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?