Annoying Book Trends

So I've been trying to find ways to take the content of this blog beyond what you could find cruising Amazon reviews. I still haven't figured it out, but I did come up with an idea for tonight's post: Annoying Book Trends!

1. Title format: The [quirky profession's] [female relative]. You know what I speak of. "The Alchemist's Daughter." "The Mandolin-maker's wife". This is one of those trends where one book with a similar title broke through and everyone rushed to do it. It's particularly awful when you can tell that the book does not, in fact, concern the daughter of an alchemist. And the fact that it invariably concerns a female relative reeks of that "herstory" crap...clearly, the alchemist or mandolin-maker is the interesting one, and it makes me think that it will be primarily about the tribulations of keeping the wood shavings out of the casseroles and explaining the mysterious explosions to the neighbors. I think it's time for this trend to die.

2. The Girl who was Too Spunky For Her Time. It's hard for modern women to imagine an era in which they had almost no freedom. When it was a commonly held belief that encouraging a woman to learn things would interfere with her ability to have babies, when an unmarried 19-year-old was an old maid, when people went around saying things like "women belong in the kitchen" in a non-ironic way and didn't get smacked for them. It's hard for modern women to imagine, but if you're writing historical fiction, you need to try.

Yes, throughout history, there were women who were Too Spunky For Their Time, but the fact that the repressive system remained in place for so long seems to indicate that they were generally in the minority. Why were most women OK with their lack of spunk? What made so many women agree to marry at an early age, turn from their books once they could read well enough to get by in their society, and generally conform? Maybe the happy housewives of earlier eras are harder for us to relate to, but who says that everything in historical fiction needs to speak to our modern world?

3. Cardboard boyfriends. Chick-lit books are notorious for this. Even though the focus is supposed to be primarily on the girl, would it kill writers to give their male characters the tiniest bit of depth? Usually, all we know about them is their profession and their penchant for doing thoughtful things (if they're good guys) or being thoughtless (if they're the douchebag obstacle character). Give him a hobby or something!

4. Memoirs by boring people. The memoir genre is hard to do well. The cold, hard truth is that not everyone's life is interesting. Other people have interesting lives and can't portray them well. Some have something very mildly interesting about them but flog it way too hard. Since the explosion of the genre about 15 years ago, they've definitely varied in quality.

5. Formulaic fantasy. Shouldn't that be a contradiction in terms? Sadly, it's not. I took a beating on here a few years ago for my post on The Alchemyst, but it's pretty typical of a formulaic fantasy novel. Person or persons receive a strange visitor. Strange visitor reveals magic ability/chosen one status. Person embarks on a quest to either find a lost object or destroy a dangerous object. Fate of world hangs in balance. Quirky companion goes along. Plot culminates in an archetypcial struggle between good and evil. Good wins.

When it's good, like in the Harry Potter series, it can be good. There were enough side roads and distractions in that to prevent it from seeming like the same old plot. When it's bad, like in "The Alchemyst," it's dreadful. When it's not like that at all but forced into that model for a movie, as in "The Golden Compass" film, it deserves a prison sentence. George RR Martin gets high marks from me for breaking out of this mold. Wish more people would.

So tell me: what do you all dislike in books? What device, trend, or character archetype would you like to place a 1000-year ban on?

HP7

I think I've talked on here before about how much I generally hate the Harry Potter movies, even though I love the books, even though I went to midnight release parties for the last three books (I got interested in the series the summer Goblet of Fire came out). Most of them have been pretty terrible. Although the casting has been terrific, they cut out all the wrong things. I knew we weren't going to get along from the first movie, when they eliminated Hermione's hero scene, where she solved Snape's logic puzzle.

I hated how in the third movie, he figured out the Patronus spell right away. It took him most of the term in the book, it's like an eighth grader trying to calculus, and it took away from the psychological journey of it all, because that was the book where he had to confront what happened to his parents and decide how it would affect the rest of his life.

In the fifth movie...I don't really remember the fifth movie.

In the sixth movie, they actually cut out the fight scene back at the castle following Dumbledore's death. They had Bellatrix smashing shit in the Great Hall, which is totally out of character. Bellatrix is a sadist and a suck-up, and I always thought she was a bit in love with Voldemort. She's not the type to just break stuff out of spite. They didn't show enough backstory about Voldemort, and they cut one of the scariest scenes in the books, where Dumbledore drinks the potion and trips out and starts pleading with some unseen attacker and asking him, or Harry, to kill him.

But they finally got it right in the first part of HP7. They staged some stuff that just happens in summary dialogue, probably most notably the scene at the beginning when Hermione modifies her parents' memory for their own protection, editing herself out. The Death Eater's meeting is scarier onscreen than it is in the book. All of their interiors were terrific: the Burrow, Malfoy Manor, Bathilda Bagshot's home, the Lovegoods' house. Because there's so much travel in this one, they get some great exterior shots too.

I absolutely loved this movie, in fact, the more I think about it. Sure, there were some things I would have liked to have seen that weren't there, but overall, they made excellent choices about what to film and what to cut. The characters were more true to the books: Fred and George were funnier, Hermione seemed smarter and nicer, Ron was much more lovable. I actually think I'm going to see it again, and I've never done that for any other Harry Potter.

The Seventh and Final Installment in the Epic Saga of Harry Potter

First off, let me state to my loyal readers: if you have not yet completed the book, and don't want to see any spoilers, please stop reading now. Otherwise, scroll down.































