Calvin and Hobbes

I recently finished re-reading all the Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. I was in college in 1985 when the strip premiered in newspapers, but in law school when I discovered the strip after the first compilation, Calvin and Hobbes, was released in 1987. I bought each new compilation until its creator, Bill Watterson, retired the strip in 1995.

In my opinion, Calvin and Hobbes was the greatest daily comic strip in history. The strip had a melancholy feel similar to Peanuts and it's well-developed cast of kids, but focused on two characters, a six-year-old boy, Calvin, and his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, and their interactions with the mundane world around them. It spoke to many things I experienced growing up and was filled with humor, wisdom, and an astute, philosophical view on the world around us. The genius, creativity and integrity of Bill Watterson is clearly evident throughout.

It's been years since I read them, so the stories almost seemed new. What I enjoyed this time was seeing how the comic was fully realized from the first strip. The side-characters are there from the beginning and consistent with their portrayals throughout the ten years of stories -- Mom and Dad (never named), Moe the bully, Susie Derkins, Calvin's smarter, kinder classmate and neighbor, his teacher, Miss Wormwood, Rosalyn, his long-suffering babysitter, and more. Stories involving Calvin's imagination, like Spaceman Spiff, frequent dinosaur attacks, armies of snowmen, the Transmogrifier, time-travel, Calvin Ball, Stupendous Man and other alter-egos, were all brilliantly realized. 

And of course, there's Hobbes, Calvin's wiser and kinder stuffed tiger, only alive in Calvin's imagination, his best friend, sometimes competitor, and constant companion. Calvin and Hobbes was also remarkably consistent, never seeing any drop in quality over its 10 year long existence. And when Watterson had had enough, he stopped. No merchandising, no animated specials, no reboot. For 30 years now, he's let his work speak for itself.

Calvin and Hobbes was the best. I don't expect any pushback on this.

Happy Reading

I received a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas, 2012. I had wanted an e-reader for a while, and with the release of the excellent Paperwhite and a price point below $100, I put it on my Christmas list.

Since then, I've downloaded a pretty good number of books, rarely paying more than $2 for one. Being an Amazon Prime member I can also borrow one book a month (I know, lame) for free. I've done that quite a few times but it can be a little frustrating if you're reading a series, as you sometimes need to wait to download the next book.

Below are all the books I've read on my Kindle since the start of 2013 (not in order). All were new to me except the the nine books I had already read (in junior or senior high school), marked with an asterisk.

FICTION
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

The Skull by Philip K. Dick

The Shining by Stephen King

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein*

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman*
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy
The Star Wars Trilogy*
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke*
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke*
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke*
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein*
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
All 14 original Ian Fleming James Bond Novels

HISTORY
Dunkirk: Retreat from the Brink of Destruction by Lieutenant Colonel Ewan Butler and Maj. J.S. Bradford
The German Generals Talk by B.H. Lidell Hart
Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis
Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff
The Fall of Japan by William Craig
History of the Civil War by James Ford Rhodes
Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway by Walter Lord
The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans
The Third Reich in Power by Richard J. Evans
The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans
D-Day Through German Eyes by Holger Eckhertz
Stalingrad: How the Red Army Triumphed by Michael K. Jones
The Battle of the Atlantic by Donald Macintyre
Hitler by Ian Kershaw
Killing the Bismarck by Iain Ballantyne
Operation Barbarossa: The German Invasion of Soviet Russia by Robert Kirchubel

NON-FICTION

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
These Are the Voyages - Season One by Marc Cushman and Susan Osborn
These Are the Voyages - Season Two by Marc Cushman and Susan Osborn
These Are the Voyages - Season Three by Marc Cushman and Susan Osborn
When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales

I'd be thrilled to discuss any of them in the comments.

Viewing recommendation: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Everyone in my family has read Daniel Handler's excellent series of 13 kids' books, A Series of Unfortunate Events. We also enjoyed the 2004 movie by the same name starring Jim Carrey which retold the first three books. We've always been sad that that movie never had a sequel, leaving the story in limbo.

But now Netflix has come to the rescue! This weekend, Carol and I started watching Netflix's new streaming series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, starring Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf and Patrick Warburton as Lemony Snicket, and absolutely love it. We're only two episodes in, covering the events of the first book. I was reading some online comments and the consensus is that subsequent episodes get better and better. If true, this is a going to be a fantastic show, because the first two episodes were great.

