Alas, how sad! The final Harry Potter book.
I admit that I'm not as enamored of the "story" as I was ten or so years ago when it began, but there are two things I love about the Harry Potter books that make me not ashamed to admit that I love them (since they are, by and large, childrens' books, or at the very least, not "elevated" fiction--the discussion of "low" versus "high" literature is always a useful one to have, btw).
1. It's amazing to witness such mass, international hoopla about a book in my lifetime. About books! How cool is that?
2. Universal themes and conflicts abound: life and death, good and evil, moral ambiguity, etc. And there's plenty more!
Narratively, I also enjoy the "shift" away from omniscience as the finale approaches--I remember this from the last few books, at least. As Harry gets less chagrined and seemingly starts to figure out what's going on, the narrative shifts away from his every thought until we are only acquainted, as his friends are, by his dialogue as to what he has discovered and figured out. It's symbolic, I am sure, of the great fight that he must fight alone--the willingness to face death. So I think this is an interesting writerly trick, which I appreciate.
I thought the plot was clever and riveting. I'm not much for suspense, but I plowed through this text at about one-hundred pages per hour (which means, by the way, that I am a fast reader and not a good one, since I apparently missed quite a few important details that my friends had to explain to me) because it was just that gripping. I loved finding out the truth about Dumbledore's death, I liked the itinerant camping of Harry and friends (though it did drag on a bit, come to think of it), I loved Ron's abdication, and o! how I wept at the death of Dobby (not to mention the others, whom I won't mention, actually, but how sad, sad, sad... I love when a book makes me cry, because it means I've been drawn irrevocably into the characters' world). Oh, yes, and I was kind of hoping the Dursleys would be permanently turned into hedgehogs or something, and they weren't.
The only part I didn't like was the "Nineteen Years Later" chapter ending; it was not necessary. I guess it added a little security, because otherwise we would wonder if Voldemort wasn't really dead (hey, it's not unprecendented). A friend of mine actually proposed that Rowling added this chapter to quell any notions people might have of another book. But I counter-theorized that maybe she was just introducing characters for her next series... At any rate, it was so happy-go-lucky, and the kids' names were so silly, that it just seemed corny. Little Albus, indeed!
Overall, this final book is probably the best in the series (though book three and book six also stand out to me) and is an ending befitting the most powerful literary "event" of our time. Even though in this witch-and-wizard-world of Rowling's there's a little too much "deus ex machina" run amok--that is, every time something doesn't make sense, Rowling can just invent a new reality; for example, "Oh, that's because you don't know about the Deathly Hallows!"--it's a bit of a cop-out, don't you think?). But how incredible is it that kids and grown-ups of all ages dress up, and have parties at midnight, and stay up all night for a book??? I think the momentum of it is impressive and exciting, and deservedly so. Hooray for Harry! In spite of his flaws (kind of a snarky main character, to pretend to be a bit British in my adjectives), he fights what we all fight--destruction, hopelessness, fear, despair, loneliness, and death... Not bad for a kids' book, eh?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Digital Democracy: New Media & the Future of Democracy, by Jeff Chester
This has been a frustrating couple of reading weeks--you know the sort, wherein you have three overdue library books to finish, plus the book you actually want to read, plus the book you're supposed to be reading for school... so I feel as though I have been reading bits and pieces of several books, really. Here's one of them.
I heard about this book in a Ralph Nader interview I happened upon (NB: this reading journal is NOT a political forum, and my only "hidden" opinion/agenda is a general dislike of large corporations' hold over us). I thought the book might be useful for my fledgling-but-growing media literacy unit that I started last year (kinda sorta fits into American Lit, right? hmmm). And it will be--most specifically, though, one chapter.
To start, I did not and will not read this whole book. There are a LOT of names, mostly of bigwig men in the FCC and corporations, and corporate anything kind of dulls me out, to be wholly frank. I read the introduction, and some of the subchapters within the larger chapters, but there were whole chapters I skipped. The books makes no claim at being impartial--in fact, I think some of the biased language and tone used will lend an interesting angle to our discussion of the chapter when we read it, and whether or not Chester's premise--that being tracked and targeted very specifically by our media is bad for us--is actually correct. I love fleshing out both sides of a juicy argument!
