The comic that went up on today was kind of rushed. I did some different things with it, and I’m not too unhappy withhow it turned out… except the third panel. Grr. I may sneak back in and fix it up.
I have finally wrangled myself a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I think is going to be myfavorite already, because the other ones were so damn short. Here’s the thing about the HP books: they aren’t fantasy.They may be set against monsters and spells and junk, but the fact is that they’re detective stories through andthrough. The rest is just window dressing (and, occasionally, plot convenience).
Nerds are hailing this as the breakthrough of fantasy into the mainstream, and idiots are decrying it as the samething, but they’re both wrong. Kids are reading the books for the same reasons they read Hardy Boys or EncyclopediaBrown: they always have and always will eat up a good mystery, and the HP books are top flight.
I read the first three books (usually within 24 hours) in the past month. I also finally read Who’s Afraid ofVirginia Woolf, and the copy of Sabriel I borrowed from Meg in October, and all four of the Chronicles ofChrestomanci books Mom got me for Christmas (if you haven’t, read Diana Wynne Jones as if your life depended onit). I’m reading As I Lay Dying again, concurrently with Goblet, and I need to start re-reading my OrsonScott Card Character and Viewpoint. And I still feel guilty that I didn’t get through Fellowship of theRing before I saw the movie.
It’s been a long time since I read this much, this voraciously, and it feels good. I forget sometimes how much I usedto do it, and the fact that reading for fun essentially got me where I am in life.
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