They're covering each book with two, approximately one hour long episodes, which means they'll use 26 episodes (over three seasons) to tell the entire story. It's an incredible way to tell what is a dark, nuanced, funny, clever, and tangled story, so I'm really excited about it. It's clear from the first two episodes that they're layering in a few new characters and twists, but they're staying very close to the books.

If you're interested (and you should be), here's the trailer in an earlier post.

Edited to add: The show has a real Pushing Daisies vibe, which is another reason to recommend it.

In a world of Actual Unfortunate Events . . .

I'm really looking forward to some fictitious ones.

This looks great!

The Forever War (revisited)

Around 35 years ago, give or take, I read Joe Haldeman's classic science fiction novel, The Forever War. I was in junior high or high school at the time, within a decade of the book's initial release in 1974. Until this week, I didn't remember much about the story other than it's similar to Heinlein's Starship Troopers, it involves time dilation from traveling near the speed of light (the protagonist is a soldier who fights aliens on distant worlds while time passes much more quickly for those back on Earth), and it bothered young me that on his return to Earth, the protagonist finds gender lines blurred and men wearing (gasp!) makeup. That's pretty much everything I remembered about the book.

I'd been looking for something to read on my Kindle for a few weeks, so when The Forever War went on sale for $1.99 last week, I snatched it up (metaphorically and digitally).

I'm about forty percent done (see, I have a Kindle, which reports the percentage completed as you read) and I'm loving it. It's really well written and has a great classic age of science fiction vibe skewed by the post-Vietnam era in which it was written. Hilariously, the story starts in the year 1997 where Earth has a presence throughout the solar system and colonies in other star systems, so it's a little off target. In the preface, Haldeman says he set it in the near future because he wanted his future soldiers to also be Vietnam veterans, but admits that, yeah, his take on our future was a little off.

If you haven't read it, I can recommend it and I'm not even done yet. I'm remembering a few more details as I work through it, but for the most part, it feels like the first time.

What's Ipecac Reading Now?

At the moment, I'm back on my World War II kick, reading Stalingrad: How the Red Army Triumphed by Michael K. Jones. Jones' work is a reinterpretation of the battle of Stalingrad based on interviews with survivors conducted after the fall of the Soviet Union and without all the communist propaganda that infected previous accounts. 

The idea that a defeated, outnumbered, demoralized Soviet army, retreating from the bigger, better equipped, triumphant, more professional German 6th army, would turn the tide of the war in a desperate stand at Stalingrad, has always seemed impossible. I'm finding the book fascinating and finally starting to understand what happened. It's still amazing, but at least the story is coming clear.

I guess now I'll have to watch Enemy at the Gates.

Before this, I read Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, the basis of two different classic movies, (1956 and 1978). I really enjoyed the story of a Doctor returning to his small town to find that alien pods have been taking over the townspeople, destroying the originals and creating exact duplicates in their place. It's a good story and well written, although the characters constantly do stupid things like not taking pictures or movies of any evidence and they keep destroying the physical evidence of alien pods, even when it falls into their laps. Still, it's easy to see why this story was made into multiple movies and created the "pod people" meme.

Afterwards, I watched the 1956 version of the movie starring Kevin McCarthy. They fix some of the glaring problems with the plot of the book and ramp up the paranoia. Given that the two leads are both divorced, I found the movie pretty daring for the 1950s. Not so daring was the studio-imposed "happy" ending. Lame. I'm looking forward to watching the 1978 version with Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy.

Reading Update - Breakfast of Champions and Starship Troopers

I finished Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” a couple of weeks ago and followed up by reading “Breakfast of Champions” last week. I didn’t like BOC nearly as much as Slaughterhouse Five. BOC is a lot more “experimental” and was probably considered pretty edgy in its time, but it doesn’t have a lot of plot and seems to be written from the perspective of someone explaining humanity to aliens. That’s interesting, but ultimately didn’t lead to much. It got better as it went on, once the plot kicked in, but that’s about all I can say about it. Plus, Vonnegut uses the N-word A LOT and I wasn’t sure if it was meant satirically or not. (On balance, I think so).

This week I started Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”. I read it in Junior or Senior High (30+ years ago) but didn’t remember much of it other than a few scenes. I know that the book has a reputation as being a polemic in favor of fascism and, of course, I remember Paul Verhoeven’s movie which I really love. My impression before re-reading was that the movie, described by many as 90210 in space, was nothing like the book.

