Continuing with the Harry Potter re-read.

Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

• Before reading thoughts
  • I know this is where Harry grows up a bit and the series takes a dark turn. It also gets some heft, doubling up from the first three 300-400 pagers. But man do I not remember a specific thing about this book. There’s some kind of big Quidditch thing at the beginning and then the Triwizard tournament punctuates the school year. Somehow Harry is in the tournament even though there’s an age limit, I guess because he’s Harry Freaking Potter. But I don’t know who wins the tournament or anything in the resolution. Are we finally rid of the Dursleys in this one?
• Book review on Goodreads
  • My big takeaway from the first reading of this series was that Rowling got in over her head with the last four books, taking on way more plot complexity and drama than she was really ready to handle at that stage of her career. But on the re-read I’m not feeling that as strongly—she has her shortcomings but mostly she’s so damn good at characters and pacing, and carefully builds out the wizarding world so well that it’s not a mystery why these books have been so endearing.
• Film reaction:
  • Maybe the first movie I didn’t really like. Perhaps because this is the first of the “long” books. Even the short books had to be hacked to bits to fit into even a long movie, but now it’s outright butchery. Why even bother trying to cram this into one movie? Every ounce of subtlety is gone, it’s just brief emotional flourishes and action sequences, i.e., a regular big-budget movie. As long as this movie is, it still feels like a trailer for a longer, better movie. This is the first time I thought that perhaps someone who hadn’t read the book might not even understand what is even going on. They only vaguely hint about the ongoing investigations and weird happenings in the magical world, the strange incidents at the end of the World Cup are very sloppily handled. (I’d love to watch a future movie before I read the book just to see if I could actually follow it, but I don’t think I’m willing to trade that for the book-first experience. Someone who likes movies more than me should do this and report back, please.) One of the major book themes is how the pressure of fame and destiny are weighing on Harry, and they just barely touch this. Ron is just pissy one day and we don’t really know why. They do a pretty good job with the whole dance sequence, but probably teenage love tribulations are notoriously relatable and un-subtle, and therefore entirely film friendly. (An aside: I have a particular aggravation towards movie dialogue that starts with “Welcome to…” It seems so self-conscious, like they’re thinking about how to make the movie trailer friendly, while also providing a quick way to establish what the hell is happening in a given scene. It’s such a movie thing. And this film might set the record. Welcome to Hogwarts. Welcome to the Triwizard tournament. Welcome to the first task. Stop bloody welcoming me!) Anyway as this was the first long book, and they had a new director on board, I can cut them some slack. Maybe they’ll do a bit better with the next ones. But I’d say my odds of watching all the movies has dipped below 50%.

Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

• Before reading thoughts
  • As with Book 4, disturbingly little remains in my brain from Book 5. This is also true of Book 6 and 7. Maybe because I never read any of them more than once and only saw the fourth movie (once). When you read something that long that fast, it’s not unlike cramming for an exam. Everything’s loaded up in the RAM but nothing goes into long-term storage. All I got is that this was “the angsty one.” A lot of general unpleasantness with Harry’s attitude and Umbridge’s crushing presence, but no plot details at all.
• Book review on Goodreads
  • When I got on Goodreads I retroactively rated all of these, with Book 5 getting tagged with just a 3/5, lowest of the series, purely on its feel of constant despair. Re-reading mostly just validated that, BUT I came around on the rating and bumped it up a star. Nothing this long that keeps the pages turning probably deserves a middling rating. It’s still a problem that Rowling’s writing suffers the most when things get dramatic, and with a lot of drama in OOTP there’s a lot of poor writing, but there’s enough done right to overcome it.
• Film reaction:
  • If Goblet of Fire was the first movie I didn’t really like, this was the first movie I thought was outright bad. The unavoidable plot butchery continues, and it felt even more charmless and confusing. I found myself longing for the Prisoners of Azkaban’s willingness to add little touches that weren’t even in the book. As usual the visual and performances are great, although where did the soundtrack go? The first few movies have a great score and now it’s an afterthought. Basically, if I were tasked to be a film critic, despite my general disinterest in modern movies, this would be my usual template review. Looks great, story is boring. There’s a new director and screenwriter for this one, maybe that’s to blame. But mostly I’d guess they don’t have a lot of creative freedom with something like this. Work through the plot points as efficiently as possible so we can all get rich. Make it look good so people can post screengrabs of it when they review the book for the rest of eternity. Criticism doesn’t really enter into it. Anyway, the odds of me watching the remaining three movies are really not that good. OOTP just seemed like an inferior rehash directly after reading the book, and more of a chore than anything. It’d make more sense maybe to watch them years later if I wanted to revisit HP but was busy reading other things. I can’t really even say the last couple of movies helped solidify HP details in my brain, which was kinda the whole point of watching them in addition to reading. They’re in such a rush that it’s just a different form of cramming.

