[  Mood: Sleepy ]
I finished Deathly Hallows at 2am. Again, no spoilers here, but on finishing I had tears rolling down my face and a big goofy grin. I held the book in my hands staring at the picture of JK Rowling on the back cover for about five minutes, just feeling that warm satisfaction that I had hoped for but feared not finding. Then I got up and walked into the living room and gently shelved it.

Even when I was writing all the praise in the entry below, I was worried. Would she be able to put it to bed? Could she really tie up all the plot threads elegantly, and make a powerful ending, and make us believe it? Could she earn whatever ending she writes? That’s the hardest part, I think–making an ending we’ll believe in. So easy to fall flat, especially with such a weight to bear.

Well, she did it. I don’t know if I cry over books more or less often than others, but this one had the tears rising, man, four or five times–and it didn’t just feel like emotional manipulation, either. Tear-jerker writing doesn’t move me. These were characters I’d fallen in love with (more than I’d realized), going through intense pain that felt truly necessary for the story to work. And the ending–absolutely satisfying.

What I wrote below about Rowling challenging herself and taking risks more and more with each book, and how it goes double for this one–well supersize that double. I kept thinking, this is a VERY risky book. When I would stop reading to go do something, I often found myself thinking about those people who started reading this as preteens, now in their early 20s, and how this book could really turn a lot of them off. They could very justly say, "This is not what I signed on for!" When I say it’s serious, I don’t mean it’s just grim–I mean it’s breaking through into being serious literature. Rowling destroys cherished preconceptions, forcing readers to question everything they know. For someone who grew up with this series, that could lead them to question everything in their own lives, right at the age when they should begin doing so, but so many don’t.

But it’s a dangerous thing to ask your readers to do that. It’s not exactly a pleasant process, even if it’s necessary to becoming an adult. And that’s the thing–the ending of the series is not for kids. I can’t think of any other series of books that does this: It takes readers from childhood to adulthood, and forces them, if they stick with it, to think like adults–something a lot of adults refuse to do.

In a way, it’s the opposite of what Lucas did with (to?) Star Wars. It started out as a kid’s action-adventure story, and got a bit more mature by the 3rd movie–and then it went back to kiddieland with the prequels. Lucas shied away from the challenge that Rowling seized.

Ms. Rowling, I salute you, and thank you. You have added far more pleasure to my life than I would have imagined possible after reading Harry Potter & the Philosopher’s Stone. You’ve gone from a fun, light, inconsequential writer to a knockout-punch heavyweight champion. I can’t wait to see what you’ll do next.

[  Mood: Cool ]
When I picked up my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Saturday, I thought about blogging a chapter-by-chapter reaction to the story. However, this is grading season for me–lots of essays on Melville and Thoreau and Black Superheroes to read and mark. So no time, and anyway, it would’ve taken me a lot longer to read the book that way. On top of that, one of our esteemed writers, Robert E. Howard scholar Mark Finn, is working on something similar. I’m not sure how similar, because I don’t want to read his piece before I finish the book, but it’ll be up on the RevSF front page soon.

I’m still a few chapters before the end–I almost decided to just finish it at the breakfast table this morning, but I must be responsible to my students. I’ll get it done before I go to sleep tonight, I’m sure. Anyway, I’m quite impressed. I believe I mentioned in one of our "Harry Potter Sucks/Rocks" segments that Rowling is becoming a better writer with every book, and that goes double for this one. I’m a bit of an amateur writer myself, and man, if I had written a light, fun kids’ fantasy that had turned into an enormous hit and made me the richest author in the world, I have to admit I’d probably just try to follow it up with formulaic book after formulaic book and not really try anything new. That’s what most writers do, after all.

But not Rowling. OK, she did for the first three books, but come on. Since Book 4, you can see (if you look for it) that she’s pushing herself, learning her craft, and becoming a damn good writer. She’s taking a lot of risks, too. The vast majority of her fans fell in love with the first book–why risk turning them off by making the stories darker, more realistic, more political, more complex? Why mess with success?

Because she’s a dedicated writer, that’s why. It’s easy to make fun of Harry Potter as mere light entertainment, but in the later books, especially this final one, that’s not really true. She’s not quite at, say, Ursula K. LeGuin’s level, but she’s become a real pro of a writer, in plotting, characterization, description, prose style, what have you. I’d say she’s become the equal of Philip Pullman now.

And it’s easy to make fun of Rowling for getting rich, but while I don’t think financial success has more than a superficial connection to talent and skill (as a scholar, I specialize in an author who made a pittance in his whole life from writing, and who’s now considered America’s Shakespeare), I think a lot of anti-Rowling grumbling is just jealousy. I bet she can reach LeGuin’s level. I hope she really does leave Harry behind and do something totally new, the way LeGuin did with the Earthsea books (I know, she wrote other books before Earthsea).

