BleakAlong - Post the Finalmente

Every time we finish a readalong, The Doors "This is the End" plays in my head the whole time I'm writing my final post. It's very distracting, especially because for most of my young life I was pretty sure that Val Kilmer was Jim Morrison and that is a very handsome movie poster, I tell you what. Have I mentioned this before? Possibly.

Anyway. Part of the reason I was behind most of the readalong is that I was listening to the audiobook, which is approximately 548 hours long. I enjoy audiobooks immensely because they allow me to pursue two hobbies at once (reading and knitting, or reading and spinning, or reading and eating...), but they do slow down my Goodreads challenge. Last night I went to bed with 3 chapters (two hours!) left, so I gave in and read the last ~50 pages in the paperback that Amanda sent me for our Secret Santa, and I am SO glad I did because the afterword to this edition is delightful. Elizabeth McCracken is a Dickens fangirl whose first sentence to her afterword apologizes to the reader for encountering an afterword at all following roughly 1000 pages of novel.

Not to mention that the splash page on her website is delightful.

Salute the McCracken.

How are we feeling now that mostly everyone we didn't like ::cough Skimpole cough:: and a few people we did - POOR JO - are dead?

They had nothing to do with it.

I had a shouty moment when Esther turned Woodcourt down and I was prepared to be Very Upset Indeed, but Jarndyce made the right decision - some might say unlike Dickens himself later in life - and while I dislike the idea that Esther was his to reward Woodcourt with, I support the final outcome of Esther being happy and loved for who she is.

You know who never calls Esther "Dame Durden"? Woodcourt.

We're gonna circle back to the birdcage theme for a second - remember that one from way back when? - to just mention that Miss Flyte names all her birds and probably has to recite them in order every night like Arya Stark, and with all the Ashes and Penitences and Wards in Jarndyces, she has a bird named Spinach. Bless you, Miss Flyte.

And bless YOU, Charles Dickens, on behalf of all the Volumnias of the world, with our spare little drops and feeble prismatic twinkling. You rapscallion, you brimstone bogtrotter, you brilliant and ginormous tool.

It's not your fault that sometimes in my head I get you mixed up with Charles Darwin.

Harry Potter HFriday - Part the Battle then Battle Some More

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now: that epilogue is pretty awful, what with the side-eyes between Harry and Draco and the everyone-having-a-zillion-kids. I read it once (and once will dooooo), so I’m ignoring it this time around.

That's right, JK, I said NO.

When Amycus spits at McGonagall and Harry is like, ::whips off cloak:: “you shouldn’t have done that!” and McGonagall is all, “Harry! Don’t be so gallant!” and then he’s like, “He SPIT at you!” NICE JOB, HARRY. Because like hell you spit at McGonagall and get away with it. Like. hell.

Exactly.

There are so many gorgeous parallels in this part of the book. Like when, Ron freaks out about needing to get past the Whomping Willow and Hermione is all, “Are you a wizard or what?" Turnabout: it's fair play, Weasley. And in Snape's memories where he's on the train with Lily, and James says, "I think if I were in Slytherin, I'd go home, wouldn't you?" Which, we've heard someone say something like that before... ::glares at Draco:: So basically Snape is Harry's foil, not Voldemort, who is just a regular ol' fashioned enemy, and James is Draco's foil. Ouch my brain.

At some point JK gives in to herself and actually lets someone talk about what a long game someone has been playing (I ran out of paper flags before this point so no quote for you!), and to that I say, well played indeed, Lady Jo. 

I don't really have a transition here, so now we come to all the SADS that hit me right in my solar plexus:

OMG

Snape telling Harry to look at him while he dies... because of Lily's eyes... those eyes that never saw him, never knew he longed to hold her close, to live at last, in Lilllllyyyyyy's eeeeeyes...

There are fresh tearstains next to the 2007 ones at the part where Percy comes back and Fred is the one to forgive him - but MORE this time because I knew what was coming and that made it WORSE (tbh I cried every time Fred showed up in this book), and then they’re joking – Percy! Joking! – and then… the world blows apart. Don’t try to tell me JK didn’t mean that figuratively as well as literally; she definitely did because she will kill what we love.

The line about the three homeless boys who made Hogwarts their home hurts a bit, doesn't it?

And Bellatrix’s laugh is like Sirius’s because they are cousins and sometimes families have weird little things in common including the way they die. 

Let’s talk about mothers in these books, SHALL WE?

That’s pretty much it, really. The mothers are all BAMFs.

AND SO WE COME TO THE END.  I am clinging to next week as the Last Week because I'm not ready yet.

11 out of 11 Blibbering Humdingers*


*I really hope someone else is going to cover Luna and the Malfoy's family structure, because they DESERVE IT.

Harry Potter HFriday - Post the FOR SOBBING OUT LOUD

I MISSED YOU GUYS! I am going to be seriously adrift in Blogland when these Harry Potter shenanigans are over. The frustrating thing about having missed the last 2 weeks is that I actually completed my reading BOTH TIMES and just wasn’t able to write up the post due to the plague (week 1, super shitty!) and a father/daughter weekend in Seattle (week 2, loads of fun!).

