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All right...I probably should have started with this one, but I had a lapse. One of the most important things we can take from books as writers is what we loved about it and what we hated. This helps ub not only because we can learn what to and not to do, and also because we can learn what is forgiven. That is, rules can be broken. There can be things we thouroughly dislike in a book, but an editor may take it and people may read it anyway. These trade-offs are important to consider in our own writing. The Sorcerer's Stone was Rowling's first book, and despite it's popularity, she had the normal trouble in getting published.
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One of everybody's favorite aspects of the book is precisely my greatest nuissance while reading it. The bane that bothered me was simply the young-audience geared narrator who kept the story flowing easily, simply, and light. Too much sugar-and-cream and not enough depth, darkness and bitter flavour to balance it all out.
Posts: 295 | Registered: May 2003
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Favorite Thing: The insercurity of a young boy thrust into a magical world in which he was special, but he did not feel able to live up to the hype.
Least Favorite Thing: Plot holes. Actually, every book had plot holes. The one in the first book was the fact that three 11-year-olds could get through a series of obstacles meant to fend off superior adult wizards. I forgave it because it was for kids, but I still couldn't help but notice it as it rather shouted at me and hit me in the face!
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I think the ridiculous ease of the obstacles was more of the plot hole than the fact that the kids were (understandably) able to blow through them *chuckle*
Posts: 233 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Actually the obstacles didn't bother me, until you mentioned it. (Except for the chess game which angered me in the movie--because it was done so stupidly) I simply assumed that the ever bookish Hermione was just a plot-device to work our dumber-jockish mains (Harry + Ron) to where they could "end the book," if you will.
Speaking of chess, for someone as dense as Ron--I don't think he'd make a very good chess player. And I remember wondering how much of the real game JK understood, or if she simply had heard of it and knew how the pieces move. To some of us die-hards, or in my case former die-hard, that is considered illiterate in the chess world. It's like knowing the alphabet but not knowing the language.
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