Not sure if I’ll need to do another post for Books 6-7. I’m definitely reading them (have just started Half-Blood Prince, at this writing) and will write something up on Goodreads, but the movie watching is absolutely in doubt. Plus I remember so little about those books it’s probably not even worth noting what the “before reading” thoughts are. I can do them now, in fact: I don’t remember anything. Horcruxes are a thing (and that’s as specific as I can get), and (spoiler) Snape kills Dumbledore.

Sometime last decade I embarked on a project to read all Hugo Award-winning novels. I thought I would get done around 2011. I was only off by eight years.

Not that it’s an especially long list—about 70, depending on how you count them—but I certainly wasn’t reading only off the list until completion. I sprinkled them into the regular flow. Only sometimes the flow wouldn’t drift back to the list for months at a time. I’d vaguely acknowledge that I’d read most of them and as I’m only in my early 40s I still (probably) have plenty of time to finish before I die. So progress was slow and intermittent until finally in the last few months I made the final push to pick off the last few.

What’s on the list?

• Mega list of Hugo winners (generously copied from Wikipedia) with my Goodreads ratings and tiers
• Goodreads Hugo winners bookshelf

In the end I thought it was useful to assign the ones I’ve read to tiers:

1. Classics – everyone (not just SF people) should read.
2. Important/Zeitgeisty books – ones SF readers should know; these would fit into an SF class curriculum.
3. Great SF books – solid recommendations.
4. Fine for SF fans but not vital.
5. Skip it – doesn’t mean it’s bad (but they might be), just not that important to the genre. Take ’em or leave ’em.

So: Are you finally done?

Not quite. But close enough to draw some final conclusions. At the moment I’m in the middle of Fritz Leiber’s The Wanderer, and after that, I’ll have just two to go: John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. I’ll take care of both over the next few months.

I’ve only read a fraction of all the total nominees. If I really wanted this project to count, I’m not even close to done.

But you’ve officially read every other Hugo winner?

Well, uh, no.

TLDR answer: I gave them all a fair shot but this was supposed to be an enjoyable project, and it turned out that sometimes it wasn’t, so I made peace with not being a completist.

Specifically, I didn’t finish (or sometimes even start) these:

• Downbelow Station, CJ Cherryh, 1982
• Startide Rising, David Brin, 1984
• The Uplift War, David Brin, 1988
• Cyteen, CJ Cherryh, 1989
• Mirror Dance, Lois McMaster Bujold, 1995
• Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson, 1997
• Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold, 2004

Somewhere along the way I accepted that I wasn’t going to truly read every single Hugo winner. Some just aren’t that good. Or maybe they are objectively good, but they just aren’t my thing. Lois McMaster Bujold’s books played some part in that. She’s won four Hugos, and I read two, plus another in the same series, and found them consistently mediocre. I still faced two more, one a part of a totally different series, meaning I probably had to commit to other series books too, and….I just didn’t wanna.

Brin’s and Robinson’s books both have the problems that they are parts of series, and the series aren’t that great. I started and bailed on Startide Rising, which was disappointing; I actually quite liked the first book in the Uplift series (Sundiver, not a Hugo winner). But Startide Rising was terrible and it was a pure slog to make it even as far as I did. I had no interest in finishing it, so I definitely didn’t want to read another book in the series on top of that. Blue Mars is the most likely one from this list that I’ll eventually read, but similarly, I’d have to overcome predecessors I didn’t like first. Red Mars was the first in the series, and pretty good, but I got completely bogged down in the sequel, Green Mars. I’d have to re-read them both to get back to Blue. Maybe in the unlikely event I can retire at 50 and suddenly find myself with an abundance of free time.

