Learn From It

OMG my eyes are soooo pretty, riiiight? Well, riiiiight?

Seriously, I really mean to stress the “old” part of it. As in, I'm back on the bifocals kick. It all started a couple of nights ago when, to my horror, I was about done reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (not the porn version, Hairy Pooter and the Prisoner of Ass Cabin—hey, I should revisit the funny-porn-titles thing again!). And I didn't have the fourth book yet!

I know, I'm one of the last people on the planet to have read them, but I do own the DVDs of the first three. I have yet to see any of the movies (including Goblet of Fire) in the theater. And the only reason I have been reading them at all is that my friend and famous Clever Monkey, Steve, gave me a boxed set of the first three books. I must say that the packaging and the cover art on the original hardbacks is quite lovely. Even the fabric used to bind the hard covers are well-chosen contrasts of color which are whimsical and definitely not “normal”: bright green and lurid purple, vivid blue and that same kelly green, etc.

Anyhow, I wasn't going to read them since I already knew the stories, but I started. And so help me Satan Dumbledore, I could not stop. Maybe I just hate Jesus because J.K. Rowling seduced me into it.

Anyhow, with a fucked-up sleep schedule (at one point, I was sleeping from about 9am til 3 in the afternoon after having been awake all night long), and blessing the giant corporate we-can-outlast-the-little-bookshop-in-hours-of-operation Borders Books for staying open til 11pm, I dashed down to China Basin to complete my fix book collection.

There, I was faced with a choice. You see, Books 4 and 5 are already available in trade paperback. So do I buy the paperbacks and save >$40, or do I buy the hardbacks and have a complete and proper collection? Feh. I'm not one for collectibles (and that is certainly not to say our house doesn't collect a lot of crap in it!) and special editions and all that folderol. A book is what it contains, and the content is the same in both editions, so I walked out of there with two trade paperbacks and one hardback (Book 6).

I got home and started devouring reading Book 4. Then it hit me: the pages (and thus the typeface) were significantly smaller than the hardcover editions. I immediately regretted buying the paperbacks. God, I'm old.

Yes, I was wearing my “progressive lens” glasses and yeah, I'm able to read the type without any discomfort, but I was still wishing for the regular-sized type.

So I was sitting on the sofa reading Book 4 and eating some chocolate Sam had picked up earlier at my request. Why did I request it? Well a) it's chocolate! but b) several mentions of “Eat this. You'll feel better. It's chocolate.” in Book 3 made me want to eat chocolate right then and there!

J.K. Rowling is a genius and she keeps reeling you in and making you feel part of it—and without making you feel like you need to identify with any character in particular (though I must admit that if I had to choose one whose disposition and temperament matches my own, it'd be Dumbledore).

And yeah, I know. He's old, too. But (at least in Philosopher's Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets) he also had blue eyes! Coincidence? I think not!

Oh, and apropos of nothing, when we were wee little lads, we three boys hated the original Ol' Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra. Why? Because Marie once mused that if Frank Sinatra ever asked her to marry him, she would. Ahh, the “worries” of a bunch of kids in an idyllic household, huh?

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