A question
Aug. 13th, 2009 04:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mary_j_59I've noticed that some of my posts get no response at all, while others get lots of comments. To give two examples, NOBODY responded to my post about Green Knowe. And those books are, in my opinion, really beautiful - possibly among the best fantasies ever written, and I'd be happy to talk about them. No one responded to the clip of Michelle Paver and the wolves. And that, too, is a very well-written series, in which the teen protagonists grow in believable ways. I had one response to the news that Megan Whalen Turner's fourth Attolia book is actually coming out. Then I put up a post about how unhappy I am with Harry Potter these days, and suddenly there's an intense discussion about Snape and his character going on. Okay, it's true, I love Snape. But at this point, two years after the last book, no one's mind is going to be changed about him. At least, I don't think so.
Is it the case that people visit here only for my posts on Snape? Just wondering.
Is it the case that people visit here only for my posts on Snape? Just wondering.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-13 08:53 pm (UTC)My comments on just about all posts on my flist are pretty much dependent on how busy I am, as well as how familiar I am with what the poster is discussing. Sometimes, I can miss out on stuff I'm interested in simply due to not having the time to make a decent post.
As regards the examples you mentioned, I haven't heard of Attolia or Green Knowe - so I didn't comment.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 02:55 am (UTC)Also - I hope a LOT of people will have heard of Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, Megan Whalen Turner's Attolia stories, and L.M. Boston's Green Knowe books in the near future. Apparently they are making a film of Wolf Brother (the first book in Paver's series of six) and a film of the second Green Knowe book has been completed and will be shown in the U.K. before the year is out.
There cannot be too many readers of truly good books!
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Date: 2009-08-13 10:30 pm (UTC)As for Snape, I suppose I could discuss him from now to eternity without getting bored :-)
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Date: 2009-08-14 02:59 am (UTC)But I am very glad you're still looking in from time to time. (That, btw, is the name of the upcoming Green Knowe film. A terrible title, but it's got a great cast and Diana Boston, who showed us round Green Knowe, said she loved it. )
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Date: 2009-08-14 12:03 am (UTC)I will admit that Rickman's "shuuush" to Dan during the Tower scene re-ignited my dying interest in all things Snape.
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Date: 2009-08-14 03:01 am (UTC)But I do look in on your blog, several times a week, and I'm glad you're still with me.
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Date: 2009-08-14 02:02 am (UTC)There are, of course, some entries that draw few comments, or even none at all, for no apparent reason. I try not to think about it, because there are so many things that can influence it: how busy my flisters are, time of posting, whether it was a heavy posting day or a light one (on a light day, your entry might spend more time on somebody's flist), whether I'm posting about something obscure or demanding... and the list goes on. Sometimes people aren't sure of how to respond. Sometimes they don't have the time or emotional energy. Sometimes they feel like they have nothing to contribute.
But as for the posts you reference, I'm afraid I'll have to echo the others and admit that I haven't read the books in question, so I would have had nothing intelligent to say on the subject!
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Date: 2009-08-14 03:07 am (UTC)But, except for the "Attolia" series, which IMHO should have been published as adult, these are kids' books, and short and pleasant to read. Megan Whalen Turner ( Attolia) is no stylist, but excels at complex, character-driven plots. Michelle Paver is doing a fine job of presenting (1) a culture that is truly alien to most of her readers, (2) a conflict between good and evil (3) a coming-of-age story, and (4) believable psychology and characterizations. L.M. Boston is just a gorgeous writer, in every way. Her books are typically marketed younger than the others, but don't let that fool you. Good writing is good writing, and it is ageless.
Hope your dad's doing better, btw.
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Date: 2009-08-14 03:22 am (UTC)ME! ME!
I guess I comment on things that I know, and things that I have and opinion on. Plus there's that whole thing where I see you in person quiet often anyway...
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Date: 2009-08-14 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 03:23 am (UTC)Anyway - I'm going to do a follow-up, multimedia post about the books I mentioned.
See you! and keep up the good work; I can see you are heavily invested in Arthur, etc, right now.
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Date: 2009-08-14 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 01:37 pm (UTC)I never seem to get tired of folks like Palin. She reminds me of a "popular" girl in school that somehow you can see right through to their core. And you don't understand why all of your peers don't have the same perception
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Date: 2009-08-14 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 08:31 pm (UTC)I find that most of my post don't receive any comments. I don't even know if anyone reads them. I don't know how long I'll even keep logging on to this site, but everytime I do I read the post on my friend's pages, but that is just about all I do.
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Date: 2009-08-15 03:32 am (UTC)BTW, I'm doing a brief follow-up post so people can see what on earth I'm talking about. It's true you and I have different tastes in literature - I love good fantasy for children, and have since I was a child. But, if there is one thing I'd like you to understand, it's that the Potter books are not good fantasy. Not good children's fantasy - not any kind of good fantasy. It would be a shame to be turned off of an entire branch of literature just because of these books.
The Attolia books aren't fantasy, anyway. They could be seen as alternate history/political intrigue, set in a country very like Renaissance Greece. As for Paver, take a look at this link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30965518/ns/today-today_books/
It's the first few pages of Wolf Brother, and if any reader, after reading them, didn't feel for this kid and want to know what would happen to him, I'd be really surprised.