OK. I hope I've gotten it far enough down so that those who don't want to see any spoilers have been able to opt out. I received my copy from Barnes and Noble at 1:15 AM, and finished reading around 6:15 this evening. I really do believe this was the best installment in the series, and brought it to the perfect conclusion.

For nearly two years now, I've been bragging to anyone who would listen that I knew the whereabouts of one of the Horcruxes Harry was looking for. I was pleased to see that I was right: the locket had been stolen by Sirius's brother, Regulus A. Black, and was kicking around Grimmauld Place (the Order encounters it at the beginning of the 5th book, when they are cleaning the house.) It, in turn was stolen by Mundungus Fletcher, who used it as a bribe for...well, it's not that important. The point is that I was right. I am very clever!

Or maybe not. I was one of the very few in the anti-Snape camp. I thought he was just being himself when he killed Dumbledore. The truth is that "himself" was sadder than I'd ever imagined. The pro-Snape crowd was right about him. A sad and lonesome life he led, and the full story will cause readers to view his actions in previous volumes much differently.

Other than the location of the Horcrux, I really didn't know what was going to happen in this book. I couldn't even speculate. While I couldn't see it ending with Voldemort triumphing, I knew from previous installments that Rowling would not flinch from killing Harry if she felt that was the way the series needed to end. My one prediction was that this volume would have an extremely high body count, and it did. I count nine deaths on the Order side alone. As any reviewer will tell you, or any mildly observant reader will know, the books get progressively darker, and it's all been leading up to this, to war. Right from the beginning, it's clear that playtime is over and that the Death Eaters are prepared to be more aggressive than at any point in their shameful history. Harry suffers a loss right away, and a terrible loss for the Order follows quickly on its heels.

One strength of this series is that it presents Harry, and the other heroes, as human. They fight. They demonstrate remarkably bad judgment on many, many occasions. Sometimes, they act selfishly and thoughtlessly. One hero, however, had always seemed to be above it all. Albus Dumbledore was a mix of the ideal teacher, the ideal parent, and even a bit of God himself thrown in there. He was wise, kind, and powerful, an asset to anyone on his side and a threat to anyone who wasn't, not just in terms of strength but in terms of morality. Dumbledore seemed to be an ideal to which the rest of us could only hope to aspire, yet in this book, it's revealed that he was not so perfect after all. He, too, had selfishness and pride in his past that led to the death of an innocent.

Good fantasy needs to be about more than the artificial world in which it exists. To me, the take-home message of this series is the power of love, all kinds of love. All kinds are demonstrated in this book. There's the love that exists between friends. There's the love that comes from a warm and loving family. The slavish, hero-worship love for one who's saved you from a terrible fate, that would cause you to lay down your life for that person. The kind of ill-advised, ill-conceived, wildly romantic love that, on occasion, ends up working out despite all odds. The love that you develop for one you respect and admire. Even the unrequited, desperate love that you're alone with in the dark can be a powerful and remarkable force. Given the situation in my personal life right now, which is still very much on my mind and which has another half which I haven't posted about here, it was a message that helped me a lot and made me feel better.

I think that most Harry Potter fans will be satisfied with the conclusion to which his saga has come. I suspect that I'm not alone among fans, however, in saying that I'll miss all this. I can't think of anything else in pop culture that has really generated this same type of excitement, at least not in my lifetime. Everyone from kids who barely outweigh the heftier installments of the series, to stuffy-looking stockbrokers, to grandparents, have gotten in on it. I will miss the excitement and the anticipation, but I loved the journey. I sincerely hope that we have not heard the last from JK Rowling.

The End Is Nigh!

The End of Harry Potter, that is. And theories abound as to what Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will contain, and how JK Rowling will end the series. Hell, in my own family, there's even debate over whether the title contains an adjective or just a proper noun (I say proper noun, that the Deathly Hallows is a place, just like the Whomping Willow or Shrieking Shack. My sister thinks it's an adjective and says that titles aren't supposed to have them. I don't know why.)

Someone has even collected all of his theories and written a book. Damn, I wish I'd thought of that idea. I'd be out drinking now and sleeping in tomorrow if so. This guy's a famous writer, though, so perhaps he had a leg up. His name is David Langford, and his book is called The End of Harry Potter?. If you want to read a real review of it, I recommend GrrlScientist's. Anything she writes is usually pretty good, but since she's read the book and I haven't, it's definitely best to check with her here.

As I said in her comments, I'm a bit conflicted over whether or not to buy it. I looked at it tonight and I really, really want to read it. But I know that once I read it, I won't want it anymore. Once the 7th book comes out, I REALLY won't want it anymore.

Nah, I'm just using the existence of the book as a jumping-off point here. I'm simultaneously pleased and disappointed to see confirmation of my theory as to where one of the remaining Horcruxes is located. I kind of wanted to be the only one who'd noticed, but I'm kind of glad to see that it wasn't an out-there theory. (If you don't know where it is, I will give you a general hint. Look in Book 5. Re-read the beginning. If you haven't found it by the time school starts, you've missed it.)

Snape is the real wild card going into HP7. As Langford points out, his actions at the end of HP6 don't make much logical sense, no matter where you think his loyalties lie. It's also hard to believe any of the possibilities for Dumbledore's fate: that he's really dead but engineered it himself; that he's really dead as a result of getting caught in the trap; that he's not really dead after all.

In a few more weeks, the country will grind to a virtual stand-still as everyone calls in sick to work to stay home and read their copies of HP7, and the greatest publishing phenomenon most of us will ever witness will come to an end, and we'll know the answers to all of our questions. Until then...