Boy was that impression wrong. I’m about halfway done with the book and so far it has tracked the movie pretty well. Johnnie Rico starts out in high school, joins the Federation forces on a whim, goes through basic training and is now involved in the disastrous invasion of Klendathu, following the destruction of Buenos Aires. Many of the same characters are in the book and a lot of the high school and training scenes from the book are in the movie. They did add some characters in the movie, played up the romantic entanglements, took out the power armor completely, and moved a few things around, but all in all I am shocked at how similar the two stories are.

I also hit the first jarring notes of libertarian/fascist philosophy this morning as Heinlein devotes a chapter to the glorious societal benefits of corporal punishment and how 20th century Democracies failed because they stopped beating their kids. Yeah, that was charming, and not at all a strawman argument, and stupid and wrong.

Still, that aside, I’m enjoying the book and finding my love of the movie enhancing the read.

What's Ipecac Reading Now?

I recently finished reading Robert Kirchubel’s “Operation Barbarossa: The German Invasion of the Soviet Union”. Having read a good number of WWII histories over the past couple of years, I wanted to get more detail on the actual military aspects of Hitler’s biggest mistake. Kirchubel’s book, only covering the first six months after the invasion, certainly provided lots of great, fascinating detail.

Wanting to take a break from World War II, I went about a week without anything specific to read. We’re members of Amazon Prime which means I can borrow one book per month free from the Amazon Lending Library, but if you don’t have a specific title in mind that’s part of the library, sorting through the thousands of books is rather daunting. Unfortunately, two books I’d like to reread, Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” are not available for free. (I’m really interested to see if my reaction to them has changed since I read them as a teenager).

With that in mind, the other night I reluctantly decided to browse through the science fiction section of the Lending Library. Lo and behold, on one of the first pages I found something I actually wanted to read, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five”! I consider this a great stroke of luck as I’ve been wanting to read more Vonnegut since I finished “Cat’s Cradle” last year. I’m about halfway done and really enjoying it. Vonnegut is great.

Ian Fleming and James Bond

As I’ve written before, for the past few months I’ve been reading all of the Ian Fleming James Bond novels. As of last week, I was down to a single short-story, “007 in New York”, which is the last story in a book of Bond short-stories released after Fleming’s death.

Before I started the story, I discovered that today, August 12, 2014, is the fiftieth anniversary of Fleming’s death. I put aside my Kindle so I could finish the final Bond story on the anniversary. This afternoon, I read that story, an odd little narrative of Bond daydreaming about what he’ll do in New York City while on an assignment. The story ends suddenly on a humorous note, with absolutely no action, and with a recipe for scrambled eggs! So now I’m done.

I loved reading the Bond novels. Not only were they well written, interesting and exciting in their own right, but comparing them to the movies was a lot of fun. There are, of course, many differences and seeing the choices made by the filmmakers when adapting the stories was a fascinating lesson in filmmaking. The films Casino Royale, From Russia with Love, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service are the closest to the source material, while Moonraker, Diamonds are Forever and The Man with the Golden Gun are probably the farthest. The films Goldfinger and Doctor No made notable improvements on excellent novels because the process of filmmaking resulted in tighter, more logical and action-packed stories. Reading these novels has made me excited to see all the Bond films again (even the Roger Moore ones).

Thanks, Ian Fleming.

Bond Update

While we're traveling, I've got my Kindle with me and have been reading my eleventh James Bond novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It seems particularly  appropriate to read Bond while in London.

I am enjoying this particular novel immensely. The story is fascinating and Fleming is by this time a master of his characters and his action sequences. I know that the movie is well regarded by Bond fans and while I have seen many parts of it, it's one of the few I haven't seen all the way through. From what I have seen, it seems to be a more faithful adaptation than most. 

I'm really looking forward to watching it when we get home. 

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote has long been on my want-to-read list. Since I'm waiting for April 1 for my next free James Bond download from the Kindle lending library, and, inspired by SJ Honeywell's review of the movie Capote last month, I started reading it this week.

In Cold Blood tells the story of the Clutter Family murders. In November, 1959, an entire family of four (father, mother, teen daughter and teen son) was murdered in the middle of the night in the tiny farming town of Holcomb, Kansas. Police could find no apparent motive and only two clues, bootprints left by the killers. Author Truman Capote investigated the crime and followed the investigation and, after the killers were caught, spent the next six years writing his masterpiece, widely recognized as one of the greatest true-crime books of all time.

