You will say: I must be a low-down, dirty misanthropist,
apparently. I must hate humankind; I must steal medicine from the
elderly; bully innocent kids and hate Singapore. Why? Because
I can't fucking stand Harry Potter. More than
that, if I somehow come to find that you read Harry Potter and are
over the age of, let's say, twelve, I respect you a great deal
less. Yes I'm talking about you, grown-up man who still reads
'Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince' every morning at the MRT
station.
I know you're asking, "FUCKBAR, but why?" Given the popularity
of this shit, I'm obviously in the minority. But just because a
million people say a stupid thing is great doesn't mean it's not a
fucking ridiculously stupid thing.
I often speak out against the sheer stupidity of reading lousy
but somehow popular literature in an attempt to be "cool," I get
whole groups of people who don't read anything but pop shit telling
me how great the work is and how misguided I am.
This makes me laugh. I mean, not to sound like a prick, but I
read ALOT. Easily more than most English majors
though I am from the Engineering discipline. I know what good work
is; I know what bad work is. Harry Potter, for instance, is what
most people who read classify as bad/popular literature. Other
examples of such books include the work of Dan Brown, Nicholas
Sparks, Ann Rice and the lot.
Now, if you've a made a reading career out of that shit, to you,
I say, read a fucking good book for once. Coming from the purely
literary merit angle, most people seem to think that J.K. Rowling
is a genius, when in actuality most of what one learns in Writing
101 is not employed in any of the Harry Potter books. They're
simply awful.
The movies, while pretty, aren't much better. And speaking
of the movies, I'd like to rant about how people watch them and
then say they've read the fucking book. This isn't bullshit
unique to Harry Potter though.
The thing about movies that come from books is that they truly
aren't alike. It's the burden of medium, kids. A writer writes a
book based on his own image; you read the book based on your own.
Then, when one throws a fucking director's reading in and mixes it
up, you have a completely different story. Passages are cut,
dialogue is changed, actors don't look the same as you would have
pictured their character, etc. etc. etc.
But don't act like you're savvy to me when you're a fucking
poser. I know that most people are too lazy to read and that's why
they settle for the movie (unlike you, reader, who deserves credit
when credit is due...you're obviously reading something else right
now), but c'mon bitch, don't try to pull that shit on me...
Okay, now I'm done with that. The point is, reading is
cool. I find girls who read a least five times sexier than girls
who don't (appeareance pending). It's just that Harry fucking
Potter is not cool. You're grown-up now, fuckers; read something
that grow-ups read.
It's not that I'm that stubborn...it's that I plan to age both
gradually and gracefully. I don't like new music. I don't like new
television. In fact, I think that both are the reason why kids
these days are such fucking punks.
Now, before I get a slew of people firing back with "You just
don't get it." or "It's a good story, man," or "you're an asshole,"
I'd like to say save it. I'm friends with a group of people who
don't read anything but that horseshit. Well, take that. They read
this horseshit too...every once in a while.
