Harry Potter
The new Harry Potter movie (based on Book 5 of 7) arrives in Dubai today (only a week late).
The last Harry Potter book arrives worldwide on Saturday. It will début in Dubai synchronously with it's début in the rest of the world, i.e. at 3 a.m. Dubai time (and most Dubai book stores will be open at 3 a.m. for devoted fans).
At least three versions of the last book are already on bittorrent on the Internet. As of current date, it is absolutely clear that at least two are fakes. Possibly all three are fakes.
Two may be downloaded from inside the UAE, but one (possibly the real one) is blocked by the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.
There was a TV show in the '60s about an incompetent police department which had, through no fault of their own, accidentally captured a gang and reduced the crime rate in their city, thereby winning an award of tickets to a play for every member of the department. The women (female workers and wives of male workers) were concerned that the play might be pornographic, as many plays were in the 1960s, and sent the policemen to check. Having verified that the play contained no sex whatsoever, the women agreed to go. However, having seen police investigating the play, some right-wingers had condemned it, and, as a result, the play was sold out, so the police department could not get a single ticket.
This happened to Ms. Rowling, as a few strange Christian right-wingers condemned Harry Potter. (As, presumably, they would have condemned Peter Pan, Alice, Willie Wonka, The Brothers Grimm, and all children's literature other than, perhaps, the Children's King James).
This resulted in what folk legend experts call an ostention, i.e. real people reacting exactly as fictional characters had previously done, so that all the Harry Potter books sold out and went into repeated printings until the author became richer than the Queen of England (or Sheba, for that matter).
Still, the books are written with fast-moving plots (I can read about 100 pages in an hour, where it takes me at least a month to read 10 pages of Henry James, or 1 page of Joyce). So Rowling's success isn't entirely undeserved.
The last Harry Potter book arrives worldwide on Saturday. It will début in Dubai synchronously with it's début in the rest of the world, i.e. at 3 a.m. Dubai time (and most Dubai book stores will be open at 3 a.m. for devoted fans).
At least three versions of the last book are already on bittorrent on the Internet. As of current date, it is absolutely clear that at least two are fakes. Possibly all three are fakes.
Two may be downloaded from inside the UAE, but one (possibly the real one) is blocked by the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority.
There was a TV show in the '60s about an incompetent police department which had, through no fault of their own, accidentally captured a gang and reduced the crime rate in their city, thereby winning an award of tickets to a play for every member of the department. The women (female workers and wives of male workers) were concerned that the play might be pornographic, as many plays were in the 1960s, and sent the policemen to check. Having verified that the play contained no sex whatsoever, the women agreed to go. However, having seen police investigating the play, some right-wingers had condemned it, and, as a result, the play was sold out, so the police department could not get a single ticket.
This happened to Ms. Rowling, as a few strange Christian right-wingers condemned Harry Potter. (As, presumably, they would have condemned Peter Pan, Alice, Willie Wonka, The Brothers Grimm, and all children's literature other than, perhaps, the Children's King James).
This resulted in what folk legend experts call an ostention, i.e. real people reacting exactly as fictional characters had previously done, so that all the Harry Potter books sold out and went into repeated printings until the author became richer than the Queen of England (or Sheba, for that matter).
Still, the books are written with fast-moving plots (I can read about 100 pages in an hour, where it takes me at least a month to read 10 pages of Henry James, or 1 page of Joyce). So Rowling's success isn't entirely undeserved.
posted by Dubai@Random at 2:22 am
4 Comments:
where do you get all this stuff from?
This comment has been removed by the author.
The one I downloaded was from Bittorrent, but it wouldn't download until I used "alternative" means. I think the torrent file (got via Isohunt) was from Piratebay which is blocked, but I never realised before that the proxy could prevent individual torrents from downloading within a bitorrent client.
Anyway it wasn't a huge file, so it didn't take long (maybe 70mb in two parts?)
And it's the real deal. Partly because it's disappointing, in the way that Rowling is disappointing.* Fun, good storytelling, but ultimately second rate. You finish feeling kind of meh, not woah.
That said I think the way her books have encouraged a lot of kids to get reading again is just brilliant. So kudos to her for that.
*to imitate an author convincingly is quite hard, so anyone that could imitate Rowling perfectly would probably be a better writer than her. Since the book isn't any better than her usual stuff, I don't think it's a fake. When I first read the epilogue on a different site, it was so lame/fanfic I did think it was fake. But now I have read the whole book, and the epilogue photos are clearly from the same set, then yeah, I believe it's the real deal.
(I kind of wish it wasn't though, so I would have a second all-new book to read on the 21st!)
Harsha: What stuff?
SD: I like your analysis. I find most of the endings unsatisfying.
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