Right, enough blogging–must grade.

[  Mood: Very Sad ]
Coco scampered off to Hamster Heaven about three hours ago.

I think she was quite relieved it was over. She was just exhausted. She went so gently that, although she was in Junko’s hands, there was about a five-minute period when we weren’t sure if she was alive or dead. I cleaned her up and wrapped her in clean blankets (an old t-shirt cut into strips that she liked to nest in), and put her in a small box filled with sweet-smelling dry grass. We added her favorite foods, and let her lie in state in the family butsudan, which has statues of what I think of as our "Three Intercessors": Kannon, Boddhisatva of Infinite Mercy; Jizo, Boddhisatva of Lost Children; and Mary Mother of Jesus. We burned incense and prayed for her.

However, as it is a hot and humid day, before leaving for work I put her in a tupperware container and put that in the fridge.

We’ll take her to the local park tomorrow and, when no one is looking, bury her in the same area as our other pets. We have four hamsters there already, plus a turtle and several tiny fish. We call it Hamster Hill. It has a good view, and a couple of sakura trees to provide gorgeous cherry blossoms in the spring.

Our beloved, very old hamster Coco is in a bad way. Something going on in her reproductive tract, leaking blood. She’s weak, but struggling to survive. She’s tired, but doesn’t seem to be in pain, and the doc thinks it might stem from an infection (couldn’t find a tumor), so we’re giving her antibiotics.

She’s 3 years and about 3 months old, which is the longest any of our hamsters have lived, and something like the equivalent of 80 in humans. I hope she pulls through, but I’m not expecting her to be around much longer.

[  Mood: Happy ]
Two years ago today, our rebooted, reanimated, almost totally spam-free Message Boards were reborn. Happy Re-Birthday!

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt the next day, too.

OK, I know worms don’t have knees, but you know what I mean!

Right, I have entered geezerhood. I’m 40.

Took the day off, relaxed. Planned to go to Hard Rock for BBQ ribs, but a typhoon got in the way, so instead went to the video shop before the wind got dangerous and rented Casino Royale and Nacho Libre. Watched the former–damn good stuff. Best Bond ever? Not sure yet, but a contender. They managed to make it reasonably realistic, and yet still feel like a Bond movie–but not like a cheesey Bond movie, which is nearly all of them. For a real review, see here.

Hard Rock and presents tomorrow. Monday is me and Junko’s 10th anniversary. Holy cow, I need to buy a present!

My geek project deadline is today. Did I succeed in getting myself into the best condition I’ve ever been in? Yes and no. I’m the strongest I’ve ever been, with, like, actual muscles all over the place. Not huge muscles, but bigger than ever before. But I still have a beer belly hiding what I am sure is a perfectly sculpted sixpack. Anyway, the project will continue.

Monday night, Junko (my darling wife) had her first recital before an audience that didn’t consist solely of family, friends, or the students from the singing classes she takes.

She says she was so nervous that, after practicing earlier in the day, she lay down on a sofa and just felt sick, saying to herself, "I want to go home, I want to go home…" Luckily, she had no ruby slippers, and when the time came she did a great job. She probably wouldn’t have gotten a ticket to Hollywood, but Randy would’ve been nice to her, Simon wouldn’t have been too mean, and Paula would have been very complimentary.

She started this hobby of taking singing lessons a few months ago, and I’m really happy that she’s getting on stage now. She has a strong lower-range, rich-and-sultry voice. She needs some more practice, but she’s already a good amateur. I’m proud of her for going for it, and I know she’ll only get better and better.

Saturday, 07/07/07, was Tanabata, a romantic holiday in which the star Vega, representing the weaver princess Orihime, and the star Altair, representing the cowherd prince Hikoboshi, who were in love before they died and were placed in the heavens at opposite ends of the sky, can cross the Milky Way and meet each other, as long as the sky is clear.

This is cruelly ironic, since the sky is virtually never clear in Japan on July 7th, as it’s in the rainy season. On the other hand, it must be clear somewhere–after all, this is an international festival, which we in Japan inherited from a Chinese legend. Not that logic should come into play in fairy tales…

Or should it? I’m reminded of an excellent book I read a couple of years ago, Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart, who wrote a series of three mystery/fantasy novels set in ancient historical/mythical China, called The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox. Bridge of Birds is the first one and the only one I’ve read, and it’s the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi written as a mystery story. Great stuff, very exciting and funny.

