I was feeling better yesterday, but the drive home turned out to be a nightmare - dizziness even when I didn't move my head, some stomach cramps. I was very upset by the time I got home. I think I may have gotten a bit dehydrated, which just made everything else worse.
I'm not an idiot: it's just much harder than you'd think avoiding dehydration when you live and work out in a desert.
I didn't eat much dinner, which may have contributed to some vivid dreams. I didn't go to the gym this morning, not wanting to push things. When I woke up to Rudder's alarm, I was thinking about work and what I needed to do today. After I feel back asleep, I dreamed that I was trying to enter to-dos into my planner, while Hermione Granger was traying to explain to several of us about some much more important problem we were facing. (Voldemort-related, no doubt. I do hope he's not coming to work here.)
I suspect Hermione was in my dreams because I was reading a discussion of whether HP is fantasy over at Patrick Neilsen Hayden's place. Some of that was a discussion of the exact definition of "genre fantasy", but at least one person was claiming that HP is not primarily fantasy because the plot could be easily rewritten to omit any fantastic elements (positing Harry as an alien or whatever). I disagree strongly; I don't believe that that claim is correct anyhow (a rewrite might be possible but it would be very extensive and could not be automated, in my opinion) but more because I don't read the books for their plot. In fact, what plot? "Harry finds out he's a wizard, Book 1. Book 1 and all subsequent books: Harry, generally in company with Hermione and Ron, learns things, gets in trouble for poking in where he shouldn't, overcomes obstacles, and inconclusively defeats Voldemort. I presume Volume 7 will end with "conclusively defeats Voldemort". I grant some of those obstacles are fascinating in their own right and range from dragons to merpeople to Umbridge to his own friends. Still, the plot in itself is simple and satisfying (to me at least, because I have a simple mind). That's not a bad thing; I'm not convinced a plot is strictly necessary for all books. what's the plot in Little Women, or Tom Sawyer, or Tristram Shandy? "Jo grows up" or "Tom lives for a year or two" or "My uncle likes fortifications" isn't much of a plot - individual episodes have plots, like Tom's running away or his being lost in Indian Cave, but the overall arc, doesn't to any extent. Harry does have a plot, both in each book and over the series, but I don't read it for that. I read it for the world: I want to live in Hogwarts. I want to hang out in Hagrid's hut and sneak around under an invisibility cloak and prove I have the courage to be in Gryffindor. I want to find out magic isn't impossible. I want to be Harry, and fortunately I can, at least while the book is open.
I'm writing all of this here because the PNH discussion is a month and a half old and because this has all already been written there, mostly better.
And that was a long prologue, but I was thinking about HP and its (lack of plot) in connection to my current rereading of Caroline Stevermer's A College of Magics. (Spoilers below.) In addition to a world I'd like to live in and characters I'd like to know or be (I loved Jane and was delighted to find her again in A Scholar of Magics), ACoM has lashings of plot. On the other hand, it also has a lot of little holes and inconsistencies and loose endings. It reads like a first book, though I don't think it is Stevermer's first. For example, the whole first half of the book is at Greenlaw college; Faris does grow up a bit but otherwise the transition from school to Galazon seems a little abrupt. The college is so lovingly limned it's impossible not to feel interrupted when Faris is simultaneously called home and expelled and just leaves, forever. Also, why do we have the character of Odile? How did Faris make it through her first year without so much as learning any other first-years' names? Why does Menary hate Faris and what is Uncle Brinker's motivation? (Those two may be answered in the book; it's been a while since my first reading.) Can Faris rebuild her love of Galazon? If not, why does she still care what happens to it? Will Julian age normally? And so on. None of that keeps me from enjoying either ACoM or A Scholar of Magics, though.
Posted by dichroic at September 30, 2004 01:25 PM