I am finding the reputation to be well-deserved. Capote's writing is excellent, clear, straightforward and compelling, yet poetic when needed. It's certainly not a funny book, but there are a few humorous word constructions here and there that let his sly sense of humor show through. The story details a terrible, pointless tragedy, but reveals an amazingly rich tapestry of humanity.

I especially appreciate the way Capote follows all the people involved up to the night of the murders, then skips to the next morning, waiting until the killers are caught to reveal what really happened during that dreadful night. There's never any mystery about who did it from our perspective, but waiting to reveal the details was a clever move.

Once I'm done with the book, likely in a day or two, I plan to watch Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-winning performance in Capote. I'm really looking forward to it.

Reading Material

Last year my family gave me a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas. I love having it on my commute as it’s far easier to carry than an actual book. And since I’m now reading while commuting, the volume of my reading has increased over the past year. Last month, after I finished Richard J. Evans fantastic three part “Third Reich” series, I was looking to read something a little lighter, as one can only take so many Nazi atrocities. I had long had a hankering to read Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.

We've been members of Amazon PRIME for a few years now. We like the access to streaming movies and TV shows and, of course, “free” shipping for a lot of stuff available on Amazon. Another of the benefits of PRIME membership is the Kindle Lending Library, which I hadn’t used. I looked into it and was happy to find that all of the James Bond novels are available and I could read them for free. Hooray!

I “borrowed” the first in the series, Casino Royale, a couple of months ago and I read it last month. The story was pretty straight-forward, Bond must defeat a bad guy at baccarat to bankrupt him, and the Daniel Craig movie version is surprisingly faithful to the book. Bond doesn't globe-trot and there aren't a lot of action set-pieces, but the writing is good and with the intrigue, violence and sex, you can understand why the series became successful in the 1950’s. Bond is pretty misogynistic, though, and that took some getting used to.

In publication order, next up was, bizarrely, Live and Let Die. I’m very familiar with the movie series and Live is the eighth movie and stars Roger Moore as James Bond. So this being the second novel took a bit of adjustment in my mind. Plus, I’m picturing Sean Connery in all the novels, regardless of the story.

I liked Live a good deal. The story is much more expansive than Casino Royale as Bond travels more and there is a clear attempt to humanize the character. What's fascinating is that the story is very different from the movie except for the few scenes in Harlem. Even more interesting is that two of the action sequences don't appear in the movie of Live and Let Die but do appear in Licence to Kill and For Your Eyes Only. Not to be outdone by the misogyny in the first novel, this one has a good amount of racist language, which again, took some getting used to, although it's certainly of the period.

Last week I finished Moonraker. Written in 1954, there's no way the novel could be anything like the movie since the movie deals with multiple space shuttles and an operational space station. The story of the novel involves a Richard Branson-esque British philanthropist who's building Britain's first ballistic missile, modeled after the German V-2 rocket. I found the first half of Moonraker to be really great and surprising. Bond is invited by M to an exclusive card-players club to see if the above-mentioned philanthropist, Hugo Drax, is cheating at bridge. And the entire first half of the novel just deals with the card-playing action at the club. It was really, really interesting.

Once the action switches to the missile launch site, it's more of a standard action thriller but still really good. Bond survives more by luck than skill at times and I had figured out what was going on way before Bond did which made me think he wasn't quite as clever as he needed to be, but still. Good stuff. Plus, less misogyny and no racism!

After I finished Moonraker, I returned it to the Amazon Lending Library and went to download the next novel, Diamonds are Forever. It was then I made a horrible discovery. You can only borrow one book per month. What?!? I had read three books within a six week period.

I dug into the rules until I figured out what had happened. I had borrowed Casino Royale before November. When I finished it, I borrowed Live and Let Die in November. I finished it in early December and immediately borrowed and finished Moonraker. Six weeks, three novels, borrowed during three different months. And now I can't borrow anything else until January. D'oh!

I want to read Diamonds are Forever when we're visiting family for Christmas, so I went ahead and bought that. The individual Bond novels are only $6 or $8. Then I'll borrow the next one in January. Over the next few months, I'll probably end up buying half and borrowing the other half.

I enthusiastically recommend the Bond series. I'm enjoying them immensely.

