Bookstorm

Let's face it: J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows isn't as great as some would have others believe. In fact, given the suspense of the previous novels, Year Seven is downright boring. Yes, I said it: boring.

Oddly enough, all the flaws in the series seemed to announce themselves on every page: mediocre writing, laughably bad dialogue--during the climax of the novel, Harry is shouting everything he says--and paper-thin characterization. The worst part was that I just found it hard to care about what was going on. Rowling seemed to be making a colossal effort to keep the book long: over half the book shows Harry, Ron, and Hermione Apparating aimlessly, searching for Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes, and, in between searches, bickering endlessly.

"Harry, what are we doing?"

"I have no idea! Blast you, Dumbledore, for not telling me what I'm doing!"

"Let's Apparate!"

"There's nothing here! Harry, it's all your fault for not making Dumbledore tell you what you're supposed to be doing!"

"No, it's all Ron's fault because he's so stupid!"

"What? It's Hermione's fault for making us Apparate here in the first place!"

"No, it's Dumbledore's fault, drat you! My scar is burning!"

"You're supposed to know what you're doing, Harry! Screw this! I'm leaving!"

And on and on, for five hundred pages or so. In short, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the worst kind of finish: it's tedious, completely forced, and utterly pointless. But hey: six out of seven ain't bad.

I've finally started James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and I'm surprised that it's turning out to be a very enjoyable book. Of course, I don't claim to know what, if anything, is going on, but I think, in the grand scheme of the Wake, that's beside the point. Sure, the book is written in Joyce's invented language, but that's part of the novel's (if you can call it such) overall charm. I hesitate to call Finnegans Wake sheer genius (sheer madness is more like it), but I can say, with utter sincerity, that this is one of the most entertaining and musical books I've ever read. The Wake is certainly impenetrable, but somehow, I don't think Joyce meant for the book to be understood (or taken seriously, for that matter). The book is enjoyable and entertaining because of Joyce's wordplay--which, ultimately, seems to be the point of the entire endeavor--and it's definitely expanded my vocabulary in strange ways, but I'm finding that Finnegans Wake is much easier to digest when I remember that I won't understand anything about it.

Drinking Heineken always gives me a God damn headache, so last night, while pondering John Milton's Paradise Lost and listening to the occasional snap-crackle-pop of firecrackers outside, I wondered why, after five bottles, I continued to drink it. My mind boggled once or twice--when it wasn't about to explode out of my skull.

Maybe some lessons just aren't meant to be learned.