Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part the First, In Which I Go Crazy With Wand Innuendos

Ho, boy.  It's harder than I thought it would be to coalesce my thoughts this week.  I think Deathly Hallows is a pretty good book but a pretty poor wrap-up to the series, but I'm not sure that anything could have wrapped up the series brilliantly for me--my expectations were always going to be too high. The whole time I was reading this week, I kept thinking, oh, not much longer.  Or, wow, we won't see ______ again.  I'm feeling pretty melancholy and the worst hasn't even happened yet.  But onwards and upwards.  Thanks once again to Alice for hosting the readalong, without which I'm sure I'd have got lots more reading done but had much less fun.

I think this is the first book where JKR used any epitaphs.  I am not a fan of that.  I do love the dedication, though. And it's curious to me that it looks so serpentine. Is it a subtle nod to Slytherin? Or an even subtler nod to the Mouse's Tale/Tail from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? I'd really like to know.

Chapter One: Snape is literally and figuratively Voldemort's right-hand man. Love that. But then we hear about Pius Thicknesse and methinks that JKR has grown a tad heavy-handed with her Name Symbolism once more.

She makes up for it when Voldemort and Malfoy compare the length of their wands, though.  Makes Lucius's "involuntary movement" all the more intriguing, no? And then "some of the throng sniggered." They certainly did, Jo.

Not my original idea here, but I remember reading a pretty in-depth review of DH after it came out, saying that in the first chapter, Rowling really ratchets up the fear and tension by killing off a character so beloved that...we never knew her name before now. When I first read the scene of Charity Burbage, I was pretty subdued, but every subsequent time I've read it, I can only think of what that critic said and it makes me giggle.

Chapter Two: In Memoriam.  Maybe this chapter would have been better named In FoDump.

Chapter Three: I got nothin'. I really had wanted a better reconciliation of Harry and Dudley, and there were glimmers of it, but I think there's an enormous story there just waiting for JKR to tell it.

Chapter Four: I like the action-y bits in this chapter, but it all kind of leaves me wondering why they couldn't just, oh, I dunno,  drive Harry out of harm's way instead of creating this ridiculously complicated diversion. They could have put lots of Shield Charms on the car. Dumbledore wanted Snape to still be useful to Voldemort? Dude, Snape just killed you to be useful to Voldemort. No need to get Moody killed in the process. Besides that, why not Disillusion themselves when leaving Privet Drive?  They did that when arriving there and it seemed to work just fine.

Wait, you want to use polyjuice and risk everybody's life instead of just driving away in a muggle car? Riiight.

Also, the same critic who wrote that about Charity Burbage brought it to my attention that at one point there are six naked Harry Potters in the room, waiting for clothing. Just sayin'.

I was upset when Hedwig died.  She dies a better death in the movie than in the book, though.

Chapter Five: I love the twins here. Getting an ear cursed off and still making bad jokes about it. The twins are really at their best in this book, I think.

Hole-ier than thou. 

I'm sorry, but an editor should have caught this one: "The suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence." In other words, it was with them like something that was with them. Yup.

Chapter Six: Anybody else surprised by the way Secret Keeping changes with the death of the Secret Keeper? I would have assumed that charm/spell/whatever would end with the death of the Keeper.

Also, Ron is at his best in this section of the book.  His humor is quick and the tone is just right and he seems to have gotten a grasp on the different ways he can be a friend to Harry vs Hermione.  I chuckle every time I re-read his "always the tone of surprise" line. And his response to Hermione's saying that if she were to drive a sword through him it wouldn't damage his soul: "Which would be a real comfort to me, I'm sure." Oftentimes in previous books Ron's humor has a bitter edge or is at someone else's expense--usually Luna's or Neville's.  But I really like Ron in these first ten chapters, and he's not a character I generally am partial to.

Chapter Seven: Twelve Fail-Safe Way to Charm Witches...about which Ron adds,"It's not all about wandwork." No, indeed, Ron.  No, indeed.  Tee hee.

Chapter Eight: Krum hadn't realized that he'd ever discussed his wand with fans before.  You cheeky Seeker, Krum!

Chapter Nine: In which Hermione is essentially the most awesome character ever but then claims never to have done any memory charms. One chapter after telling us that she's performed complex ones on her parents. Editors should have caught that, too, but like Helen of Troy's face, it's a line that has launched a thousand "ships."  (Most adult Hermione/Snape stories incorporate that line and have Snape perform the memory charm on the Grangers.)