Reading Matter

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Anna Kareninininina by Tolstoy, considered one of the greatest novels of all time. I started in late December and it took me nearly three months, reading before sleep every night. The writing style is very clean and I appreciated Tolstoy’s sense of humor; for a 900+ page story about mid-19th century Russia, the characters are reasonably modern and relatable. The story itself is epic, taking place over a couple of years and encompassing dozens of characters, which actually hurt my enjoyment. Characters come into the story with their own chapters, only to disappear for hundreds of pages before they reappear. Some characters never return, which I found odd. I did find it really interesting that one of the main male characters clearly demonstrates many of the characteristics of someone with autism, but is never identified as such, of course. For the longest time I wasn’t sure why the book is even named after Anna until near the end when it became clear.

My family gave me a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas but I haven’t had much chance to use it as I’ve been finishing Anna and then, in a neck-snapping change of tone, immediately started mad genius Stephen Colbert’s latest book, which I also received for Christmas. But this week I turned to the Kindle for Stephen King’s The Shining. I’m not a big fan of Stephen King but I’m having a hard time putting the Kindle down. And I’m finding my enjoyment of the book enhanced by my familiarity with Kubrick’s movie as it’s fascinating to see the differences.

As I told Carol, my only regret about reading The Shining on my Kindle is that when I hit the scary parts, I’m reluctant to put the device into the freezer.

A gift from the past

My Grandfather was a collector, not of anything specific, just stuff. He loved going to flea markets and collecting little devices, nick-nacks and the assorted book or game. A long time ago he gave me three first-American-edition volumes of Winston Churchill's history of World War II. The books were a bit water-stained, but still readable. They've been on my bookshelf for years.

(As a quick sidenote, my Grandfather fought in Europe in WWII. He never discussed it with me and I understand he mentioned it only a few times, right before his death.)

If you ever check out the sidebar and have noted the current book I'm reading, you may have noticed that I started reading the books a few months ago. For the last fifteen years I've mostly read fantasy novels. Occasionally I'll read non-fiction (I've read a lot of Dawkins and Sagan lately) but only occasionally. So picking these books up was something of a change of pace for me.

From the start, I really enjoyed them. Churchill is a great writer with a wry sense of humor and a good perspective on the whole history of the war. I know a decent amount about World War II but much of the history was unknown to me. I didn't know that right after France collapsed, the British, after giving them options to join the British fleet or sail to neutral America, sank the French fleet at Oran so it wouldn't fall into German hands. Attacking your closest ally like that takes some serious steel.

The personalities of the various leaders is fascinating. Churchill's correspondence with Roosevelt seems almost too familiar, as if they were an old married couple. Stalin is a whiny, petulant figure unhappy that most of the German army was on his doorstep (his own fault) and that he couldn't get the British to attack France before they were ready. The knowledge that he will screw over the Allies and take Eastern Europe after the war makes it difficult to read some of the fawning correspondence sent to him by Churchill.

Churchill himself is amazing. He micromanages everything, from weapons production to military tactics, often sending his Generals and Admirals passive-aggressive telegrams asking them why they hadn't attacked already or taken a particular town. The almost casual way he can talk write about the loss of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians after a particular battle is rather shocking compared to the way modern Americans handle that kind of loss. It paints a vivid picture of the differences between that generation and today's.

As I came to the middle of the third volume, I discovered the greatest revelation. The story was in mid-1941 and I couldn't figure out how he was going to resolve four more years of the war in another 300 pages. With a sinking feeling I looked up the work. Of course, there are SIX volumes. Another 1800 pages or so.

I ordered the last three volumes on Amazon and have just started reading the sixth volume. It really is an illuminating, astounding work of history. The detail and the scope are vast and incredible. I can't overstate how fun it's been reading this masterpiece.

Thanks, Grandpa.

Harry Potter and the Really Long Read - Afterward

So you may have noticed that I finished reading all seven books of the Harry Potter series last month. I started on August 13 and finished on October 26 after 4195 total pages. It went quickly.

The Sorceror's Stone - Aug. 13 to Aug. 21
The Chamber of Secrets - Aug. 22 to Aug. 28
The Prisoner of Azkaban - Aug. 29 to Sept. 9
The Goblet of Fire - Sept. 9 to Sept. 22
The Order of the Phoenix - Sept. 22 to Oct. 7
The Half-Blood Prince - Oct. 7 to Oct. 16
The Deathly Hallows - Oct. 16 to Oct. 26
Reading the entire series in one burst and already knowing the story allowed me to focus on themes, characters and plot threads woven throughout the series, confirming the richness of J.K. Rowling's universe and how much the subject matter matures as the characters do. The Sorceror's Stone is told in almost classic children's literature style, while The Deathly Hallows throws all the previous conventions of the series out the window and deals with death and violence throughout. And yet the consistency of the writing, humor and characters is remarkable.

