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News came out a few days back about the forthcoming Harry Potter book; I can just see the stampede of addicted youths clamoring for their fix come June.
I must admit I'm of two minds about the phenomenon. On one hand, I can understand how a story such as that one would fire people's imaginations, especially for kids who through it discover the joy of reading (now, to nudge copies of "The Golden Compass" into their unsuspecting hands...) but on the other, they're not that great. Good, but not great. They're fun to read, sure, but I can't recall any of them giving me shivers of real feeling and not a single tear wet the pages of the copies I read. Perhaps it's just me, but I don't find that they generate much emotion, just action. The fourth one was much better in this respect, but it may be only that the protagonists have hit puberty and internal conflicts are arising.
I feel like starting an ongoing thread about the books I've read and loved, but I think I'll start with the perhaps less-known ones. So tonight, I bring you "The Neverending Story".
What stayed with me from this book are ghostly images, surreal like a Leonor Fini painting and shifting. A disembodied voice wailing through ruined columns; two snakes in an endless ring; two sphinx (sphinxes?) facing each other in a desert of endless night; a lion running over many-coloured sand dunes, always at the edge of my vision; an ivory tower, as far away as it is high; a young boy and an old man laying pieces of illustrated glass on the snow and going back down the shaft for more. There was a woman with red hair, a dragon with a voice like a great bronze bell and the Nothing, the terrifying void eating away at reality.
I must admit I'm of two minds about the phenomenon. On one hand, I can understand how a story such as that one would fire people's imaginations, especially for kids who through it discover the joy of reading (now, to nudge copies of "The Golden Compass" into their unsuspecting hands...) but on the other, they're not that great. Good, but not great. They're fun to read, sure, but I can't recall any of them giving me shivers of real feeling and not a single tear wet the pages of the copies I read. Perhaps it's just me, but I don't find that they generate much emotion, just action. The fourth one was much better in this respect, but it may be only that the protagonists have hit puberty and internal conflicts are arising.
I feel like starting an ongoing thread about the books I've read and loved, but I think I'll start with the perhaps less-known ones. So tonight, I bring you "The Neverending Story".
What stayed with me from this book are ghostly images, surreal like a Leonor Fini painting and shifting. A disembodied voice wailing through ruined columns; two snakes in an endless ring; two sphinx (sphinxes?) facing each other in a desert of endless night; a lion running over many-coloured sand dunes, always at the edge of my vision; an ivory tower, as far away as it is high; a young boy and an old man laying pieces of illustrated glass on the snow and going back down the shaft for more. There was a woman with red hair, a dragon with a voice like a great bronze bell and the Nothing, the terrifying void eating away at reality.
