up from there the next time I came in. And in this way I worked my way through Harry Potter books 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Book 7 I actually bought in hardcover and read when it came out.
Back in those days, I didn't even have a computer at home, and I couldn't play the CD-ROM on my normal CD player. So on weekends when I spent a couple hours at Internet Cafes, I would just bring the CD-ROM with me, put on the headphones, and play it on the computers at the Internet Cafe. At the end of every Internet Cafe session, I would write down what chapter I was on on the CD-ROM jacket, and then pick up from there the next time I came in. And in this way I worked my way through Harry Potter books 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Book 7 I actually bought in hardcover and read when it came out.
(*3) During my time in Japan, I viewed listening to English audiobooks as a way to keep up my literary skills as much as entertainment. See footnote (*1). So the audiobooks that I had in my apartment were played again and again and again in the hopes that I would absorb all their literary language.
(*4) During the period when I was toying with the idea of going back to school for a history degree, my audiobook listening time switched to a lot of history related books and radio shows. That, plus as time went on, audio material became so freely available online and to download that there really seemed little point carrying around physical copies of audio books. If memory serves, I left my physical CDs in my old room at my parents' house one year in between moves to different countries. And on a recent trip back to the U.S., at my mother's urging, I gave away or threw away everything in my old room that I wasn't going to use again. I think that's when I parted company with my audiobook copy of The Philosopher's Stone.
(*5) According to Wikipedia, the movie came out in 2001. Although since I first saw it as a VHS rental, it may have been 2002 when I first saw it. Who can remember?
August 22: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (p.0-210)
August 29: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling (p.210-332)
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
Sunday, August 29, 2021
US epidemiologist explains why vaccines alone won't stop Delta | Coronavirus | A Current Affair
Well, this is really depressing. I had been hoping that once we got vaccinated, we'd be in the clear. (I hesitate to share this with all the disinformation about Covid going around these days, but I think this is a credible news source, right?)
Weekly Reading Vlog #23: The Grammar Book p.176-192, The Brothers Grimm p.694-802, Harry Potter...
Books (246 pages this week)
The Grammar Book by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman p.176-192 (16 pages)
The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales p.694-802 (up to story #193: The Drummer) (108 pages)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling p.210-332 (finished) (122 pages)
Podcasts: (Not mentioned in the video)
The History of Rome (4th Listening): From 118 The Palmyrene Wars To 125- The Best Defence is a Good Defence
Revolutions: 10.66- Finland Station
For more information about what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE.
Public Service Announcement: Always Verify Any Quotes About the Nazis before Re-Posting on Social Media
There have been a lot of memes recently about 1930s Germany on social media--either things the Nazis supposedly said, or things the Holocaust victims supposedly said, etc.
But whenever you get the urge to repost one of these memes, google the quote first. Chances are you'll see the same quote replicated on a number of Facebook pages, and Reddit pages, and blogs. But keep searching until you can find the quote in context in a legitimate credible source. If you can't find that quote in a legitimate source, then assume that the quote has been manufactured or altered.
If you see a quote about the Nazis that supports your own political position, always google it before you repost it.
If you see someone on Facebook post a quote about the Nazis that goes against your politics, don't get sucked into debating the implications of the quote until you've googled it first. Then, point out to your friend that the quote is fake, and don't waste time debating the implications of the quote.
(And, yes, this blog post has been inspired by interactions on Facebook. There have been a lot of memes about the Nazis popping up on Facebook recently. My own anecdotal observation is that more than half of them are manufactured quotes.)
Saturday, August 28, 2021
Friday, August 27, 2021
From the Young Turks: Officer Who Shot Ashli Babbitt Reveals Identify
I normally really like the Young Turks, but in this case I'm linking to this video not because I agree with it, but because I disagree with it and I want to make a point. And also because I'm worried a lot of the dialogue on the left is similar to the points in this video.
Because of the polarization in America nowadays, the Left feels like it has to disagree with whatever the Right says, and vice-versa. So because the Right has made a martyr of Ashli Babbitt, the Left feels like it has to argue that her killing was justified. But this is a mistake.
Ashli Babbitt didn't need to be shot. She was entering into a restricted area, but she wasn't being violent or threatening anyone's life at the time. She should have been restrained, but not killed. Killing someone is an extreme measure to be taken as a last resort.
Her ultimate intentions (had she gotten through) are unclear. Possibly she would have been violent, but equally possibly she wouldn't have been.
HCMC proxy shopping mess leaves residents high and dry
Wow. I'm glad we still have some food at our place, but this news is becoming scary. Our current food is not going to last us forever.