On Harry Potter, reading, writing and winning

My brother’s girlfriend lent me her copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to read while I was in Holland a couple of weeks ago. She figured I’d manage before I’d return to Armenia. She was right (as I knew she would be): it took me all of two days to read the book. I am not a Harry Potter-addict at all: I’ve read three or four books and watched the first two movies. I think that the only books that I haven’t either read or watched as a movie are HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban and HP and the Half-blood Prince. I certainly enjoy the HP-series and I don’t exclude that at some time I will read the books I haven’t read yet. But I don’t feel like I have to, like it is a lack in my reading experience if I don’t read them. Just so you know where I stand on Harry Potter.

One of “my” children here in Armenia (Vardan, a 17 year old boy with severe kidney failure – I have often blogged about him on my other blog) is absolutely crazy about Harry Potter and loves both the books and the movies. Harry is his hero and meeting J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe (the actor who plays HP in the movies) is one of his biggest dreams. But I digress.

I found the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows rather slow and at one point, about 200 pages in, I felt I’d had enough of the book. I needed a break, because the story was dragging so much. So I put the book away and took it up again the next day. Fortunately, the pace picked up soon and I couldn’t put the book down anymore till I had turned the last page. Since everybody already knows the story (and for those few that don’t I don’t want to spoil anything), I won’t summarize it here.

To be honest, I didn’t even think that the book was that great. It’s certainly not my favorite of series – I think that would be the Goblet of Fire, possibly because that was my introduction to Harry. Despite this, I did want to keep on reading, to find out what would happen next and how things would end. Rowling’s writing is wonderful and I love the alternative world she has created. I especially loved the part of the book set in the Weasly-household, the preparations for the wedding was probably my favorite part of the book.

However, I was continually aware that I was reading a translation (I read the Dutch translation), which was a bit annoying. Not because the translation was bad, on the contrary: the Dutch translator did do a great job, translating the names of people and places mostly in a clever way, keeping the wordplays or the characteristics of the owner of the name in the Dutch version. I tried to find the reason why reading the Dutch translation of HP bothered me, even if there wasn’t really anything wrong with that translation, but I couldn’t.

In general, I prefer reading books in English if that is the original language, and if the book was originally written in a third language, sometimes I even prefer reading the English translation to reading the Dutch. Even if the quality of the Dutch translation is good and generally Dutch translators do a good job. Maybe it has something to do with my general aversion of reading Dutch literature, I mean literature originally written in Dutch by Dutch writers. Though I can’t see the connection between the two, original Dutch literature and books in Dutch translation. I do read books in Dutch, but mostly non-fiction. I just don’t like Dutch fiction. I’ve never liked it. But I am drifting off into completely different areas. I might actually ponder reading in translation and/or my dislike of literature in my native language a bit more and come back to it in one or more separate posts.

It took me some time after finishing Harry Potter, before I realized that I could actually count it towards the Chunkster Challenge, as the book has 500-something pages. I decided not to, simply because the book didn’t feel like a chunkster. For me, reading a book that can be defined as a chunkster needs to take some effort. Not that it has to be a book I am dragging to finish and that takes forever or is difficult or that it has to be a ‘punishment’. Maybe it has something to do with me not being afraid to take on big or difficult books and frequently actually taking them on. Having breezed through Harry didn’t feel like I just finished a chunkster. Long story short: I decided no to count Harry Potter towards the Chunkster Challenge. This actually keeps the counter for my challenges still stuck at 0.

I am halfway through The Whisperers, which will definitely count as a chunkster, but I put it away for a bit to read some other things. Stalin’s terror was getting a bit too gloomy, though the book is very good. I am in the middle of writing a half-way post for The Whisperers, which should be up sometime later this week.

I have quite a few half finished posts and some reviews that I have notes for, but which I haven’t started putting in the computer yet. I lost my writing groove after I came back from Holland. Now you know why it has been so quiet around here. I try to write for an hour or two every morning before I go to work (I generally start at 11am, one of the perks of working parttime ), but I haven’t managed to do that once since I returned home. It’s really starting to bug me, I feel like I am missing something, not doing something I need and want to be doing. This week I want to start writing and getting the rhythm back. While I won’t be able to post something everyday, I want to put up at least three posts per week. Here, I made it public. Now I ‘only’ have to stick to it.

To end this somewhat rambling post (it wasn’t my intention to ramble when I started), there is some good news. I won Michael Cunningham’s The Hours in Alisia’s give-away! More reading fun coming my way!