Well, amazon.ca & I are not seeing eye to eye on Stephen Fry's reading of book 3. I think I'm losing this one. (yes, Valerie - Stephen Fry is the Harry Potter voice in England. For a while, amazon.ca carried both the UK and the US audio book versions but now the UK versions are becoming extremely scarce on this side of the Atlantic)
I finished HBP and I'm not happy with it. It's a book that starts slow and gloomy and turns harsh and depressing. I found the ending distressing and I think it will be awful for my kids.
The kids are not reading it this year; they're still on Book 3 (we got the Jim Dale version from the library while I fight my battle with amazon). If I can keep them on this slow rate, it will still be a while before they get to the truly depressing volumes but still.....
For them, Harry Potter is a magical, fairy-tale story. I'm not looking forward to their castles in the air shattering in the gray and dreary volumes 5 & 6.
2 comments:
I still may have to go over to amazon.co.uk and (eventually) order some Stephen Fry versions. (birthday presents??)
I've got the 1st two books on tape (and I've got all the books as well -- U.S. versions), but amazon.co.uk has sent me everything else I've wanted (mostly Rupert annuals), so why not 'Fried' HP tapes?
I agree with you about the darkness of the latter books. For grownups this isn't a problem, but if I had younger kids who were fans, denying them the later books would be a problem I wouldn't like to face. I guess a comparable situation would be if the books by older authors such as Edward Eager took a dark turn.
Good luck on your mess with Amazon.
Thanks for your opinion of HBP. I've been trying to decide when to let my 10yo son read it. I am thinking he needs to wait a year. Our deal is I have to read it first, then I decide when it would work for him to read it. Luckily, most of the books he enjoys I don't have to do this with, but the later HP books I find it necessary.
Thanks for writing such a wonderful journal.
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