Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone" by J. K. Rowling is a book I highly recommend, especially if, like me, it’s been 7 or 8 years since you’ve been through the text. I have a few grievances with the book, make no mistake, but this book is definitely entertaining, with complicated and contrasting characters and personable heroes in a rich, multilayered environment of discovery and mystery. If you haven’t read this book, you should read it.

I originally included a section here on why having a book about magic is not evil, but it doesn’t really fit in this review. I’ve included the text in a post-script if you would like to read it.

Allow me to vent for a moment. This book is actually called “Harry Potter and the PHILOSPHER’S Stone.” Why do we have the version we have? The philosopher’s stone is an actual legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone) and Nicolas Flamel was an actual person tied to the legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Flamel). The “sorcerer’s” stone isn’t anything. I know, it’s not really a big deal, but I just wish the “American” version wasn’t the less interesting version, that’s all. Don’t get me wrong, some of the changes between the two books do improve the readability (http://www.hp-lexicon.org/about/books/ps/differences-ps.html), my issue is just with the substitution of “sorcerer” for “philosopher”. It also begs the question: in the movie, did they shoot two separate scenes for every section that included the phrase “sorcerer’s stone”? Do Britain’s see a different movie than I do? Does this British version come in a format that you can watch in the US? So many unanswered questions!!! (Alright, so in today’s wiki-age there’s no such thing as an unanswered question: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Philosopher under “Filming”.)

Believe it or not, this is actually the first time I’ve read “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, and I’ve never actually read any of the other books in the Harry Potter series. That’s not to say I don’t know the text; all of the books have been read to me in their entirety by my wife, Britt. However, this being the first time that I’ve read the text myself made the reading an interesting experience, and made the story seem very fresh. Knowing how the entire series transpires and resolves makes the wonderful Easter eggs throughout the book more interesting (like the mention of Serious Black in the first chapter). The biggest strength of the book is the dynamic range in the personalities of its characters, but a close second is the setting of Hogwarts. This setting allows for a very natural introduction and exposition of many magical ideas, and allows for a nearly unlimited number of contrasting plot developments. The end is exciting and riveting, but I do have to say that I prefer the movie’s rendering of the ultimate foiling of the villain to that of the book; the book’s version just seems much…wetter. Harry Potter is an unlikely and endearing hero, and his friends contrast him so perfectly that the story ends up demonstrating many valuable life-lessons, like the value of teamwork, integrity and courage. A telling mark of an enduring book is its ability to be interesting the second time you read the story, and this is a quality that exists very solidly in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

Needless to say, I highly recommend the book. Despite my frustrations with the removal of “Philosopher’s Stone” from the American version, I find the book to be well written, interesting and very entertaining. If you haven’t read this book, you should borrow a copy today from your friend who keeps bugging you to read it. The book is good enough that you won’t even mind that smug I-told-you-so look on their face.

P.S.
I’d like to put in a plug for why the use of magic in a story plot is NOT evil. I certainly understand why magic can seem inappropriate when you try to mesh it into a spiritual context. Magic can certainly be presented as the antithesis of the power of God. When we see Jesus Christ use the power of God in the scriptures, it often seems like magic, but Christ makes it clear that he is doing the will of the Father and not his own will, and he often attributes the ability for the power to work to a trait (namely faith) in the receiver of the power. This fits the best definition I’ve heard for the ability to wield God’s power: It is the ability to serve others. Contrast this with magic, which is usually depicted as being mastered by an individual so that it can be forced to do their will. Likewise, incantations are the antithesis to prayer. Prayer is an act of seeking to communicate with a supernatural superior, and thereafter trying to learn what answers have come from the supplication. Again, the expectation is that no matter what is prayed for, the answer will be according to God’s will, not according to the will of the party who is praying. Incantations, on the other hand, are repetitive phrases that can force the supernatural power to submit to the one saying the incantation. I could go on, but I think it is clear why some seem to think that magic and religion collide so viciously; it is because some would have you believe that they are competing for legitimacy.

There are two ideas, then, as to what magic power is. One idea is that for magic to exist, God could not, and therefore to suggest that magic exists is to suggest that God does not exist. The other idea is that to study magic is to seek power from those who oppose God. This is not how it magic treated in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”.