In fact, you can read it for free here, or at least the first draft of it. You can also find an interview with the author there, and see why he only wrote three of the novels. I’m planning to track down that omnibus edition of all three of them.

Anyway, highest recommendations–if you find it, get it.

So, today’s Independence Day. Happy 4th to all my fellow Americans.

Notice the lack of exclamation points. I’m in Japan, where it’s just pouring down buckets of rain, as this is the Rainy Season. When I first got here, I tried to celebrate the 4th like a good Amerikanski, but what I soon discovered is that trying to take over a section of beach and turn it into a little slice of fireworks-poppin’ America is, well, kind of pointless. Since it’s during the rainy season, nobody is there to be overawed by your patriotism, and even in those years when it’s not raining on the 4th, nobody cares. People on the beach and in parks are setting off a few bottle rockets all the time in the summer.

And it really gets silly when you witness your first Japanese summer fireworks display. On August 2nd, we have the biggest one here in Fukuoka, but there are several others here in the city, and dozens out in small towns, from the second half of July to the first half of September. And they make the biggest July 4th display in America look like a damp squib. I’m talking 90 minutes of amazing, overwhelming, absolutely gorgeous explosions, one after another with only brief pauses to let the accumulated smoke drift away. And they go off at a much lower altitude than would ever be allowed in America, to the point where you have to watch for sparks setting your hair on fire. The explosions make your internal organs vibrate. It leaves you numb.

It’s kind of weird that Japan, which in many ways has such a "nanny mentality" government and has far stricter safety laws about things like food safety and gun control, is so much more permissive than the US when it comes to fireworks. Here, you can buy big bundles of them at 7-11 and set them off just about anywhere, anytime, as long as you don’t make the neighbors complain. In Texas, it’s far, FAR easier to buy guns and ammo than to buy firecrackers. (You might have a two-week waiting period on guns, but you can only buy fireworks three weeks a year.) I think this is related to what Sneezy talks about here.

So anyway, Independence Day has joined that growing group of American holidays where I just go, "Oh, today’s the 4th…" And then I feel a bit homesick.

I went by Mandake, a big manga/anime store, a couple days ago, hoping to find a cool figurine to use for my huge, somewhat retarded Paladin character in one of the D&D games I’m playing in. Fukuoka doesn’t have anyplace that carries the little lead figures or the new plastic ones that you’d find in a US game/comic shop, so I was trying my luck with collector’s figures from anime shows. Some of them are small enough to be usable on a battlegrid.

Anyway, no luck. The ones that were small enough were all unsuitable–schoolgirls with magic wands and the like. But it did remind me of what a weird place these shops are.

The first time I went there was with Alexandra, one of my fellow players back in the days of the Hakata Hackmasters. Everybody else in the group was at least 10 years younger than me, mostly JET Program members just out of university, come to Japan for a couple years to teach at public schools. Wendy, another member, found me online through a review I’d written of the Call of Cthulhu rulebook. She got some of her friends together and we started gaming.

Anyway, Alexandra was helping me out. The Man in Black (the one from the Delta Green Mailing List, not Johnny Cash) had done me a favor and I was paying him back with spaceships he could use in a game of his back in Hawaii. Alexandra was a regular customer of Mandrake, so she took me there to show me around.

Now, the 4th floor is where the figures are, and there’s a lot of them. Sadly, there’s a strict no-camera rule, so I can’t show pics, but it’s probably somebody’s idea of heaven. Tons and tons and tons of stuff, and a lot of it quite cheap. But very narrow aisles, and very little organization. I get exhausted just looking around every time I go there.

The weirdness really started when I was done looking around and Xandra took me downstairs to the 3rd and 2nd floors. 3rd floor is "girls’ comics," which means original or spoof hentai made for (and mostly by) ladies, which means it’s mostly stories about gay guys having lots of romance and a little sex. It’s also the cosplay floor, which was pretty cool to look at, and which was what she was there for. Some seriously elaborate costumes from anime were on display.

2nd floor is "boys’ comics," which means hentai, hentai, LOTS of hentai. Some of it was of interest to me, but most everywhere I looked was very heavy sanity-damaging stuff. While I was trying to pop my eyeballs back into my head, I was worrying that one of my students might show up. "Oh, David-sensei, are you into lolicon tentacle bondage?" [strangled voice] "No, just lookin’ around…"

Back on the 1st floor, what a relief to be surrounded by regular used comics and used video games. Anyway, these days it’s just straight up the escalator to the 4th floor when I go in there once every few months. I always have to have a long pause between visits, so I can forget how tiny and cramped the place is, and the musty smell. It always makes me miss Dragon’s Lair, my old shop back in Austin, with its big, open spaces.