I read every night before bed and during the day on weekends. I enjoyed the entire experience very much and look forward to visiting this wonderful world and these characters again. Much as I re-read the Lord of the Rings every few years or so, I have no doubt that re-reading the Harry Potter series also will become a tradition for me.

HP Update

No, not Hewlett-Packard. Harry Potter.

I started re-reading the seventh book a couple of days ago. Given the speed with which I read "The Deathly Hallows" when it came out, I'm seeing a lot of detail I don't remember. That says a lot for the depth of the book.

While the first and second book make it seem like Hogwarts is the focus of the tale, the story gradually moves into other territory and the seventh book makes it clear that the focus of the story was never about a boy going to a school, but about a boy growing up to fight evil. Even when it didn't seem to, the story was about Harry fighting Voldemort. Once that moment finally arrives in earnest, Hogwarts has become a prize that has been lost and must be regained.

This time through, I appreciated the sixth book, "The Half-Blood Prince", more than on previous readings. It's a deep breath before the plunge and explores many of the characters, especially Voldemort, in much greater depth before all-out wizard war ensues. It's a remarkably subtle and quiet story considering all that has come before.

Reading all seven books back to back has been a really enjoyable experience.

How much do you think we'd have to offer the President?

My son, Ben, is 9 years old. He's always been a good reader but, unlike his sister, won't read "chapter books", i.e. long books with actual chapters. When Rachel was Ben's age, she was already reading novels on her own and I read most of "The Lord of the Rings" and the first four Harry Potter books aloud to her. But Ben has steadfastly refused to read long books and won't let me read them to him.

So, earlier this week, I decided to try a new tactic: bribery. I picked out three books of varying lengths and told him I'd pay cash money if he finished them. That's right, I'm paying the little bugger to read. The payout would be according to the length of the book. The menu was as follows:

• A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning (approx 150 pages) $10
• Rusty's Space Ship (approx 250 pages) $15
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (approx 350 pages) $20

Ben loves both films, A Series of Unfortunate Events and Harry Potter, so I figured he'd have an easier time with those. Rusty's Space Ship is one of my favorites from when I was his age.

To my surprise and despite the negative reaction he gave me, the day after I made the offer, Ben started reading The Bad Beginning. I suspect that he picked it because it was the shortest, but I'm not sure. While he says he doesn't understand the story, he's up to chapter ten and reading every night before bed. He'll probably finish tonight.

I'm hoping that once he finishes, he'll continue with the other two books. Of course, once he has embraced the joy of reading, I'll have to teach him the harsh, real-life lesson involving writing. That is, if someone offers to pay you to do something, you should always get it in writing.

Harry Potter and the really long read

Last night I started re-reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (obviously I'm an American and couldn't be bothered with the word "Philosopher's"). Over the last few years, I've read all the books (save the last) multiple times. This time, I'm reading all seven books straight through. I want to experience the whole narrative in one swoop. Also, I'm curious how long it will take me.

I have to say, I was immensely pleased with the first chapter which takes place on the morning following the death of Lily and James Potter and the disappearance of Voldemort. So much of the story is already laid out, including references to characters and situations we won't encounter until several books later. Wonderful.
I'll update as I go. In the meantime, check out these really interesting articles about the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Warning: if you haven't read the last book, these articles contain Spoilers.
"J.K. Rowling's Ministry of Magic" by Stephen King (yes, that Stephen King).
"The End of Childhood" by Mark Harris

End of an Era

Anticipated much like the last Star Wars movie, Peter Jackson's Return of the King, or other genre-related finale, the last book in the Harry Potter series has arrived and the story is complete. I won't go into plot or other details here because others have not finished reading. But for the last two pages, I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 4AM, Sunday, July 22. I had read ahead of Rachel and so held off reading the last two pages until Sunday afternoon, giving her a chance to finish ahead of me.

The book was completely different than the other six in terms of structure and tone, more adult than kiddy literature. J.K. Rowling surprised me at every turn, paying off multiple story threads in ways I didn't predict. The book is brilliant.