So the chapter I liked best, and will hopefully be able to use in class, is called "The Brandwashing of America: Marketing and Micropersuasion in the Digital Era." Clearly not unbiased, but really informative about ways in which our choices are monitored (for example, how often do you think about cookies? I admittedly dream of chocolate-chip regularly, but rarely consider the software variety sending information from my computer to internet sources).
This chapter is essentially about how the new media is growing not in response to wealth of information, but rather to suit the needs of marketing and revenue growth for major media outlets and their subsidiaries. As I already mentioned, Chester's premise is that the lengths to which marketers are now able to go (such as researching brain scans to maximize the emotional impact of a commercial) to target specific audiences is a destructive by-product of the FCC deregulation that Clinton passed as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which for the first time since 1934 removed restrictions on media ownership. This simply means that only a tiny number of large corporations control everything we see, hear, purchase, and--consequently--identify with and, gosh darn it, maybe even think. This is one of those "scary" books--with subheadings that invoke Big Brother--the predicts our dire future, but I have to admit that I, too, am not impartial, that my seeking out of this text and even the presentation of this unit to my students is because I somewhat feel that we are being "played" by the media. In general, our society is unaware of the degree to which we are being used. I don't know with any certainty that every aspect of our current media is always particularly harmful or bad--just that we should probably apprised of a few facts that we don't generally realize, such as:
1. Universities such as MIT, Harvard, and Stanford make significant contributions to media and marketing research;
2. Theres a system called Advertising Digital Identification that assigns a code to every ad from every medium to track effectiveness;
3. "behavioral marketing" is the name for using your online history to determine which ads you are shown;
4. Digital and satellite television gives you such features as "on-demand" programming, but it also records your viewing behaviors to report back.
The bottom line is to just be aware of the subtlety of marketing and marketers. After all, this is a significant change from just a few decades ago, and it's rather jarring for us old-timers. Yet I think some people might actually see some good in this adware stuff... But at the very least, isn't our privacy compromised? And marketing, I think (my opinion here), sometimes blurs the lines of authenticity to the point where we aren't sure what we want anymore because we're just buying into prepacked notions of who we are--and, more importantly in American transformation culture, who we'd like to be.
While this book would probably only appeal to people interested in the subject (and it would have been a great David Brudnoy interview back in the glory days of his radio show), I think we all have some re sponsibility to know exactly what effects companies like Viacom and AOL (are they even separate companies still?) have because they control nearly all the portals through which we receive information and what gets marketed.
It simply can't be good to get all your news from just one ubersource--hey, even "back in the day" you wouldn't always listen to the same town crier, would you? We need a little balance in a democracy, as this book so readily claims.
And now? Off to finish Fever Pitch and Dr. Faustus!
I heard about this book in a Ralph Nader interview I happened upon (NB: this reading journal is NOT a political forum, and my only "hidden" opinion/agenda is a general dislike of large corporations' hold over us). I thought the book might be useful for my fledgling-but-growing media literacy unit that I started last year (kinda sorta fits into American Lit, right? hmmm). And it will be--most specifically, though, one chapter.
To start, I did not and will not read this whole book. There are a LOT of names, mostly of bigwig men in the FCC and corporations, and corporate anything kind of dulls me out, to be wholly frank. I read the introduction, and some of the subchapters within the larger chapters, but there were whole chapters I skipped. The books makes no claim at being impartial--in fact, I think some of the biased language and tone used will lend an interesting angle to our discussion of the chapter when we read it, and whether or not Chester's premise--that being tracked and targeted very specifically by our media is bad for us--is actually correct. I love fleshing out both sides of a juicy argument!
So the chapter I liked best, and will hopefully be able to use in class, is called "The Brandwashing of America: Marketing and Micropersuasion in the Digital Era." Clearly not unbiased, but really informative about ways in which our choices are monitored (for example, how often do you think about cookies? I admittedly dream of chocolate-chip regularly, but rarely consider the software variety sending information from my computer to internet sources).
