- Terry, USGS Crew : I have great taste in women! When have I ever steered you wrong?
Harry Dalton : What about Astrid?
Terry, USGS Crew : What about Astrid? I thought the two of you would have a lot in common. She said she was into rocks.
Harry Dalton : Crystals, Terry. Crystals. Not rocks. Crystals.
I’ve never had any interest in Harry Potter, but my daughter asked me to watch The Prisoner of Azkaban with her. It’s really rather good. I’ll start reading the books to her.
I’m certain Ian Brown is in it. Either that or a doppelganger.
The Prisoner of Azkaban is the best movie of the series and the book is also amongst the best one … if you are willing to overlook the time travel trope as that sort of invalidates everything. The director is Alfonso Cuaron so that was to be expected.
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If you read the whole series you can see Rowling’s writing skills evolving from ‘amateur storyteller’ to ‘proper writer’. She got the hang of it a lot faster than most.
Wasn’t overly impressed with the movies.
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Yeah. The first one most closely follows the book, which is why I like it. I don’t like the first Dumbledore though. He was a bit intense.
I hated all the movies, myself. They were too different to the book.
I don’t think I have any such book, but you reminded me of graduate school.
There was this superfine, intellectual-type classmate in our program, and during one class she mentioned that her favorite book was Infinite Jest. For whatever reason my buddy could not abide this reading preference, and the two of them stopped speaking for the rest of the year.
I think he was probably just mad because he’d been rejected by her and Infinite Jest was his excuse. To be fair, he made some compelling arguments against that book, and after I read it I agreed with most of what he said.
I think the fact so many critics praised David Foster Wallace as a literary God after he passed annoyed those who found his books too impenetrable. They in turn view those who label him as their favorite author as perhaps literary snobs who mention his name for the prestige value rather than true enjoyment of his output. I’m indifferent about him, but that’s my take from drifting through some bookclub forums and threads over the years.
Infinite Jest was hard for me to get through. In terms of sheer impenetrability it doesn’t hold a candle to Gravity’s Rainbow or Finnegan’s Wake, but yeah, it seemed like a lot of effort relative to what’s actually in the book.
Thing is, I read a collection of Wallace’s essays once and really enjoyed them.