And then Ron struggles with his wand and tells Hermione that it's no wonder he can't get it out.  With Harry standing right there and everything!

Chapter Ten: Oh, thank GOD they finally figure out who the heck RAB was. Now we know was Narcissa didn't get a star name like the other Blacks--it's because her cousin Regulus got two.  Oh, and yeah, they finally remember that locket from OotP that they mysteriously couldn't open.

Oy, my goodness, Kreacher's tale.  So heartbreaking.  One of the most poignant part of the entire series, I think. My eyes are actually welling up right now, just thinking about what I read yesterday. So emotional, so right on the money in terms of Hermione's analysis of house elf motivation and loyalties and what bastards wizards are for treating house elves the way they do.

Heckuva chapter to end on, I say. 

Tales of Beedle the Bard

All hail, Alice, host of the bestest readalong, and her ability to make us all stick to deadlines like good little Hufflepuffs. It really has been a ton of fun, and I appreciate the emotional breathing room she's given us between tomes 6 and 7.  But it must be said that reading Tales of Beedle the Bard has left me feeling siriusly underwhelmed. See what I did there?

In fact, this is how I felt about reading them:

Very shruggy.  I mean, part of the point of fairy tales is that there's no real character development--they're supposed to be blank enough for Every Reader (or in some cases, Every Listener) to be able to read a little of himself or herself into them. And to be fair, I've gone back and read some of the Grimm tales in recent years and didn't love them either.

But do you want to know what really bothers me about this book? Well, quite a lot, actually.  But one of them is the bogus 4th wall play that JKR does with her annotations for Muggle readers.  And another of them is Dumbledore's annotations to begin with.

For starters: If these tales, which must have been old when Beedle managed to write them down, were so progressive in terms of gender equality, why, 600 years later, does Slytherin not have any female quidditch players?  Why do witches still stay home and do the child-rearing while their husbands go off to work in the ministry?

While I don't think I would be able to sit through a reading of Mrs. Bloxam's expurgated version of "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot," the few excerpts Dumbledore included in his annotations filled me with glee--there are so many good words in there: "poorly tum-tums," "teethy-pegs," "kissed and huggled," etc. And you can't tell me that Hoppity Pot isn't a better name than Hopping Pot.  Considering Dumbledore's own few words of nitwit, oddment, and tweak, I'm surprised he's not more drawn to this version himself.

One of the more benign images from googling "teethy peg"

Did anybody else think that Babbity Rabbity's Cackling Stump was going to be a story about an amputee? Back when I read Deathly Hallows, where Ron is naming various tales to Harry and Hermione, utterly astonished they've never heard of any, this was one of them, I thought that and was kind of hoping for it.  Like an olden-days version of Mad-Eye Moody, whose pegleg talks back to its owner.

I also wanted to pull my hair out re: the deathly hallows re: Dumbledore's purely Byzantine machinations with those in our upcoming book to be discussed. Deathly Hallows, thy name is Red Herring. Just like communism.

And what's up with the Malfoys being badmouthed all the time? JKR, you could make your names a little less heavy-handed and it would be more effective. Brutus Malfoy? Really?

Anyway, I'm glad that net profits from this book go to benefit some children's fund or other, but honestly, this book seems to be the equivalent of Meryl Streep filming "She-Devil" because she needed some beer money. In other words, it's not quite up to the standards I usually associate with JKR's stories.

See what I'm saying?

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince Readalong

His dumblin' days are sadly numbered. I can hardly think about it.

There is so much happening in the last quarter of this book that I hardly know where to start. Except, of course, by thanking Alice for hosting this readalong.  If anything has been made clear during my participation, it is this: despite our collective nitpicking about contradictions and inconsistencies and our tendency to bicker about our beloved characters, this is a magical, magical world that JKR has created.  It is not, perhaps, world-building on a Tolkien scale, but it is still the world I most want to dwell in when I want to escape from this one.

And now, on to Chapter Nineteen: Elf Tails: it's interesting to me that Hermione is the first one to analyze the two different attacks on Katie and Ron and peg them for ultimately being the same.  She may not excel in creative magic like the twins do, but her mind is sharp and logical and she doesn't get distracted by dissimilar superficial details. It's Our Girl at her best.

