I've finally got to the end of the final Harry Potter book. It took me 4 days because I only had an hour or 2 each day, on the train or in the evenings, to read it.
A few thoughts:
- The early books were a bit childish. Thankfully the later ones were more grown up.
- What has J K Rowling got against the North of England? She names a couple of evil characters after Northern towns (Warrington, the Slytherin chaser in the earlier books, and Runcorn, a fairly nasty man from the Ministry in the last book). Also, do all Hogwarts students live in London? There is only ever mention of the train leaving from Kings Cross.
Possibly a few spoilers below...
It was my company Summer Do in Birmingham tonight. Emma was supposed to be meeting me at the office but she was running late. It had been raining all day and the railway lines were flooded. No trains were leaving Coventry station but the ticket offices were still happily selling tickets to people. They weren't going to put on a rail replacement bus because they claimed the flooding wasn't their fault.
Emma eventually turned up 2½ hours later, having taken the bus instead. She said she wouldn't have bothered but I'd already paid in advance. We stayed for a few drinks and the buffet, to make sure we got our moneys worth.
We didn't know whether the trains would be running properly by the time we were ready to go home, so we thought it would be safer to leave early. We were in luck and there was a train ready to leave when we got to New St.
We got back to Coventry before midnight. Emma had pre-ordered the Harry Potter book from Waterstones and we had to wait for the shop to open. She decided not to read the book there an then, but to wait until morning.
I am currently reading Where Did It All Go Right?, by Andrew Collins. The broadcaster and journalist tries to counter the fashion for 'miserable childhood' autobiographies with this book, where he describes growing up in a fairly normal family in Northampton in the 70s.
The book is effectively a time capsule of that decade, with chapters alternating between describing aspects of his home life (sometimes in great detail), and extracts from his diaries. He's a few years older than me so some of the TV and music was different to my childhood, but some aspects were painfully familiar.
The chapter called Supermousse covered food in the 70s and was an absolute gem. He came to the conclusion that, although kids eat rubbish today, things weren't actually that much better back then. He presented extracts from his diary describing meals, and most of it was out of packets or tins. Pasta and rice were non-existent, beans and chips were ubiquitous. A lot of this was similar to my own recollections. Vegetables did mostly consist of carrots and peas (with sprouts at Christmas of course). In our family, Cauliflower Cheese made an appearance after I discovered it at my Aunt and Uncles wedding and ate several platefuls.
Potatoes were the main bulk, usually chips or mashed, or sometimes mashed then fried - we sometimes had 'Bubble and Squeak' if there was leftover cabbage. One thing people did do better in the 70s was re-use leftover or spare food, probably because it was more expensive in real terms than today.
He mentions the lack of curries, or anything rice based really, but no mention of rice pudding. In the book, pasta was largely confined to tins of spaghetti, but at least we had Macaroni Cheese, usually out of a tin but I remember my mum making it on occasion, and thinking it took an awfully long time. The home made cheese sauce was better than the tinned variety though.
The 70s was a decade full of terrible food, but through no fault of the people living through it. Most people had never encountered foreign food, most people had never been abroad and even those who had were largely wary of the strange foods on offer. People weren't used to experimenting with food. Ingredients which are common now were a rarity back then - I don't remember seeing peppers, aubergines or courgettes as a child (recently in Asda, we saw Courgettes on the shelf under 'Exotic Veg' - I hope that was a mistake and they don't still consider such a common vegetable as exotic. But this was Asda so you never know.)
It's always a bit sad to read about the death of someone if you were a fan of their work. I read a lot of Vonnegut's books while I was in my 20s, starting with The Sirens of Titan. His most famous book, Slaughterhouse 5, was inspired by his experience of the fire-bombing of Dresden and is usually mentioned alongside Catch 22 as one of the greatest anti-war novels.
I finished reading the book on the train home tonight. If treated simply as a novel describing the end of the world, the traditional fight of good vs. evil and the only group of Christians in the world who realise what's going in, then it is a reasonable fantasy. Ignoring any religious issues at the moment, there are a few odd ideas in the book such as the passage which described addresses being collected so emails could be sent out to attract visitors to the organisations website. Obviously they meant it in good spirit, but spamming for Jesus would not make them very popular. There was another section towards the end of the book where thousands of voices were singing in different languages but the sounds combined to form the Hallelujah Chorus from The Messiah. If that was tried in a film it would be such a terrible cliche.
Most of the problems stem from the authors notes at the end of each chapter. Oh the whole, these are interesting and draw attention to parallels between the story and the Bible, but again there are a few issues.
In the notes at the end of chapter 4, the 'Big Pot' is used as another name for the Big Dipper constellation, in order to draw another parallel with the Bible. I've never heard this seriously used as a name for the constellation and this sounded so tenuous when I read it.
At the end of chapter 23, the author says:
There is something about the return of Jesus that sounds unbelievable to the modern, cynical mind. And yet it is no more unbelievable than any of the other myths and legends (including evolution) that mankind has come up with to explain our existence.
Now personally, I think the idea that the flora and fauna of our planet has been slowly changing over millions of years to be a more rational explanation than the belief that God created everything in only a few days. For a start it is based on many years of studying the real world, rather than simply believing something which was written in a book a few thousand years ago and for which there is no proof whatsoever.
This absolute belief in every word of the bible is possibly the book's greatest weakness. It crop up again in the notes after chapter 23 where he claims:
Everything else about the Bible indicates that it is an historically accurate book
For most of the Bible, there is no historical corroborating evidence. Especially the story of the creation, where there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
I was walking back to the office after wandering around the shops at lunchtime. On New Street, at the bottom of the ramp which leads up to the Palisades shopping centre, there was a bloke handing out books. Ever curious, I decided to see what it was about. The book was called Survivors, written by a pseudonymous Zion Ben Jonah. It seemed to be some kind of post-apocalyptic tale designed as a warning about moral corruption in modern society. I tried to hand the book back saying that I wasn't interested, but he refused to take it back and said that he only wanted 'a few pennies' in return. I rummaged around in my pocket and pulled out a few coins to give to him - I had less than £1 on me after buying food so he only got a few coins, which strangely were all 20p pieces.
I started reading the book on the train home. It's a novel where the end of the world seems to follow the events described in the bible, which starts with the nuclear destruction of America. The book also takes issue with the moral corruption of modern America and how organised religion has diverged so far from the original teachings of Christ - both fair points as well.
There are one or two issues I have with the book (apart from it's obvious preachy nature) but I'll wait until I've finished reading it before saying more. You can read a review of the book here.
I finished reading the book on the train home tonight. It's an interesting, entertaining and moving (auto)biography, started by John Peel and finished by his wife after he died. Full of anecdotes and interesting titbits about Radio One's longest serving DJ and presenter of Home Truths, which was one of my favourite Radio 4 programmes for a while.
