Daily Book Excerpt: YA/children’s books:
Next book on the shelf is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2)
The books are so episodic that I found it hard to pick out an excerpt. Like – we have the flying car which leads to the Whomping Willow. But – once that’s over, it’s over – and onto the next thing. (I find parts of the books tedious for that reason – It ends up reading like: “And then THIS happened and then THIS happened and then THIS happened …” and eventually I’m like: “So?” I get bored with the episodic nature of the books sometimes. The main PLOT-LINE of each book – the ARC, if you will – is there in the titles. The final battle, or stand-off – is always in the title – but I feel like some of the episodes included are extraneous and could have been chopped earlier along in the process.) All of this is to say I flipped through the book, reminiscing about my favorite parts – I love the ridiculousness of Lockhart – He is such a funny character. I love how the Weasleys come and save Harry in the beginning of the book. This is our first introduction to The Burrow, and what a cozy chaotic happy place it is. You just love being there, and you’re happy for Harry to have such good friends.
Anyway, I decided – as an excerpt – to go with the Deathday Party (or at least part of it). I just found some of the images really arresting, and cool – and I also love Rowlings cleverness and wit here. The books are funny – that’s one of the reasons I am so hooked on them. Like – the group of “gloomy nuns” at the party … It’s just such a funny random image. I love that detail.
Also, I am SURE that Rowling was subtly referencing Miss Havisham’s decaying wedding feast in this section. Can’t be a coincidence.
Also, please. I love Ron so much I frankly do not know what to do with myself.
Excerpt from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2)
The passageway leading to Nearly Headless Nick’s party had been lined with candles, too, though the effect was far from cheerful. These were long, thin, jet-black tapers, all bursting bright-blue, casting a dim, ghostly light even over their own living faces. The temperature dropped with every step they took. As Harry shivered and drew his robes tightly around him, he heard what sounded like a thousand fingernails scraping an enormous blackboard.
“Is that supposed to be music?” Ron whispered. They turned a corner and saw Nearly Headless Nick standing at a doorway hung with black velvet drapes.
“My dear friends,” he said mournfululy, ‘Welcome, welcome … so pleased you could come …”
He swept off his plumed hat and bowed them inside.
It was an incredible sight. The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform. A chandelier overhead blazed midnight-blue with a thousand more black candles. Their breath rose in a mist before them; it was like stepping into a freezer.
“Shall we have a look around?” Harry suggested, wanting to warm up his feet.
“Careful not to walk through anyone,” said Ron nervously, and they set off around the edge of the dance floor. They passed a group of gloomy nuns, a ragged man wearing chains, and the Fat Friar, a cheerful Hufflepuff ghost, who was talking to a knight with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. Harry wasn’t surprised to see that the Bloody Baron, a gaunt, staring Slytherin ghost covered in silver bloodstains, was being given a wide berth by the other ghosts.
“Oh, no,” said Hermione, stopping abruptly. “Turn back, turn back, I don’t want to talk to Moaning Myrtle –”
“Who?” said Harry as they backtracked quickly.
“She haunts one of the toilets in the girls’ bathroom on the first floor,” said Hermione.
“She haunts a toilet?”
“Yes. It’s been out of order all year because she keeps having tantrums and flooding the place. I never went in there anyway if I could avoid it; it’s awful trying to have a pee with her wailing at you –”
“Look, food!” said Ron.
On the other side of the dungeon was a long table, also covered in black velvet. They approached it eagerly but next moment had stopped in their tracks, horrified. The smell was quite disgusting. Large, rotten fish were laid on handsome silver platters; cakes, burned charcoal-black, were heaped on salvers; there was a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mold and in pride of place, an enormous gray cake in the shape of a tombstone, with tar-like icing forming the words.
SIR NICHOLAS DE MIMSY-PORPINGTON
DIED 31ST OCTOBER 1492
Harry watched, amazed, as a porly ghost approached the table, crouched low, and walked through it, his mouth held wide so that it passed through one of the stinking salmon.
“Can you taste it if you walk through it?” Harry asked him.