In this book, magic is just a cool version of science. Some examples? Herbology, the study of magical plants and their uses, is akin to many ways we study plants in the real world, just more interesting. Aloe Vera soothes your skin (boring); magical plants can make you breathe underwater (cool). Potions is magical chemistry. Mix the wrong chemicals in the real world and your explosion will likely kill you (scary, dangerous); Add porcupine quills before taking your cauldron of the fire and the explosion will be painful, amusing and immediately reversible (funny, poor old Neville, why is Snape so mean?). In “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, magic is treated as a source of power (akin to electricity) that taps into both the supernatural and emotional world around us, and Hogwarts school is dedicated to the science of how to use this source of power. Magic, then, is a mixture of science with imagination, and adding imagination to science is interesting, entertaining and valuable. It is NOT evil.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand was a very difficult book to read, because it is not an interesting narrative whose purpose is to weave a story and suspend the conclusion for the entertainment of the reader, but is rather a very, very, very long parable designed to effectively prove the validity of a philosophy, namely objectivism. While Ayn Rand did an extremely good job of presenting her philosophy in “Atlas Shrugged” and wrapping it in a narrative that was often compelling, her book fails to be great fiction and should rather be read for non-fictional purposes as a means for understanding the intricate details of the application of objectivism. As a parable, “Atlas Shrugged” is very compelling and applicable in today’s political climate. While I don’t recommend “Atlas Shrugged” as a great novel, I do recommend you read this book if you feel that the wealthy business owners are robbing their workers of compensation that is the laborers’ entitlement.

Yes, you can.

“Atlas Shrugged” is a science fiction novel that follows the American political system through a collapse due to introduction of “emergency” laws that bring a socialistic system of rule, during which the opposition to these “emergency” laws is not to fight them, but to stop producing commodities that can be seized by those in power. People are divided into producers, competent laborers and moochers (also called rotters, leeches, looters and other names). Generally, producers create things (ore from a mine, crops from a farm, well-crafted art, realistic philosophies, scientific break-throughs), competent laborers work hard and successfully for these producers to enable there production and wealth (and are well compensated for their efforts) and the moochers try to manipulate moral codes to shame the producers and competent laborers into giving the moochers a portion of their wealth for reasons that only manipulated moral codes justify. Politicians in this book are universally in the category of the moocher (one of the leading moochers is even named Wesley Mooch). Successful and competent businessmen are producers. Dishonest and scheming businessmen are moochers. Competent laborers are highly valued by the producers and feared/despised by the moochers. This classification stems from the basic tenets of objectivism, which is, according Ayn Rand:
1) “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” – You can’t master science by pretending the laws of nature don’t exist.
2) “You can’t eat your cake and have it too” – You can’t consume something and expect it to still be there.
3) “Man is an end in himself” – Seeking your own survival as a rational being is the most basic virtue.
4) “Give me liberty or give me death” – Trading value for value by mutual consent is good; Forcing the exchange of goods with threat of force is bad. Redistributing wealth is evil.

As a novel, “Atlas Shrugged” starts with promise but ends up being boring and long. The story itself seems to grind to a halt in part three of the book and the reader must trudge through endless pages of essays on objectivism to come to the somewhat anticlimactic conclusion. If you boiled out all of the essays and made the novel to contain just the story, it wouldn’t be considered a great story.

The heroine of the story, the railroad executive named Dagny Taggart, is compelling but fairly disloyal and wishy-washy in her relationships. This is presented as a virtue, because to be loyal would be to deny her true feelings. As a heroine of objectivism I’m sure Dagny Taggart is almost perfect…but as a human hero, her desires shift a bit too frequently to make her trustworthy.