Same chapter: Mr Weasley says it was a lucky day that Ron sat with Harry on the Hogwarts Express, but really, isn't it just the opposite? Would half of the Weasley's troubles exist if it weren't for Ron's close association with Harry? Would Harry have even been sorted into Gryffindor if he hadn't made friends with Ron on the train? Still, good on Arthur Weasley for being a glass-half-full kind of guy.

Same chapter: I'm sorry, but couldn't a 5th grader have found a loophole around the instructions Harry gave Kreacher? Harry didn't tell Kreacher that he couldn't tell, say, Bellatrix or Narcissa, that he (Kreacher) was following Draco.

Chapter 21: The Unknowable Room. I'm curious about Harry's and Snape's disagreement on the best way to tackle dementors.  Harry = producing a patronus and Snape = occluding? That's my hunch.

Brief detour to the Drarry sexual subtext: Draco calls Harry the Boy Who Scored, Harry later says under his breath multiple times, "I need to see where Draco Malfoy keeps coming secretly" and "I need to see what Draco Malfoy is doing inside you." Yeah, baby.

Chapter 23: Horcruxes. I wonder, not for the first time, why it's only murder that can split a witch or wizard's soul.  It's terrible, but it doesn't seem like the worst thing to do to somebody.  Seems like what Bellatrix & Co did to the Longbottoms was worse. And is it just the act of murder that splits the soul, or is that additional creation of a horcrux that does it?  And where does killing leave off and murder begin?

Chapter 24: Sectumsempra.  Does anybody else find it disturbing that in the same chapter in which Harry slices open Draco Malfoy and nearly kills him, that he finally gets Ginny Weasley? Way to reward your characters for brutality, Jo. On the other hand, the monster in Harry's chest at the end of this chapter inspired THE best pieces of fanfiction I've ever read: The Way We Get By and Drop Dead Gorgeous, by Maya/Mistful, aka Sara Rees Brennan.  If you can find them anywhere on line, I recommend that you do so.

Chapter 26: The Cave. Very cool, very creepy, but unnecessarily complicated, perhaps?  Could they have flown on brooms to the middle of the lake? Couldn't Harry have shot the aguamenti'd water straight into Dumbledore's mouth? Couldn't Dumbledore have taught Harry a quick spell to produce fire when he was conversationally telling him how they would keep the inferi at bay?

But oh, my hear melted the first time I read Dumbledore say, "I am not worried, Harry...I am with you." And then every subsequent time I read that, my heart just broke, because of course I knew what was coming next.

Tarot card: The Lightning Struck Tower

Chapter 27: The Lightning Struck Tower.  There's a lot going on here. Besides the obvious, I mean.  It breaks my heart a little bit that Draco has had such a tough year that the sympathy and praise he gets from Dumbledore mean so much to Draco. What a terrible position to be in: forced to plot your way to kill one of the greatest wizards of your time, with pain of death hanging over you--not just yours, but your entire family's.  I imagine Draco would have been in much better shape if it was only his own life on the line. Poor Snape, because the moment he's been dreading all year finally arrives. If Dumbledore is correct, then Snape believes he is splitting his soul to keep Draco's intact. Poor Harry, to be invisible and petrified the entire time.

Poor Draco

Chapter 28: The Flight of the Prince.  I don't understand how anybody who has ever read any kind of story with a red herring before could still think that Snape was evil after reading this chapter. Snape is fleeing for his life with Draco and he still is trying to teach Potter, still trying to protect him. I remember reading this chapter the first time, in the wee hours of the morning, feverishly turning pages, re-reading the scene on the tower and then this one, going back & forth between the two chapters. Comparing the "revulsion and hatred" from one scene with the "demented, inhuman" look on his face, the pain visible there compared to the pain of a dog being burned alive.

Chapter 29: The Phoenix Lament.  I'm mostly fine until I get to the scene when Fleur and Molly arrive in the hospital wing and have their moment. Then I cry and cry.  I have neither really liked nor disliked Fleur, but at this moment I love her. "What do I care how 'e looks? I am good looking enough for both of us, I theenk." Indeed you are, Fleur.  Indeed, you are. But can I just say here how much I hate the inconsistency of Fleur's speech?  Sometimes she is capable of pronouncing a"th" or "h" and sometimes she is not?

Ach, I am out of time.  But this book leaves me with an ache that the others don't, and not for the obvious reasons. No, instead I'm left wondering how and when the Snape/Harry story arc will be resolved, because in HBP, it's clear to me that theirs should have been the most important relationship in this series.  And I don't mean that just because Snape is the most interesting character, but because of all of the layers of the story that would wrap up if they came to a true reconciliation. A reconciliation between Snape and Harry is a reconciliation between generations, it's a righting of past wrongs, it would come from a place of understanding instead of blind prejudice, and oh, shoot, I really am out of time and can go no further.

I'll just say this: that if you think Snape is as interesting a character as I do and would like to read some excellent fanfiction that beautifully addresses the Harry/Snape issue, please read Theowyn's Harry Potter and the Enemy Within. It's not slash, everybody stays in character, but it's a thoughtful exploration of the student/professor relationship and, to my mind, a better story for Harry's sixth year than HBP was. 

Book Review: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

One of the best books I've read in the last decade was Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published in 2006 and recreating a period of history about which I knew nothing, much to my shame: the Biafran war for independence in Nigeria. When I heard that Adichie had a new novel coming out this spring, I was very excited by the news.

It's difficult to compare Adichie's seminal novel with Americanah, her latest effort. This is a contemporary novel, splitting its time between Nigeria and America, with a brief and depressing detour into England for good measure. The writing is always good and frequently transcendent, and that's not an adjective I use lightly. It is a third person narration that mostly follows Ifemelu, a bright young Nigerian woman who jumps at the chance to study in America; after finding much struggle she finds both personal and professional success, but something still eludes her, so she returns to Nigeria.  We also get a portrait of Obinze, the boy from university who loves Ifemelu but loses her through no fault of his own, and his subsequent sojourn to London as an illegal immigrant.

The third person narrative feels so intimate on occasion, though, that I had to double check and assure myself that it was not first person--that, as much as anything, is the true measure of how fine a writer Adichie truly is. She does everything right, as far as I'm concerned, and writers who are (lazily, in my opinion) compelled to write in first person, or use multiple narrators to tell their story, or worse, do either of those things while writing in present tense, could learn much from studying her prose and structure.

The first half of this novel is truly substantive, whether it's dealing with power and corruption in Nigeria, or the vagaries of racism in modern America. Adichie made me think of race in new ways while I was reading this, and of course her discourses on American Blacks vs Non-American Blacks (told via Ifemelu's blogposts) were fascinating and illuminating in equal measure. Whether it's Ifemelu's complicated relationships with her auntie, cousin, and boyfriends in the US, or with her family or Obinze back home in Nigeria, or whether she's casually expositing about race in America compared to a lack of race awareness in Nigeria, I found the first half of this book satisfyingly meaty--something I could really sink my teeth into.  Whether I was reading the book over breakfast, on the airplane,  or in a cafe in the French Quarter, I was immersed and loving it.

The second half of the book, however, is a bit of a disappointment, I'm sorry to confess, but that may have more to do with my expectations than it does with any real failure of the book. Once Ifemelu repatriates to Nigeria, and once her path crosses with Obinze's again, the book becomes much more about relationships than anything else. While I was expecting Great Things, hoping that Ifemelu would use her Life Experience to strike out on her own, raging against the machine for the rights of the downtrodden, she was mostly concerned with reuniting with Obinze, who in her absence, had married and had children.

The book ends with (Spoiler alert: please highlight the following text to read it) Obinze leaving his wife to be with Ifemelu, which gives the novel a tawdrier ending than I would have liked.  I had no objections to their being together--in fact, I tend to root for happy relationships in fiction--but what I really wanted was for the novel to continue beyond that point, to tell me what extraordinary things they had done with their lives. I wanted to know that they used the strength of their combined love as a fulcrum to move the world and be a force for good, as they had been on their own in their separate lives. 

Still, I want to make it clear that I was drawn into this novel emotionally in a way that I haven't been with the past few pieces of literary fiction I've reviewed. Adichie's writing is terrific, and a book like hers, even one whose ending disappoints, is still about a thousand times better than most of the drivel that gets published.

NB: This book has already been published in the UK and will be published by Knopf in the US on May 17, 2013.  I read an advance reading copy provided to me at my request from my sales rep.

Last Month in Review: April 2013

I saw this gif a few weeks ago while searching for the perfect Harry Potter gif for Alice's readalong. It's no more appropriate now than it was for Harry Potter, but it's so cute I had to use it.  Found it here, but I don't think it's her image, either.

April was an entirely average reading month for me: a little fiction, two works of non-fiction, some audio books, some fan fiction, and even one e-book.  I am thankful because I think my temporary reading slump is behind me. In chronological order:

1. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Excellent work of literary fiction.  Slightly disappointing ending.