The Cherryh books are hugely long complex books about fictional politics, which for me means they are hugely long complex books I won’t read. I obeyed the “read 100 minus my age” pages rule and dutifully returned them to the library unfinished.

(Also worth mentioning that there are three Retro Hugo winners I haven’t read but I don’t feel like they are required.)

Ann Leckie’s book came out since you started the project so it’s understandable that it’s still on the shelf. Which means Stand on Zanzibar will be your last classic winner standing. Why that one?

Mostly it gets the honor because I think it occupied a medium-hanging-fruit niche that made it seem neither especially vital nor bad. Also it’s long, and I don’t know anything about John Brunner. Ironically I happened across a used copy of it years ago so it’s been sitting on a shelf behind me, unread, for probably at least a decade. It sounds good, and has a good reputation, so I haven’t been specifically avoiding it. But it kept getting skipped because I didn’t know that I wanted to wade into its 650 pages just yet. I’d either go for lower-hanging fruit of shorter books by known authors, or try to knock off one of the oddball ’70s winners with mixed reviews, or embarrassing ’50s schlock first. At some point Brunner’s was the last one with a strong reputation left in the pile, so I saved it for the end.

Was this a worthwhile project? Do you think SF fans should read all the Hugo winners?

Nah. Some of them really just aren’t that great. I gave them an average rating of 3.7 out of 5 on Goodreads, compared to my overall average of 3.9. Maybe that should be expected. I generally pick books I’ll probably like and the hit rate is bound to be better than any curated list, where I will sometimes have a different opinion. Especially since some of the entries on that list are known to have been poor choices. So here’s the part where I wonder if this was even worth it. By comparison I’ve read 15 of the Modern Library Top 100 with an average rating of 4.3. Not much data but probably enough to conclude I should have spent the last ten years reading those instead. If I had unlimited time I could read through a bunch of lists and gather similar data. That would be really interesting if I was going to be alive for 1000 years. I’ll probably have to settle for incomplete data.

Anyway no list is definitive and I already did the Hugos so I may as well wrap this up. I picked the Hugos fairly arbitrarily over the Nebulas, and I can think of at least three other SF awards. Based on the results here though I’m probably not going to bother with the other lists. Like any yearly award, the Hugos probably capture some zeitgeist, but (especially in retrospect) many years they didn’t pick the best book, and some years there were several good books and only one could win. Years are arbitrary end points.

Final conclusions, especially for readers who’ve skipped to the end of this rambling write-up?

1. Working through lists of books (or movies, albums, restaurants) is fun, but don’t be a slave to them. I’m glad I read most of these but some of the best decisions I made were the omissions.
2. Yearly lists that try to capture the most important thing that happened without the benefit of historical hindsight probably miss at least as often as they hit.
3. It was worth it, but in the end, not as informative as maybe I’d hoped. I read authors I might have otherwise missed, but I’m still lacking in some important SF work. And I definitely should have skipped some of the predictably mediocre Hugo winners in favor of, say, Pulitzer winners.

Recently started a Harry Potter series re-read. I’ve only ever read them one time and saw only the first few movies. I liked the series fine but never got super obsessive. I mean, who would waste that much time on any fictional series. When it was new I was a bit older than the target demographic and wasn’t even aware of it until somewhere around the fourth movie, only then going back and catching up on the books. From there I read the remaining books as they came out, but never bothered watching any more of the movies. Generally I am much more of a reader than a movie watcher. So my thing with movies based on books is that I think, “I don’t want to see the movie until I’ve read the book.” Eventually I read the book. Then I’m like, “Well now why would I bother with the movie?”

Anyway as it is now 2018 in my spacetime reality, it’s been 10-15 years since I’ve read any of the books. And I had forgotten basically everything. Like I could tell you it had something to do with magic, and there was someone named Ron, but it got awful fuzzy beyond that. I remembered the four magical houses. Someone was named Sirius Black, and he was either a murderer or Harry’s uncle or secretly Voldemort, or maybe all three, unless I was thinking of someone else. I play a fair amount of Sporcle and naturally it has about a billion HP quizzes. One of the most played ones on the site is to name the Top 200 HP characters by appearances. I don’t know that I could have named more than ten.