As a parable, “Atlas Shrugged” is exceptional. By placing her philosophy in a very carefully controlled atmosphere she is able to manipulate a very persuasive argument for objectivism. Her characters choices are realistic and usually believable, making the characters themselves seem much more human, which in turn makes the events seem very plausible. Furthermore, the political environment created in the story was so similar to today’s that it was eerie. “Atlas Shrugged” serves objectivism well as a parable.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the ideas of objectivism other than to say that I find it to be very interesting and to contain a lot of truth, but it is also rather self-promoting and inflammatory. Where Ayn Rand’s essays on objectivism become wearisome is when they start playing games with phrase meanings in order to illicit a response. For example, the “Love of money” in the 6th chapter of Timothy is akin to seeking to get gain without doing the work to produce, i.e. a robber loves money so he lies in wait to steal it. “Love of money” in objectivism is reinterpreted as the virtue of wanting to work hard to produce, akin to the attitudes of the first and second servants (given 5 and 2 talents) in the parable of the talents in Matthew chapter 25. The two ideas actually agree as to what the actual virtue is, so repurposing the phrase to try to create a division is frustrating.

If you want to read good fiction, pass over this novel. If you want to learn more about objectivism and have a chance to compare it and your philosophy, this novel will be a good one for you to read.

A word of warning, however: upon finishing this novel I didn’t want to read anything for several days because I was tired of trying to last through page after page of repetitive essays. No book should make you dislike reading; this one does.

Duwaigunali: Chapter 1

Gaindohi - gain-‘Doe-hee
Chunulay - ’Chew-‘New-lay
Duwaigunali - due-way-guh-‘Nah-lee

The sun was shining pleasantly in the sky as Jackson walked through his fields. He had always enjoyed farming, and this year was especially good for him. His corn was already up to the top of his head, and it still had several months of growing left to do. His wheat was coming in thick and strong, and, as he walked down the evenly spaced rows, the smell of his crops greeted him; a smell of sweet grass and earth. It was a smell that always reminded him of summers as a kid when he had helped his Dad in these same fields.

This has to be the best day that we’ve had yet this summer – thought Jackson – with the warmth of the sun in a cloudless sky, except for a few distant clouds behind the northwest mountains promising to bring some light rain this evening. It might be a good day to just sit outside, and maybe take a nap under a tree after lunch.

Jackson was so content that it took several moments before he realized that a woman was screaming.

It wasn’t a cry of pain or of grief. It was much more like the scream of terror a mother would give if the side of her house was crumbling and she looked out to see a thousand men tearing down her walls. It was a scream that captured that moment of awe in seeing such a sight, along with the realization that everything you’ve depended on for years is being turned to rubble and your safety has forever been compromised.

Jackson ran quickly toward the sound as what he assumed was a cloud cast a shadow briefly across the ground. He ran toward his neighbor’s home and saw in the distance his friend’s mother making the sound and staring at the southern sky behind him; screaming, but not moving.

A deafening roar knocked him to the ground.

The roar wasn’t savage like a beast seeking food nor was it a sound that brought terror at the fearful thought of what could produce the noise, but it was big, deep and loud. It started with a sound that was very similar to waves crashing into the seashore (that is, if you were standing under the waves when they crashed) and then expanded into the sound of a thousand of the lowest notes of the largest ram’s horns. The sound felt like it was taking root in the inside of his chest, vibrating everything including his heart, and then trailing off lower until he wasn’t sure he was hearing the roar anymore, but rather just feeling it in his bones. He felt paralyzed as he lay face down in thick grass, barely able to breathe until the roar stopped. As the mighty sound faded into the distant mountains, he took a deep breath and turned over.

Standing above him, three times the height of a horse, was a monster more fearsome than any childhood story had ever described. Its body was covered in black scales that looked like glassy lava rock, and it was clearly built for strength, with strong, thick shoulders rippling out to strong, thick forelegs that blocked the view of the lower half of its body. A neck as thick as an ancient tree sprung from between the shoulders and two large, thick and powerful looking wings sprouted from somewhere on the monster’s back. Glassy black horns ran down the monster’s neck like an aging mane. The fearsome face looked wise and terrible, with the features appearing like the cross between a lizard and a horse, but with green, piercing eyes that looked too clear to belong to a beast. The fluid lightly streaming from the edges of the eyes gave the creature the look of an ancient bleary-eyed wise man that has lost his mind and now endures the tortures of a paranoid insanity.

It took several moments for Jackson to realize what the beast was, and for good reason. He had never seen a dragon before.