2 & 3. The Way We Get By and Drop Dead Gorgeous by Maya/Mistful.  These are, without a doubt, some of the finest pieces of Harry Potter fanfiction that I've ever read.  Humorous and angsty and romantic in equal measure.  If you can find them, read them.  This is a pair of novel-length twin stories.

4. The Son by Philipp Meyer. Review here. Excellent but troubling epic set in Texas.

5. Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris.  His trademark humor.  Very good. Review here.

6. The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells byAndrew Sean Greer. The writing was good, but I never did cotton to the author's time travel justifications.

7.  A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy. I listened to this audio book in my car. Review here.

8. Anne of Avonlea by L M Montgomery. Re-read this book for the nth time, this time as an e-book. Still love this story.

9. Mom and Me and Mom by Maya Angelou. Another audio book, which I hope to review one of these days.

10. The Resurrectionist by Matthew Guinn.  Debut novel, rich with atmosphere and full of promise.  And it has a great story behind its publication. Incidentally, Matthew used to be a customer of mine when I worked at Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson, MS.

What about you?  What did you read last month that you loved?

Book Review: The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

It's difficult to summarize a book like Claire Messud's The Woman Upstairs, or more precisely, to summarize it and make it sound as interesting as it really is.

Nora is a woman on the cusp of turning forty who fancied herself an artist during her high school and college years, and is thus dismayed with herself two decades later when she is still teaching elementary school. That is, until a certain family moves into town and she falls a little bit in love with all of them and with the potential that each one--mother, father, and son--represents to Nora.

Nora narrates the book in first person, looking back on her life from her formative years through college and onward, but spending most of her time relating in precise detail what her mundane life was like Before and After.  That is, before and after Reza Shahid becomes one of her students and she gets to know his parents, Skandar and Sirena, a couple whose Lebanese-Italian background, by way of France, seems exciting and exotic even in worldly Cambridge, MA.

I had never read Claire Messud before, so I came to this book with no particular expectations, and I ended up being blown away with her insight and sense of language.  The writing is frequently gorgeous and my advance reading copy is full of dog-eared pages. I think what stands out most, however, is Nora's voice.  Nora is a woman whose slow-burning anger has reached a tipping point, and the narrative sears with a rage that is so incandescent that it illuminates her specific character but also Every Woman.  It feels thoroughly modern, but as my coworker Caitlin rightly pointed out to me in a discussion one day, there's also a very classic, almost timeless, feel to it. As if The Woman Upstairs, given a change of setting, could just as easily have been penned by Mary Wollstonecraft or Virginia Woolf or any woman whose life is circumscribed by her time.

Nora's voice is searing, to be sure, but she casts her same critical gaze inward, too, so this is not just a world-done-me-wrong narrative, but also a hard look at the choices she has made for herself, learning to live with those choices, and deciding which ones are worth the time, effort, or courage to change.

Some sample passages for the flavor of the writing, including some where she invokes the Reader, like Jane Eyre does in her narrative:

"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I was in love with her--which I was--but in a romantic way--which I was not. You're thinking, how would I know whether I was romantically in love, I whose apparently nonexistent love life would suggest a prudish vacancy, uterus shriveled like a corn husk and withered dugs for breasts. You're thinking that whatever else she does, the Woman Upstairs with her cats and her pots of tea and her Sex and the City reruns and her goddamn Garnet Hill catalog, the woman with her class of third graders, and her carefully pearly smile--whatever else she manages, she doesn't have a love life to speak of. Just because something is invisible doesn't mean it isn't there. At any given time, there are a host of invisibles floating among us.  There are clairvoyants to see ghosts; but who sees the invisible emotions, the unrecorded events? Who is it that sees love, more evanescent than any ghost, let alone can catch it? Who are you tell me that I don't know what love is (69)?"

Regarding herself and the members of the Shahid family: "Each of them wanted something, and their wanting made me believe that I was capable. Not that I was an extraordinary woman, exactly, but only not exactly that. Something quite like that. Which always since childhood I had secretely wanted to believe--no: had always in my most deeply secret self believed, knowing that the believing itself was a necessary precondition...My lifelong secret certainty of specialness, my precious hidden specialness, was awakened and fed by them, grew insatiable for them, and feared them too: feared the power they might wield over me, and simply on account of that fear, almost certainly would (119)."