What I’m saying is memory is a funny thing. I remember countless random moments and facts from being alive for 40+ years but somehow not more than a few shreds from a few thousand concentrated pages of reading. Actually maybe that’s a little unfair. Names and plot details were lost, but a lot of the generalities were not. I had rated them all on Goodreads and could sorta remember my justifications for each. I suppose the lack of clarity about these books comes down to what makes memory work or not—keeping it fresh and relevant, building neural connections, applying learned information so it becomes knowledge. I didn’t do any of that with HP. I read it once, and moved on. Though I liked it I didn’t feel the need to re-read, to watch all the movies, to make it into part of my existence. (Though I did go to a Halloween party as Draco Malfoy once, a choice made because I have blond-ish hair and damn if it didn’t look good slicked back. Plus I found a cheap green tie.)

Anyway so it set up something interesting, both in terms of getting to re-live a famous literary series and as a memory experiment. My wife also read them all just once, on a similar timeline, so as I have made it a few books deep into the series, her current brain is the equivalent to my past brain. I can ask her what she remembers about, say, Peter Pettigrew as though I am accessing what I knew a month ago before I started this project. I don’t have to trust my faulty memory, which has since been overwritten by the experience of re-reading.

In addition to the re-reading I decided I might also try to watch all the movies, though I do not guarantee I will complete that part, because, as discussed, I tend to lose interest in the movies once I’ve read the books. To date I’ve re-read the first three books and watched the first three movies:

Book 1: Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone

• Before reading thoughts
  • Very little memory of the story. I didn’t remember what the deal was with the stone at all or how (or even if) Harry ended up facing Voldemort again, but I thought it had done a masterful job introducing the Potterverse. No one had thought about a sorting hat or every flavor jellybeans before. Now everyone has taken multiple online house sorting quizzes and no one fully trusts jellybeans anymore. Admittedly the larger ideas weren’t especially new: wizards, dragons, magic schools, the hero with a thousand faces. But she still had a unique vision for her world that was established here.
• Book reaction on Goodreads
  • I guess in the end I was surprised to not be surprised. Most of the events felt familiar, even if I didn’t remember precise details. Maybe the biggest takeaway was a newfound appreciation for Rowling’s writing. I had been carrying around a bit of smarmy attitude towards her as something of a simplistic narrative writer, and maybe that’s true, but damn she can hook you in. “Another adverb!” I’d gasp exasperatingly, and then realize I’d lost another hour to the book.
• Film reaction
  • Less confident than the first book, and very, very careful not to change anything. So kind of a pointless watch, really. A classic “the book was better” kind of translation where they just kind of blast through the plot points without any depth, because that’s what these kinds of movies do. Like, the miraculous last-minute Gryffindor house cup win wasn’t developed well at all and felt like a total fix. You don’t even save that much time versus a relatively short book. I did enjoy Robbie Coltrane’s delightful Hagrid and Alan Rickman’s simmering Snape. They take such ownership of the roles I can’t read the books without picturing them. The kids are so young though there’s not much in the way of performance there.

Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

• Before reading thoughts
  • I had perhaps that poorest memory of this story, mostly just recalling a disappointing ending. I didn’t even know why it was going to be disappointing. I had no idea what else was from this particular book. Was this the one with Dobby? What’s his deal again? I’d rated it four stars out of five I think because it was still a good, snappy story, but lacking the breakthroughs of the first book.
• Book reaction on Goodreads
  • Yes it’s the one with Dobby but oh yeah that’s his deal. There are lots of things like this actually: it’s the one with Moaning Myrtle, with the polyjuice potion where Harry and Ron infiltrate the Slytherin rooms as Crabbe and Goyle, with Tom Riddle. I definitely underrated the book as a whole even if the ending is rather weak. Four stars still felt right.
• Film reaction
  • More confident but that’s a mixed blessing. Way more polished in look and feel, which is good, but much more willing to take liberties with the story. Not only another classic “the book was better” but doubling down on movie-friendly parts like Quidditch, expanding any opportunity for effects and action, while shoehorning in substantive tracts of narrative through forced dialogue. Maybe you can’t win with a series this popular, where not only such a high percentage of viewers will have read the book, but will have strong opinions about it. If you make it different they’re mad, if you make it the same it’s a waste of time.

Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

• Before reading thoughts
  • I remembered this one being my favorite. But again, wasn’t sure about a lot of details. Just knew it had a really clever ending, something to do with time shifting. And it was the one with Sirius Black. Whoever that was.
• Book reaction on Goodreads
  • I wasn’t disappointed. If anything it was better than I remember: a much more complete book that does everything a good sequel should. And now I remember what’s up with Black and several other major series characters. I think from here out is where I really won’t know what to expect from the books.
• Film reaction
  • This one has a change of directors and with it, a more unique look. A bit more dark and dingy, but a livelier style. And as the most visually ambitious, it’s also the most willing to cheat on the story details. Some of the artistic touches are great, like the whomping willow changing each season. But it also crams even more plot into quick dialogue exchanges before setting up the next action sequence. The ending also feels a bit clunky and underdeveloped compared to the super tight version in the book. I mean, it’s fine, but still doesn’t sell me on it being necessary to watch the movies at all.

So I’ll definitely move on with the books (I’m about halfway through Goblet of Fire now) but not promising I’ll keep up with the movies. Overall they’ve felt a little silly to watch so recently after the books. What you should really do is watch each movie right before starting the following book as a kind of “PREVIOUSLY…ON HARRY POTTER” prep.

To be continued.

Review of Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer

Ada Palmer knows a lot more than me about language, history, and philosophy, and she interweaves them all into some seriously skillful social/political sci fi. She’s created a fully-realized future society that seems inevitable, yet fantastically different. It’s complex and ambitious. Most novels are doing well if they tell some truth about one or two social concepts–Palmer is after them all. Just a sample: Binary gender constructs on the 21st century are largely a historical relic (but just as incomplete and rife with unfair norms and taboos). Numerous cultures live together and everyone speaks a mishmash of languages. Religion is carefully regulated. And people aren’t loyal to the arbitrary geography of their birthplace (easy when you have rapid worldwide travel), but to a global “Hive” of similar philosophies.

While this is all incredibly intricate and well-done, and is legitimately comparable to Dune in scope, it doesn’t always make for breezy reading. I struggled to follow some parts or keep track of the heaps of characters with names that are as fantastic as they are difficult to remember. It’s not just unusual spellings or widely diverse language origins (but it is that)—their names, Hives, and relationships tell you something about their motives, and you may not understand how as you’re reading, but have to wait for an explanation to come later. They frequently appear on the scene in an instant, with no clue as to who they are or what they represent, only to evolve into major figures as they are discussed by other newly-introduced characters in later chapters. The thread of plot itself is a bit thin and somewhat baffling at times, Palmer rarely gives in and explains what’s happening, preferring to gradually introduce context and mete out revealing nuggets over its entire length. Much of the novel proceeds as carefully nuanced philosophical or political conversations to fill in societal details or historical backstory, which may effectively build on her world but doesn’t always keep things moving. It doesn’t help that this is a planned Part 1 of 2, and more focused on establishment than resolution.

While at times I thought I might not even finish Book 1, in the end I’m looking forward to Book 2. Especially since I feel like I’ve done the hard work of catching up with Palmer’s world, and some potential payoff is still ahead.

Also I dug this passage about the trope of the mad genius:

Heartless reality does not grant humans the lifespan necessary to master every specialty of science, so no one genius in his secret lab can really bring robots, mutants, and clones into the world at his mad whim–it takes a team, masses of funds, and decades. But one man can love all sciences, even if he cannot wield them, and he can inspire children with the model of the mad genius, even if he cannot live it.

Cross-posted from Goodreads

New review up for Eclipse: The Celestial Phenomenon That Changed the Course of History by Duncan Steele.

Also Goodreads gave me this suggestion:

I can’t tell if the relationship between these two things is hilariously buggy or inspired.