This chapter is essentially about how the new media is growing not in response to wealth of information, but rather to suit the needs of marketing and revenue growth for major media outlets and their subsidiaries. As I already mentioned, Chester's premise is that the lengths to which marketers are now able to go (such as researching brain scans to maximize the emotional impact of a commercial) to target specific audiences is a destructive by-product of the FCC deregulation that Clinton passed as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which for the first time since 1934 removed restrictions on media ownership. This simply means that only a tiny number of large corporations control everything we see, hear, purchase, and--consequently--identify with and, gosh darn it, maybe even think. This is one of those "scary" books--with subheadings that invoke Big Brother--the predicts our dire future, but I have to admit that I, too, am not impartial, that my seeking out of this text and even the presentation of this unit to my students is because I somewhat feel that we are being "played" by the media. In general, our society is unaware of the degree to which we are being used. I don't know with any certainty that every aspect of our current media is always particularly harmful or bad--just that we should probably apprised of a few facts that we don't generally realize, such as:
1. Universities such as MIT, Harvard, and Stanford make significant contributions to media and marketing research;
2. Theres a system called Advertising Digital Identification that assigns a code to every ad from every medium to track effectiveness;
3. "behavioral marketing" is the name for using your online history to determine which ads you are shown;
4. Digital and satellite television gives you such features as "on-demand" programming, but it also records your viewing behaviors to report back.
The bottom line is to just be aware of the subtlety of marketing and marketers. After all, this is a significant change from just a few decades ago, and it's rather jarring for us old-timers. Yet I think some people might actually see some good in this adware stuff... But at the very least, isn't our privacy compromised? And marketing, I think (my opinion here), sometimes blurs the lines of authenticity to the point where we aren't sure what we want anymore because we're just buying into prepacked notions of who we are--and, more importantly in American transformation culture, who we'd like to be.
While this book would probably only appeal to people interested in the subject (and it would have been a great David Brudnoy interview back in the glory days of his radio show), I think we all have some re sponsibility to know exactly what effects companies like Viacom and AOL (are they even separate companies still?) have because they control nearly all the portals through which we receive information and what gets marketed.
It simply can't be good to get all your news from just one ubersource--hey, even "back in the day" you wouldn't always listen to the same town crier, would you? We need a little balance in a democracy, as this book so readily claims.
And now? Off to finish Fever Pitch and Dr. Faustus!
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Between Camelots, by David Harris Ebenbach
My friend Trish loaned me this book with the caveat that the first story, which she had heard on NPR, was great, so she bought the book--but the rest of the stories? Not so great. Of course, she is right!
I read most of them (a few might fall under the category of "having been perused") and my overall disappointment in them is that they don't feel complete, nor are they effective "slice of life" snippets, either--most read like someone just clicked the off button too soon, or maybe they didn't click the off button when they should've, because not much conversationally is happening that's worth listening to.
The first story, "Misdirections," is sad and whole and metaphorical. I can totally relate to the have-a-heart mice traps thing, too. Plus it's a great example of how a complete story can be told well in one page.
The rest of the stories flip-flop perspectives, which I think is ambitious and brave. But it takes a little too much shifting for my brain to jump from the point of view of the old mom to the point of view to the young male teacher, and I rather started to crave a more neutral, undefined narrator who would let me ascertain the whole scene and not just one character's perception of it. Of course, since I didn't read this very carefully, I'm sure there are some stories like that and I just sleepily glossed over them a bit (I think I can remember one or two).
So, overall, some interesting stories but nothing too momentous.
I read most of them (a few might fall under the category of "having been perused") and my overall disappointment in them is that they don't feel complete, nor are they effective "slice of life" snippets, either--most read like someone just clicked the off button too soon, or maybe they didn't click the off button when they should've, because not much conversationally is happening that's worth listening to.
The first story, "Misdirections," is sad and whole and metaphorical. I can totally relate to the have-a-heart mice traps thing, too. Plus it's a great example of how a complete story can be told well in one page.
The rest of the stories flip-flop perspectives, which I think is ambitious and brave. But it takes a little too much shifting for my brain to jump from the point of view of the old mom to the point of view to the young male teacher, and I rather started to crave a more neutral, undefined narrator who would let me ascertain the whole scene and not just one character's perception of it. Of course, since I didn't read this very carefully, I'm sure there are some stories like that and I just sleepily glossed over them a bit (I think I can remember one or two).
So, overall, some interesting stories but nothing too momentous.
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