And this little bit, which somehow reminds me of part of Eliot's Four Quartets: "With the distance I have now, I can see that it was one small thought among all the other thoughts that drift like dust motes through a cluttered mind. But it was a thought I made an object, and held on to and turned over and over in my hand, as if it were an amulet, as if it gave meaning to what had come before; and holding on to it changed everything again (135)."

"I was happy. I was Happy, indeed. I was in love with love and every lucky parking spot or particularly tasty melon or unexpectedly abbreviated staff meeting seemed to me not chance but an inevitable manifestation of the beauty of my life, a beauty that I had, on account of my lack of self-knowledge, been up till now unable to see (141)."

This book was a fine, fine read and if there is any justice in this literary world, it will make both the year-end Best Of 2013 lists as well as the awards circuit when the times come.

NB: I read an advance reading copy of this book provided to me at my request by my sales rep. Knopf published it last week. 

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: Readalong Part Deux

My various Harry Potter editions:some UK, some US, some Spanish, some audios

Since I didn't do the reading this week, I planned on not posting anything.  But then I started reading Rayna's and Ally's posts and felt like it was too much fun to miss out on.  This will be very brief and slanted and mostly based on my memories of my last read-through a couple of years ago.  Thanks, as always, to Alice for hosting this read along, for it is THE BEST.

Chapter Nine: Rayna has already pointed this out, but it's one of my favorite Neville moments in the book, when Minerva recognizes Neville's worth: "It's high time your grandmother of the grandson she's got..." We've been on the Neville Appreciation Bandwagon all along; it's nice to see some textual support for that finally happening.

Parvati has a crush on Firenze, which must have inspired some truly raunchy fan fiction. Hmmm...best not to think on that too long.

Snape's introduction to DADA: The man was poetically passionate about potions, but now that he's teaching DADA, he's poetically passionate AND insinuating danger with every syllable. Makes me wonder all sorts of things, but mostly makes me wonder how the world would collectively feel about Severus Snape if this story had been told from a non-Gryffindor's POV.

Oy, clearly I'm spending too much time with this.  That's three points for the first chapter we read, and I'm not even through...must move faster.

Chapter Ten: Poor, poor Merope.

Chapter Eleven: Hermione, that confundus charm is beneath you.  It seems odd to me that she doesn't consider that explicit cheating when later in the book she's very upset when she thinks Harry used the Felix Felicis in quidditch.

Chapter Twelve: I'm glad to see that Minerva isn't ready to jump on the anti-Draco bandwagon because of the flimsy testimony Harry gives her; however the irony kills me because this time Draco actually is up to something terrible. I'm so conflicted.  Well done, JKR.

Chapter Thirteen: Speaking of conflicted, I'm generally pretty conflicted about young Tom Riddle. I think it's rather unfair for JKR to harp on that whole "it's not what we are, but our choices, that define us" angle when Tom is clearly born a sociopath. I'm not an expert on the subject, but it's my impression that the true sociopath is incapable of working within the strictures of a normal, moral society, so in this case, young Tom never had a choice, per se. How much more powerful a villain would he be, then, if Tom had not been born that way, but had chosen to become that? I don't mean to make light of the terrible things that Tom has already done in his young life, or what he will grow up to do, but I think JRK's authorial intent is a little bit misguided here.

Tom Riddle, Jr: Born This Way

Also, Dumbledore doesn't like Tom, and he has a bad feeling about him, but how on earth can it have been the smart choice to send a muggle-raised child to Diagon Alley on his own?  For the first time? It can't have been.

"The mouth organ was only ever a mouth organ." SO much homo-erotic subtext to that statement, no?

Chapter Fifteen: Unbreakable vows.  Luna's general awesomeness. Taking down the ministry via unexpected channels like gum disease.  That's like defeating the Mayor of Sunnydale with hummus.

I'm out of time now.  Can't look up more gifs, cannot respond to Ron's being poisoned. Or talk about cauldrons full of hot, strong love that need to be stirred. But it's funny that Harry remembers the bezoar from his first potions class, isn't it? Oh, and Wilkie Twycross, whose name I inevitably end up saying as either Twycwoss or Trycross. But enough for now...

