CoS wrap-up

[pauraque_bk]

All kinds of discussion in Chapter 18, but I'd like to call special attention to black_dog's comments in defense of Dumbledore, because they're way far down the page, and because I think he's the only person who didn't agree with my assessment of what Dumbledore says. *g*

The first part.

The second part. (This bit also calls Ginny's innocence into question, which I think is wicked interesting.)

*

THANK YOU to everyone who participated in the re-read. You guys are great. All the posts are saved here. (And the PoA re-read is here. Two down, three to go. [Or five, if I'm around that long.])

My opinion of the book as a whole hasn't changed very much; it's still not a favorite. It lacks the depth and coherence of PoA, as well as the theme of love that's so important to the latter three books. I have no idea if JKR meant it to read this way, but at the end of the book Harry is handed the moral that he was right to be loyal to Dumbledore, not that he was right to risk his life to save another. At every turn, the book is cheerfully cruel -- Crabbe and Goyle left locked in a closet, Hagrid carted off to Azkaban, Lockhart dealt a comeuppance out of proportion to his crimes (I kept thinking of Hansel and Gretl pushing the witch into the oven).

The movie version is a fair (in the sense of 'just') adaptation for the most part, except that it tacks on a sappy ending. Having read the book more carefully, I can sympathize with the urge to add some sugar -- the thing's downright nasty. This is a story where, when a little girl is rescued from certain death, her parents -- whom we're meant to like -- don't even give her a hug. [EDIT: Actually, they do, I just can't read. But Ginny's suffering still isn't given adequate weight, in my opinion.]

I'm also no more enlightened about what the book might once have had to do with half-blood princes than I was to start with. I do think the good money is on Godric Gryffindor to be the HBP, but there isn't a lot in CoS to support that claim, except the general introduction of the story of the Founders.

But, in any case, I certainly enjoyed all the discussion. I'll probably do PS/SS next, though not right away (I've got a merry_smutmas fic to write -- eep). If you fear withdrawal, there's a chapter-a-week OotP read-along happening at the_snarkery. They're up to Chapter 9.

Comments

[chresimos.livejournal.com]

You know...I actually don't know. Much like the quest for good T/G, a lot of the interesting Ginny stuff filters in bits and pieces into other fics. But...it's the angst that makes it so interesting, and JKR's near total silence on the matter only makes it more interesting. Magical soul-stealing aside, that's some pretty serious betrayal of trust going on there. If the one person you extremely trust suddenly is all, "I am teh evil", are you going to be able to form very healthy interpersonal relationships? Or...I don't know. Maybe it pushed her into socializing with "real" people instead of angsting on her own! And if she's at the point in OotP where she can just mention it in a barbed-but-casual way, I want to know what happened in the meantime that helped her to deal with it, for that sounds interesting to explore as well.

Also, here is duelling-related Snape and Lockhart because...uh...spamming is fun!