Jackson drew in a breath to scream out his own involuntary cry, but before his fear found voice a dark blue flame burst from the dragon’s mouth and enveloped Jackson and the ground around him. The distant woman’s scream was no longer heard by Jackson, because he could only hear the fire raging across his body. He writhed under the flame as he felt his clothes being consumed from his skin and every inch of his exposed body burning, from the soles of his feet to top of his head, to the crevasses under his fingernails. Jackson gave himself up to the heat and the pain until, after what seemed like several agonizing minutes, the flames stopped. He opened his eyes and looked again into the black dragon’s eyes, but they were now wide with what looked like confusion. The fluid still glistened at the edges of the mystical lizard’s face as it swept forward to Jackson’s pain-weakened form below it, and with a deep inhale the beast pulled back, grunted with a low growling sound and leapt into the sky. As the beast flew off, Jackson noticed that the hindquarters, though not as massive as the monster’s shoulders, were no less muscular and a long tail as thick as the dragon’s neck and equal in length to the rest of the creature’s body trailed behind.

Jackson watched in awe as the dragon swiftly disappeared into the southern horizon. Looking around him he saw nothing but raw, rich, dark dirt for thirty feet in any direction. His arms and hands were cleaner than he’d ever been able to get them in a bath, and the skin was reddening as though he had been rubbing his whole body vigorously with a coarse cloth. A few scars from long-forgotten injuries radiated red and raw.

The pleasant summer breeze suddenly brought him to a realization that his clothes were completely gone. Jackson’s mind stopped trying to make sense of what had happened and flew into a flurry of protective reactions. He stood up and raced to his home, without any thought other than hoping that his departure was not being seen by his friend’s mother.

When he reached his home, he quickly dressed and, having no further sense of immediate need or purpose, he crashed to the floor as the gravity of what had just transpired came to him with as great a force as had the roar. He laid on the floor of his home weeping with relief and gratitude for his life being spared, and shaking with the terror he hadn’t had time to feel when the dragon was standing over him. He lay that way for several hours as his emotions had time to run their course and he finally relaxed and fell into a light, dreamless sleep.

He awoke to pounding on his door and a voice saying, “Jackson, are you in there! Sir Jackson of Gaindohi! Are you alright?” The voice was distantly familiar, but the last remnants of sleep were still clouding Jackson’s mind. As he opened his eyes he saw his door open and one of the king’s riders enter into his one-room home. The rider’s eyes opened wide as he saw Jackson on the floor. “Are you alright?” he asked with concern in his voice, “are you injured?”

“No, I’m fine,” Jack replied groggily, as he slowly lifted himself from the floor and discovered that his only pains were a kink in his neck and slight ache in the front and back of his head. “What are you doing here?”

The rider, his tone sounding like the conditioned response of a soldier, said, “I’ve been sent by the king to bring you to the castle.”

“Why?”

“Because of the…events that happened earlier,” the rider’s military tone faltered slightly, “He'll want to know what you saw and…how you survived.”

Jackson nodded slowly, grabbed his travelling cloak and walked out his door with the rider, who was looking at him just a bit too intently.

“Is everything alright?” Jack said, causing the rider to look away with a hint of embarrassment.

“Did … it … really breath fire on you?” the rider asked.

Jackson sighed and rubbed his forehead, “yeah, it did.”

“But your hair isn’t burned.”

Jackson ran his fingers through his hair, “no, I guess not.”

“Did it…hurt?”

“Yes … a lot,” Jackson replied, “look, let’s just go see the king. I’m sure he’ll want to hear all of this as well, and right now I’m not really up to talking about it.”

The rider blinked and nodded, and walked over to his horse. As the rider mounted and waited, Jackson went to the stable to saddle his horse, Chunulay, a strong workhorse with a white and brown hide, whose stockiness showed her strength but did not give any hints as to her incredible speed. That being accomplished, Jackson mounted as well and the two riders began to trot towards the center of the kingdom of Duwaigunali, towards the castle of King Robert.

After some time had passed, Jackson asked, “What do you think the king is going to do about all this?”

The rider replied, “Actually, that will probably be up to you.”

“What do you mean?”

The rider stopped his horse and turned to face Jackson. “The king doesn’t want you to come just to tell him the story,” the rider half smiled, “he wants you to renew your service to him.”

Next: Chapter 2