Walkin' Round New Orleans, or Where NOT To Stand for the Gay Easter Parade

Image found here

Our last full day in New Orleans was beautiful--sunny, high 70s--albeit with ultra high humidity.  I've been living outside the South for so long that it was actually a treat to experience it, but I had no great love of near-100% humidity when I lived in Mississippi. We had started the day with a three-course Easter breakfast at Brennan's. Unfortunately, whilst descending the stairs after eating, I looked a lot like the above gif, except, you know, with less prancing at the start. Bruised dignity and some later soreness aside, I was fine. But I do seem to have a habit of falling in New Orleans after breakfast. 

I promise: I hadn't had the soup of the day when I fell

AW, Carla, and I went back to the hotel to change into some more comfortable clothing & shoes and hit the town again, popping into any little store, gallery, or boutique that looked interesting and pausing to listen to many of the street musicians.  I made a few photos along the way, keeping my fingers crossed that we might run into Kora Guy before the afternoon was over. 

Your guess is as good as mine

This boutique was giving out tiny cups of some kind of daiquiri

We paused once, mid afternoon, to grab a cold beverage and sample the wares of La Divina Gelateria, which lived up to its name.  An Orangina and some cucumber & mint sorbet were even more refreshing than a turn about the room, and we were happy to sit down for a few minutes in the shade of the buildings that surround the cathedral. Shortly after abandoning our table, we finally saw Kora Guy, where I made a short video and bought one of his CDs for DH, who loves the kora as much as I do.

La Divina Gelateria

Kora Guy

We were also pleased to learn that there were two Easter parades in the Quarter that day, so we planned our afternoon around the latter one, the Gay Easter Parade, which dovetailed with the Easter Bonnet Contest.  We saw the tail end of the first parade when leaving Brennan's that morning, and were looking forward to seeing the Gay Easter Parade as it snaked its way down Bourbon. Unfortunately, I didn't pay quite enough attention to is starting point, so I led Carla & AW astray. We stood for close to an hour on an elevated stoop on Bourbon street that we figured would be the perfect vantage point for the parade.  And it would have been, had we been on the parade route.  As it was, we saw a few people who were on their way to compete for the Easter Bonnet Contest.

We stood on the stoop here for the parade that never was.

But at least this nice woman let me take her picture

Dinner that night was at NOLA, one of Emeril's restaurants in New Orleans and one which came highly recommended from Carla & AW's friend, Kathleen, who said it was her favorite meal of the week.  Our reservation was at 6:15, which is a tad earlier than we would have preferred, but it was either that or a seating at 8:30, which was too late, so we simply made do. 

The restaurant is a converted warehouse and has the industrial decor that seems to be so trendy these days. Our  primary server was a little smarmy and reminded me quite viscerally of the laundry detergent ad director guy at the end of the Calendar Girls movie, especially the way he'd say, "Hello, ladies."  Our bread guy, who told us to call him "Bread Guy," was terrific, though, and we eventually got it out of him that his friends called him Bud. 

Carla & me at NOLA

Once more, there weren't a ton of vegetarian options on the menu, so AW made do with ordering a salad and a couple of sides; there was a vegetarian special that night not on the regular menu, but for some reason that I no longer recall, it didn't appeal to her. Carla ordered a BBQ shrimp & smoky cheese grits dish that I really loved, but it's worth noting here that BBQ shrimp in Nawlins-speak usually means pretty spicy and not at all what most people think of as BBQ. I still remember the fire in my mouth from the first time I ordered a BBQ shrimp po-boy in New Orleans.  I opted for a simple salad, followed by the small plate of duck confit & fried egg pizza.  They were both good but nothing out of the ordinary.  We were pretty full so we opted to take dessert back to the hotel to eat--we chose the pina colada cheesecake dessert special because we thought it would travel well, and it was fine but nothing special. I'm afraid that I mislaid the receipt from NOLA, so I cannot recall what our dinner came to, but I left thinking that our meal was pretty good but nothing approaching extraordinary. 

The BBQ shrimp & smoky cheese grits

The duck confit & fried egg pizza

We got back to the hotel room and Carla presented me with a gift that I LOVED: a t-shirt promoting literacy in the city of Memphis proclaiming, "I like big books and I cannot lie." So true.  Thanks, Carla!

We wanted to make our last night, well, last, so we stayed up talking as late as we could.  It's tremendously difficult being separated from my best friends from high school, especially when they both live in the same city (Memphis) and even work together, so it's vitally important to me to have these get-togethers, come what may.

Coming up next: my last morning in New Orleans, plus some concluding thoughts from our trip.

Book Giveaways: I Haz Them.

