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Ruger
Lyran Alliance
Hauptmann General
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 2104
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 Posted: 16-Jul-2005 17:46 Post subject: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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Got my copy at the midnight release (well, ok, by the time I paid for it, it was after 1 AM, meaning I didn't get back home to get started reading until after 1:30 this morning)...by 5 AM (when I had to stop to get some sleep, as by that time, I had been up for more than 24 hours straight, and I'm not used to doing things like that anymore), I was about 200 pages through it, and by about 4:30, I was finished with all 650 pages (yes, it was actually shorter than the last one...
Must say, JK Rowling did it again...excellent book, with some nice twists and turns, some surprises that some may or may not have seen coming, and it leaves you needing to read the seventh and final (?) book of the series...I can't wait for it to come out...
Anyone else read it yet? Your thoughts?
Ruger
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StarRaven
Federated Suns
Leftenant General
Joined: 01-Jun-2004 00:00
Posts: 1138
Location: United States
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| Posted: 25-Jul-2005 21:49 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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Yes, I got it on the 16th (from Amazon.com), and finished it two days later. It certainly wasn't what I expected. She shook things up quite a bit, and I don't think that there's much we can depend on to be what we're accustomed to. And I still wonder about Snape.
I'm afraid that the fifth book is still my favorite, after displacing the third. This new one certainly had a different feel to it, and it was fun, but it doesn't quite compare with the things they did to Umbrige. I'm going to have to read it again, so that I can try to get a better grip on the ending.
I suspect we've got a year or two more till the last book, if not longer. The movie in November looks like it will be good though.
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"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close semblance to the first."
- Attributed to General Aleksandr Kerensky
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Ruger
Lyran Alliance
Hauptmann General
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 2104
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| Posted: 26-Jul-2005 19:26 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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On 2005-07-25 21:49, StarRaven wrote:
The movie in November looks like it will be good though.
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Maybe...so long as they don't make anymore ridiculous and assinine changes to important plot points like changing Harry's Patronus from a stag-shaped pool of energy to just a ball of energy like they did in the third one...
Ruger
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Kalo Osis
Clan Ice Hellions
Star Colonel
Joined: 07-Jul-2005 00:00
Posts: 446
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| Posted: 30-Jul-2005 19:42 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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In my opinion, J. K. rowling should have stopped after book one. I am sorry, but the Harry Potter books just suck. LOTR and the Corean Chronicles are much much better.
_________________
"I prefer to fight for a meaningful purpose, rather than to provide a spectacle for the ignorant masses."
-Kalo on the Solaris 7 Battlemech Arenas
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Ruger
Lyran Alliance
Hauptmann General
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 2104
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| Posted: 31-Jul-2005 19:57 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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Quote:
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On 2005-07-30 19:42, Kalo Osis wrote:
In my opinion, J. K. rowling should have stopped after book one. I am sorry, but the Harry Potter books just suck. LOTR and the Corean Chronicles are much much better.
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Takes all kinds, I guess...IMnsHO, the LotR series was great as a series of movies...but the books had FAR too many songs, too much exposition on the slightest detail of the landscape, etc....it took me literally weeks to read those books...and that killed them for me...
If I want literature, and LotR was literature in this respect, I'll go with the classics, and usually take less time to read them...if I want fantasy with some meat and meaning to the story, I'll take RA Salvatore, Elaine Cunninghaim, JK Rowling and similar authors...
Ruger
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Kalo Osis
Clan Ice Hellions
Star Colonel
Joined: 07-Jul-2005 00:00
Posts: 446
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| Posted: 31-Jul-2005 20:34 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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The deatail is the point of LotR!!!
Tolkein spent years writing those books, writing the prologues and the family trees, and the histories, and the religions..... He was so dedicated to the books he spent the better part of 30 years concocting them.
Salvatore is good, but the Drizzt Do'Urden books are kind of losing their quality becuase he keeps writing so many of them. The first ones are still very good books. If you like Salvatore, read the Corean Chronicles by Modesitt Jr, it will blow the Harry Potter out your butt.
