Archive for October, 2007

More Excitement

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

I know I’m a little late, but I just finished the last Harry Potter. What a thrill! The whole book is action scenes and I must say that after keeping me tense for the duration it had a very satisfying ending. I don’t want to give anything away for people who haven’t read it – I was lucky enough that nothing had spoiled it for me – but I found it a great read.

Although I do note that some of JKR’s plot explanations get a little befuddled. That’s not just in the last book either, but nearly every one of the others. There’s a scene right at the end of each, usually where Harry talks to Dumbledore, where everything is explained – and while the odd happenings and strange events are always explained away, sometimes the explanations are so far beyond what you would expect that they become implausible, even though they have very obviously been carefully thought out.

In my opinion, the revelation at the end of a novel should draw together the seemingly incongruous and make you go “Ah, now I see! Wow, how clever”, and leave you with the feeling htat you should ahve thought of that connection yourself. Whereas Harry Potter is a bit more like “Righty-oh then, well I guess that does explain things” but I’ve never really found the explanations entirely satisfactory, like they depend too much on random ‘magic’ laws or spells that aren’t understood or explained throughout the rest of the book.

But having said that, they are definitely all great reads and some of my favourite light-reading books of all time.

Go Cats!

Monday, October 1st, 2007

I don’t really follow football that much, but it’s been impossible to live in Geelong and not get caught up in the excitement over the last couple of weeks. And after the Grand Final win by the largest margin in history on Saturday night, Geelong went crazy! It’s been 44 years since the last time they won, and i think that pent-up excitement was released in one giant splurge on Saturday night. Here’s some footage on YouTube: