Saturday, July 16, 2005

(quiz feature!) how did jeremy spend $189 this morning?



But at least he will have something other than his own ruminations to focus on the next ten or so times he goes jogging by himself.

I have not read any of the previous Harry Potter books--instead, I listened to all of them on tape. One consequence of this is that I don't know how anything is spelled. Another is that, for the last book, I ended up getting wrapped up in it and listening to the last twelve hours in a row, staying up until 4am one night (it's not easy to skim or skip ahead in an audiobook). I didn't really like the last book--for reasons more nicely articulated by Kieran Healy than I ever could--but I am optimistic that this one will be better. Something I did like about the last couple books was that it was so plain that Rowling has become so incredibly bored writing about Quidditch that she has to come up with ways of injuring or otherwise taking Harry out of action so she doesn't have to write those scenes (but, what are you going to do, when you have to follow the entire adolescent sports career of someone who is already the best in their school at the age of 11?).

Incidentally, the JFW Department of Discontinuity notes that this week will mark probably the biggest one-week spike in time spent book-reading in human history. I was wondering if there would be any observable secondary effects on time or stuff consumption, such as a decline in the aggregate number of hits to blogs as a result of people making time from Harry.

4 comments:

jnsys said...

Just finished the book. Jeremy? $189? I spent a total of $19.95 on my hard copy. Of course, I only slept for three hours total, getting to bed at 6:00. I think this one is my all-time favorite.

jeremy said...

RWS: It's 8 hours shorter than GoF, so a workday's difference in length.

jnsys: You didn't buy an 1GB iPod Shuffle as part of the deal.

jnsys said...

Ah, that would do it. I <3 my little Shuffle, so congrats on both accounts...

Ann Althouse said...

They should sell iPod shuffles pre-loaded with this book.

(Boy, do I hate emoticons! I knew that one was supposed to mean love, and I actually intepreted it as another body part before I perceived "heart." People who make emoticons either expect us to have learned them like ideograms or to see what you think we are going to see. But it's a bit of a Rorshcach test.)