“Almost,” said the ghost sadly and he drifted away.
“I expect they’ve let it rot to give it a stronger flavor,” said Hermione knowledgably, pinching her nose and leaning closer to look at the putrid haggis.
“Can we move? I feel sick,” said Ron.
I couldn’t believe they left the Deathday party out of the movie. It’s one of the best scenes.
Chamber of Secrets is my least favorite Potter book, because the whole first half of the book is spent recapping the first book.
Re: Lockhart. He should have been played by Owen Wilson. He would have been the perfect fraudulent kook. But I did hear back when I saw the first movie that Rowling only wanted British actors in the movies.
Kenneth Branagh wasn’t good-looking enough for Lockhart, imho. Maybe somebody like Rupert Everett or Jack Davenport.
Is Cary Elwes American? He might have been a good Lockhart too!
Sarahk and Lisa – and any other Harry Potter fans reading – which one is your favorite in the series so far?
I think for me it’s a tossup between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix – although the first chapter in the first book of the entire series really can’t be improved upon, in my opinion.
I guess I really liked Phoenix because of how DARK it got. Harry really had to go there … all by himself … It was the saddest of all the books (for me, anyway)- and I liked it for that reason.
But what do you guys think?
Oh, I’m definitely a BIG fan. It’s hard for me to choose a favorite book. It was Azkaban, but the more I reread Phoenix the more impressed I was, and I really loved HBP too.
it’s really hard to pick. i think Azkhaban, Order, and HBP are close to being tied in my head — though you’re right, that first chapter of it all is hard to beat.
The one thing I thought that the movie version of Chamber actually handled better than the book (a rare thing, to be sure) was the scene in the bookstore. In the book, Arthur Weasley got into a brawl with Lucius Malfoy–in the movie, Weasley stared him down with that terrific line, “We clearly have very different ideas about what disgraces the name of wizard…Malfoy.”
I really like what Mark Williams does with the character, from the first time he sticks his head through the kitchen door at the Burrows. His Arthur Weasley is neither physically imposing nor particularly charismatic (in the Napoleonesque sense, anyway), but he seems to know who he is. He’s got, for lack of a better term, moral authority. My favorite movie characters, for what it’s worth, are Arthur, Fred, and George.
PoA is my favorite, followed by GoF then the last two. I covet the Marauder’s Map.
Hayden got CoS, PoA, and GoF one year for Christmas, and I read CoS and PoA while we were at my parents’. I remember being at the end of PoA when we had to get ready to leave, and having it on the sink in the bathroom while I simultaneously read while curling my hair. So saying I couldn’t put it down was literally true.
It’s my favorite — not by far, but by a lot. That’s why I was so disappointed (understatement alert!) by the movie.
Lucius is my favorite movie character. Jason Isaacs is perfect perfect perfect. I almost can’t wait for the OotP movie to see who they get to play his wife.
Out of the kids, I think that although he is different physically from the way Ron is described in the book, Rupert Grint is amazing. I’ve always thought it neat that he’s the only one with no acting experience.
I adore the twins. They are my heroes. I fall in love with them deeper with each book.
Lisa – are you able to check your work email from home? I just sent you an URGENT girlie girl message that ONLY YOU will understand. :) I should have sent it to your home one, but I think I just hit reply on another email of yours ….
Lisa – yeah, really – and he is obviously the best actor of those three kids. Let’s not even discuss Hermione and her over-active eyebrows.
Ken – I love your point about the Arthur Weasley character. That’s so true.
i love the twins in the books, and i think the two in the movies are great.
and you know, sheila, i was watching Goblet of Fire the other day with a friend who hadn’t seen it, and i couldn’t stop obsessing about the eyebrow acting of Hermione — my friend followed it through the whole film, and ended up quite irked by it as well.
It’s SO ANNOYING. I want to tape her eyebrows down. The last line of Goblet of Fire where she says, “Nothing will ever be the same again” got a laugh the night I saw it … Ick. They should have given the line to someone else.
Hahahahah! I think I’m in trouble. I only have one eyebrow! “Now I’ll NEVER be a teen model!”