Wolf Brother
Date: 2009-08-23 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-15 03:40 pm (UTC)But I don't think that you need worry about people not reading your LJ. I loved your Star Trek essays, and they seemed to get a lot of interesting comments - so I don't think that people only come here for Snape!
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Date: 2009-08-18 02:42 am (UTC)What brought this on, actually, was partly the lack of response to the Green Knowe post, and partly a response by a livejournaller called neonorne to my latest on the Potterverse. Her response convinced me that the Snape-haters (and I would call her one, though she demurs) can simply never be convinced that he is a hero. So why keep trying? I've pretty much decided not to.
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Date: 2009-08-18 05:32 pm (UTC)By the way, I loved the excerpt from the 'Green Knowe' TV series that you posted! It was very atmospheric - the train journey in particular reminded me of travelling over the flooded Fens in winter, and I think the last 'corridor' train I was ever in was between Peterborough and Cambridge. I found another small sequence, of St Christopher walking - I do wish I'd seen the series! The BBC used to do that sort of thing very well.
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Date: 2009-08-18 02:46 am (UTC)But my other purpose in posting was to introduce my friends to some truly excellent books. In my more recent post, I've got some links - it would take ten minutes to explore them, when you have the time. Then you can see what I'm talking about. I have a feeling, based on what you say of your literary tastes, that you might not be a Green Knowe fan, but the other two series just might appeal to you. YOu never know-
The Broken World
Date: 2009-08-23 01:54 am (UTC)Most readers of fantasy, I imagine, have spent some time in Little Whinging. Many of us were raised there, though our [surrogate] parents may not have literally locked us in a cupboard to try to compel us to develop more normal interests than thinking about magic, and Dudley Dursley may have hunted us only on the school playground, not in our own homes.
Even so, I suspect that many of us read the first book much as I did: as a standard, rather shallow but verbally clever fantasy, in which a child is released from the mundane world into one more colorful, more accepting of difference, more adventurous…. I originally saw the WW as a utopia, in fact, albeit a somewhat naïve and petty one, menaced by the standard monster which our boy hero must defeat.
To have this colorful escape turn into a fascist dystopia, more conformist and prejudiced than Aunt Petunia at her worst, in which children are taught to torture their enemies and mind-rape their inferiors, including their parents—and that’s the good side!?
Well, it was a shock.
(As you said, if Jo was deliberately trying to make readers turn against fantasy worlds, it was cleverly done of her. In a way, perhaps the best fantasy comparison is LeGuin’s The Beginning Place, in which two children/young adults find that the other world to which they’re escaping is a worse trap with more terrifying dangers than the mundane world of domestic violence, emotional abuse and neglect, rape, and suburban meaninglessness they’re trying to escape.
But in LeGuin’s book, facing the dangers in the otherworld gives the children the courage and skills to choose to construct their lives in this one.)
And the shock Jo gave me is not a shock L.M. Boston ever gave me. Or L’Engle, or LeGuin, or McKillip, or Tolkien.
Those of us who had found anything to love in Jo’s world, be it a character or parts of the world itself, are left in the position of Potok’s characters—it’s up to us to struggle with the broken world she gave us, to try to make it whole.
By analyzing what’s wrong with it; by writing fanfic bringing about the reconciliations she misses (the fic that got me addicted to fanfic in general, just after DH, was Branwyn’s “One More Such Victory,” in which Harry uses the Resurrection Stone one last time—to talk to Snape), by defending—heatedly—the characters who were misprized or misrepresented by the JKR or by other writers and posters.
There’s a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” We readers feel, generally, that Earthsea ain’t broke; Middle Earth ain’t broke; Green Knowe ain’t broke. We can (mostly) entrust them to the original authors; we might have wistful or dramatic fantasies of visiting, but that’s for our benefit, not the world’s.
(Note that LeGuin did eventually decide that Earthsea was broken, and worked to fix it herself; a lot of the gender stereotypes and deeper understanding of magic and death were turned over by the books published since the original trilogy. And my teenage Mary Sue LOTR fantasies—quite properly never written—were powered partly by a desire to prove that a Wizard or person of power need not be male.)
In contrast, the Potterverse, or some of its inhabitants, we want to rescue from its inventor.
If it IS broke, fix it, seems to be the imperative.
And all of us have, properly, different opinions on how the Potterverse is broke.
Re: The Broken World
Date: 2009-08-25 06:11 am (UTC)Are you familiar with Pratchett's talk entitled Why Gandalf Never Married? (He gave the talk in 1985 when he was working on Equal Rites. Of course he went on to write witches that were more sympathetic and more *helpful* than his wizards. Then again, in his last few books Ridcully and some of the other wizards have become somewhat useful.)
And I totally agree with you that what keeps me in some parts of HP-fandom is the need to figure out where exactly things got broken (in wizarding culture and politics in general, Dumbledore's convoluted plans, the workings of Hogwarts, as well as the paths some of the supposed good guys have taken) and what can possibly be done about this broken world.
Качественный блог
Date: 2012-02-02 05:17 pm (UTC)