_________________
"I prefer to fight for a meaningful purpose, rather than to provide a spectacle for the ignorant masses."
-Kalo on the Solaris 7 Battlemech Arenas
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StarRaven
Federated Suns
Leftenant General
Joined: 01-Jun-2004 00:00
Posts: 1138
Location: United States
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| Posted: 03-Aug-2005 00:06 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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Quote:
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On 2005-07-26 19:26, Ruger wrote:
Quote:
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On 2005-07-25 21:49, StarRaven wrote:
The movie in November looks like it will be good though.
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Maybe...so long as they don't make anymore ridiculous and assinine changes to important plot points like changing Harry's Patronus from a stag-shaped pool of energy to just a ball of energy like they did in the third one...
Ruger
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True. Does anyone know why they did that? It's not as if doing the stag would have been much more effort, after all.
_________________
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close semblance to the first."
- Attributed to General Aleksandr Kerensky
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StarRaven
Federated Suns
Leftenant General
Joined: 01-Jun-2004 00:00
Posts: 1138
Location: United States
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| Posted: 03-Aug-2005 00:21 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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Quote:
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On 2005-07-30 19:42, Kalo Osis wrote:
In my opinion, J. K. rowling should have stopped after book one. I am sorry, but the Harry Potter books just suck. LOTR and the Corean Chronicles are much much better.
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I've never seen anyone else say this. They certainly didn't become one of the biggest things ever by being bad, you know.
I've never read the Corean Chronicles, but I'm with Ruger on Tolkien. I never read the books at first because of an English teacher (we called her FUBAR) who put Tolkien sentences on grammar tests. It was hideous. Later I saw the movies (which were excellent), and thought I'd give the books a chance. Big mistake. There's simply too much detail to stand. Detail is good, but not when it takes over the book and gets in the way of the story. It's rare for me to find a book that I can't finish, but LotR was one of them.
In comparison, Rowling manages to be descriptive without making it an obsession - concise. The Harry Potter books were instantly interesting from first book, and each book was interesting throughout. I never have had the desire to skip parts that I sometimes get when re-reading other books.
[ This Message was edited by: StarRaven on 2005-08-03 00:22 ]
_________________
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close semblance to the first."
- Attributed to General Aleksandr Kerensky
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mud
Draconis Combine
Tai-sho
Joined: 23-Jul-2002 00:00
Posts: 1618
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| Posted: 04-Aug-2005 21:44 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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There were a few arcs that needed a bit more editing, but it was not a step backwards.
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"The enemy's gate is down."
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SaberDance
Federated Suns
Colonel
Joined: 07-May-2004 00:00
Posts: 837
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| Posted: 16-Aug-2005 07:56 Post subject: RE: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince... |
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On many points:
Read the book in 6 hours. Still like #4 the best. Given the set-up, I'm not so sure I'm going to like book seven, but I'll read it anyway.
LOTR: excelent movie precisely because all the exposition is handled in about twenty minutes. That Tolkien spent years on the books doesn't excuse the fact that they read more like tomes of ancient chronicles than books. If you like them, go nuts. They bored the interest right out of me. I pretty much have the same opinion of Lewis's fiction. Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe will be a great movie precisely because it will take the great storytelling ability of Lewis and divorce it from his attrocious storytelling style (which is very much like his essays, where it works fine).
Movie #4: I'm guardidly optomistic. The production crew has been high-quality thus far, I hope they can keep it up.
Movie #3: The stag is there. When Harry looks to see his father, he sees the stag sending the waves of light to drive off the Dementors. The exposition was left out of it to save time in the movie. Originally, I objected, because it honestly would only have required a minute's more dialogue, but when you think about how many sub-plots and how much exposition is in those books, that turns into a lot of extra minutes of dialogue. Ergo, they made the decision that anything not directly related to the main story had to go. The Exposition was done in movies 1 and 2.
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"Politics is the Art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, misdiagnosing the problem, and applying the wrong solution."
-Groucho Marx
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