SO. Let’s just say I approached this week’s reading with a big ol’backlog of things to talk about, most of which I am going to assume someone in this group covered at some point. But here are my bullet points:

• Dumbledore telling off the Dursleys and Dudley’s confusion
• “Let us not deprive Molly any longer of the chance to deplore how thin you are.” Dumbledore knows what mothers like best.
• Snape. UGH you are being such an ASSHOLE. I have sympathy for you, I really do, but seriously man, you are the only one of the Mauraders generation who had even a CHANCE at a normal adult life, so try not being such a gigantic douche-canoe, would you?
• Ginny, you are amazing and I want to kiss you on the mouth.
• I think we can all take a moment to appreciate Madam Pince’s reaction to writing in books. Or at least I can, because why would you do that when there is a wide world of post-its out there?
• And another moment for this, which I noted as “might be a perfect paragraph”:

She left. At once Lavender and Parvati put their heads together to discuss this new development, with everything they had ever heard about McLaggen, and all they had ever guessed about Hermione. Ron looked strangely blank and said nothing. Harry was left to ponder in silence the depths to which girls would sink to get revenge. (314)

JK, you may not have a good handle on the romantic relationships in your stories, but damn girl, you sure know how to describe people.

• McGonagall sets Seamus lines: I am a wizard, not a baboon brandishing a stick.

You tell'em, Dame Smith!

One last thing for catchup: Ron’s love potion from Romilda Vane was so incredibly fantastic, and then he’s safe, and then he’s in Terrible Danger and how good is JK at foreshadowing and how guilty did I feel for laughing at Ron a moment before?! Most of my notes in this section amount to “aaauuuughhhh this is so good!”

******

OKAY. It happened, that Thing we have all been dreading, for we shall Dumble no more.

 And this whole book I have been approaching the end much like this:

Why is it in a saucepan? Why is there a towel on its head? Why do I suddenly want a kitten?

BUT FIRST, I have jumped on Alice and Rainbow's bandwagon and may supplement my lack of Harry Potter when June rolls around by reading Harry/Draco fic. 

“I need to see what Draco Malfoy is doing inside you…”

Now KISS.

But onward we must trudge, heavy our hearts and heavy our eyelids for staying up way too late to read children's' books:

Back at the beginning Harry was all, “why won’t something attack me?” and Dumbledore is like, “because you’re with ME and I am the baddest ass in these here parts.” (that last may have been just in my imagination, yes?) And then when Harry is taking Dumbledore out of the cave, Dumbles is all, “I am not worried, Harry. I am with you.”

He's going to talk to some food about this.

I’mma segue here a little and assume you are all Firefly fans because you are cool like that. Do you remember when you saw Serenity for the first time? I DO. I went to opening night and stood in line and won a t-shirt that has since disappeared (dammit). And at That Moment We All Remember, the whole theater stopped breathing. But we didn’t get time to cry because there was SLAYING KILLIN’ to be done by River Tam, Intergalactic Badass.

The second time I went to see Serenity, a very unexpected thing happened. When the crew got to Miranda, I started to sob. Great, heaving, trying-to-be-quiet-and-failing sobs. My friends who didn’t know what was coming were extremely uncomfortable, but I wept on undeterred. Because I knew what was coming. Megs and I got choked up over it this afternoon, in fact; it was one of the most devastating things I have ever experienced for a fictional character.

I haven’t read HBP since just before I started book 7, and I was racing through so I could crack open that orange behemoth. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I was firmly in the “Snape is evil” camp – I had a bookmark and everything (remember those?).

But this time through… this time, I just wept at the inevitability of it all, from the moment Dumbledore said, “I am with you.”

No exaggeration was used in the creation of this image.

So hey, how about that Fleur, huh? I’m pretty sure that “”Our Great-Auntie Muriel has a very beautiful tiara” anagrams into, “sorry I was mean and dismissive of you; welcome to the family.”

She is quite good looking enough for both of them.

Harry Potter HFriday - That Time We All Wept

I actually considered skipping this section and jumping straight to book 6, but no. I am a glutton for punishment and also perhaps the sliiiightest bit OCD.

There’s a rollicking debate going on over at Megs’s blog about whether Harry was dumb about the 2-way mirror or not. I fall on the side of that-is-a-terrible-plot-device-designed-only-to-make-me-feel-EVEN-MORE-SHITTY-JK, whatever side that is. Because really all it does is the aforementioned and make Harry feel like it’s even MORE his fault that Sirius is no more. Guilt Trip, party for two, someone carry Dumbledore’s bags, please.