Found here

The first one I shall call the All Zelda, All the Time giveaway:

 

A couple of months ago I read Z and was surprisingly drawn into it. As I say in my review, I wasn't aware of loving it while I was reading it, but there was something about the book that made me want to take action.  It prompted me to locate a copy of Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald so that I can give her her due, and not a lot of books provoke action like that.  I haven't read Call Me Zelda, so I cannot comment on that one, but considering the Zelda-Hemingway antagonism, it seems ironic that the author of Hemingway's Girl wrote it.  Anyway, I shall give advance reading copies of these two books away in a package deal. This giveaway is open only to US and Canada.

My other giveaway is for a book with a little bit of everything sensational in it. If you happen to be looking for a book that has a religious cult, arson, polygamy, incest, the Dust Bowl, illiteracy, motor accidents, and love, look no further.  You can read more about it in my review, but let's just say that these characters will not be the poster children for mental stability any time soon. This is also a paperback advance reading copy of the book, but I am willing to ship this one anywhere in the world if it costs me no more than US $20.

To enter, just be a follower of my blog and leave a comment below on which giveaway you're interested in.  For purpose of closure, let's say that the giveaway is open through the end of April. 

New Orleans, Where You Can Get Lit AND Lit at Breakfast

Breakfast at Brennan's has been a time-honored New Orleans tradition for many decades, and one in which we were happy to participate for Easter Sunday brunch.  It's hard not to love a place (by which I mean both the city and the restaurant) where it would be unusual not to drink and set your food on fire. At breakfast.

A sculpture of their signature rooster in the courtyard

So we were a tiny bit dismayed when we arrived at Brennan's for our 10:30 am reservation (no second breakfast nonsense this time around) to have our cheerful "Good morning!" greeting be returned rather curtly by a harried-looking host. We were directed with an impatiently pointed finger to wait at the bar or in the courtyard for our table until they were ready for us.  Far cry from our reception at Commander's Palace the day before, where everything was the epitome of graciousness!

About 10 minutes later we were led to an upstairs table in a nondescript room.  Again, minor disappointment compared to the charming ambience of Commander's garden room. Lest you're afraid this will be nothing but a woe-betide-me review, fear not.  Our primary server, Dan, was highly personable, and the food itself was amazing.

AW and Carla

AW avec moi

Making our selections for the 3-course breakfast was daunting--even AW had the luxury of two different delicious-sounding vegetarian entrees. AW and I started off with a cocktail called the Fleur de Lis, an exotic combination of champagne, Lillet Blonde, and Grand Marnier, and though they were very elegant, I was a little disappointed in the taste.

Baked apple--the photo is quite deceiving!

I eventually settled on the baked apple, the Eggs Hussarde, which is one of their signature dishes, and Bananas Foster, another signature dish. My mama didn't raise no fool!  While I was fully expecting to enjoy all of it, I was really blown away by the baked apple, served in double cream, and topped with the caramelized sugar from the baking process.  It doesn't look like much in the above photo, but it was one of the best things I've ever put in my mouth--which just goes to show that sometimes what's simple is what's best.

Eggs Hussarde

Eggs Ellen

AW chose the Eggs Portuguese, which is a flaky pastry with poached eggs, tomatoes and gravy and other good things, while Carla opted for Eggs Ellen, a salmon, poached eggs, and Hollandaise concoction. My Hussarde was similar to a traditional Benedict, but with a richer marchand de vin sauce. I liked it very much, but I don't think it was as good as the Eggs Sardou that I'd had there on a previous visit.

Bananas Foster. Again, not pretty, but absolutely fabulous!

Dessert is the course where Brennan's shines, quite literally.  There are at least two flambé options and ordered both of them: Bananas Foster (x2) and the Crepes Fitzgerald.  I wonder how many flambé carts  the restaurant owns, because we saw several "performances" during our visit.  Dan gave the most animated and engaging performance--some of the other servers in the room did it rather perfunctorily.

Here's Dan performing with our Bananas Foster

Another server with a different table's flambé

Our bill was about $50 less overall than our experience the day before at Commander's Palace, but that's simply because our alcohol bill was significantly reduced.  The food prices were comparable. On the way out, we overheard one employee say that they were serving 1,100 people for brunch that day, which may go a little way to excuse the harried greeting we had upon arrival.  That would be an impressive enough number if Brennan's put on a buffet brunch, but for a 3-course, full service meal?  Hard to imagine.