But here’s a thing I don’t get. Grimauld Place is on the Floo network and can’t be monitored  because Dumbledore is the secret keeper for the house’s location. So why doesn’t Harry just… go all the way to the house and look for Sirius? Climbing the stairs shouting is going to be way more effective than just sticking your head out of the fire and shouting, right? And then if the lookouts at Hogwarts Hogwarts Hoggy Warty Hogwarts hear Umbridge is coming, they just join Harry at Grimauld place. Phineas Nigellus can come back to the house and tell them when the coast is clear, and if Sirius isn’t at HQ, they could just take the Floo network to the Ministry. Because your whole body can travel by Floo.

I should be in charge of everything.

I feel the need to point out that back when we were all reading this for the first time and we didn’t know who was going to die, the whole lead-up to the duel in the arch room was SO SCARY. Leaving Ron with those brains? AGH!  There was a moment – probably less than a moment because I was reading so fast – when I was sure Hermione was dead. And then Dumbledore shows up and he. is. pissed. and you think, Oh, it’s all going to be all right and then Bellatrix hits Sirius and you’re all, he’ll be okay! It was just a stunner and McGonagall took 4 of those to the chest and she'll be okay (eventually aggghhh)!

And then he’s standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again.

There are discussions upon discussions we could have about how True Hero Archetypes have to have someone - usually a Guardian - die before they can be dedicated to their Cause in the right way, and how Sirius's death does this for Harry in a way that Dumbledore's will not. This pattern is borne out by literature and myth and, all things considered, JK handled it beautifully.

I would just like to close with the happy images of McGonagall lending Peeves her walking stick to drum Umbridge off of Hogwarts property, and of Neville and his mimbulus mimbletonia-stroking.

Neville, you are so uncomfortably attractive. 

The Moonstone Part 4 - Cry Because It's Over!

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS.

I dunno how Alice decided to break up the readings for this thing, but way to go on that one, lady.

H'okay, so. When last we met - which for me was not very long ago so I won't blame you if you missed my Part 3 post - Franklin had walked out of a fight with Rachel and said he "saw her and heard her no more," and we were all, OMG NOOOOOO!!! Because Godfrey turned out to be a money-grubbing douchenozzle and Rachel deserves someone nice even if she's not Marian.

So Ezra Jennings* comes back into the story with his piebald hair (?!?) and Mysterious Past and turns out to be quite a decent fellow, thankyouverymuch. Admit it - you suspected he somehow was behind all this for a hot second. Those piebald gipsy people are not to be trusted! But mostly because they try to save people from fevers by dosing them with brandy, quinine, and ammonia. How did we ever survive as a species before modern medicine, I ask you? And he has anecdotal evidence that Franklin's actions on Rachel's birthday night are due to opium because, you see, HE takes opium (it's totally medicinal!) so he would know. And he's writing a thingy on how the brain works, which must have sounded like  Fuck yea, SCIENCE!!! to the Victorians but at which I must admit I sniggered quite a lot.

But because this is fiction, they are able to recreate the moment and Franklin does indeed steal a bauble from the dresser and Rachel watches because she'll do anything - anything! - to clear his name, but after re-creating the scene up to the taking of the diamond, Franklin falls asleep on the couch.

So much for THAT theory. It is worth pointing out here that Betteredge has decided he dislikes Ezra Jennings - who has refused to accept the sovereignty of Robinson Crusoe - and so pesters him hilariously throughout. Oh, Betteredge.; I suspect that you and Miss Clack would have had great fun trading quotations from your respective holy books at one another, had you ever met.

But wait! All is not lost! The diamond is still in the bank - and once again the Victorians get the drop on us because we don't really understand pawning things to banks in this day-and-age or how that works, and Wilkie is of very little help explaining this so it must have been one of those Things that Everyone Understands kind of like parliamentary procedure or Bubble Tape gum. Sgt. Cuff has come back from his roses and written the name of the guy he now thinks did the deed on an envelope and given it to Franklin, who isn't supposed to open it until Franklin figures it out himself. Way to be a dick, Cuff.

So they go to the bank and watch the handoff of the diamond but everyone sees something different and they end up in the room of an inn where there is a dark-complected sailor dead in the bed and when his true identity was revealed this is what I said:

And then he turned out to be even MORE of a dickbag than we previously thought - what with the trying to marry people for their money and whatnot - because he was keeping a woman out in the country and giving her jewels and a house all in her name with the money from some kid's trust fund.

So, it was Godfrey all along, and he'd have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those damn kids Indians! Which in retrospect, I could have picked up on had I not been so excited by the myriad possibilities that Wilkie put before me; it became clearer that Godfrey needed money once he and Rachel broke up. BUT that is the mark of a great writer! Hiding things in plain sight! Distraction and obfuscation! Lady Verinder and Betteredge foreverrrrrr!


Damn, that was a good book. Wilkie Collins, I bow to you.

This book gets 11 of 11 Moonstones**



*NOT the ugliest name in all history. Oh Wilkie, have you forgotten SIR PERCIVAL GLYDE?!?
**Not actual moonstones. And no, that joke doesn't get old.