HP7 wonder who wrote that

Ed confiscated all my other reading material, so I had to read the first 200 pages of HP7 last night. He was upset about the cavalier death of Hedwig. He felt Rowling had never liked the owl, and never developed the character properly. What did Hedwig want? He kept asking me over dinner. What were Hedwig's needs and desires? What did Hedwig do when she went out flying at night? Did she have friends? Who mourns Hedwig?

I told him the editors probably made Rowling kill Hedwig because it just wasn't PC to keep sticking her in Hermione's magic bag. It's not like she can turn to the reader and say "Do not burn down a house. Do not light cats on fire. Do not put your pets in a magic bag, or any other bag for that matter, not knowing when it's going to be safe to take them out again." That's not the tone she's cultivated for the last six books, and I don't think her readers will tolerate it now.

I didn't come up with the burning down a house, or the lighting cats on fire. That was a quote from one of the confiscated books.

Best TW feedback ever

Over at the dayjob, SMEs are feverishly trying to get documents back to me all marked up, in preparation for the release that's supposed to happen the week I'm back from VP. Today's best comment: Unfortunately not true. SMEs, they're so cute.

What I read: January 2024

"Morgan is my name" by Sophie Keech. Office book club selection. It gets exhausting to read about plucky young heroines who are terrible at needlework all the time. I should probably read some Jo Walton. I mean, you can be good at needlework and other things too! I didn't find this book very surprising. The first half was kind of boring, but it got better towards the end. LHC #233: "The Shifter" by Janice Hardy. I read her writing advice website regularly, so I thought I should maybe read an actual book to find out if she was worth it. Oh my, the voice of this book grabbed me immediately. The worldbuilding seemed shady but the voice was solid. It wasn't very subtle, but I might not be the target audience. LHC #234: "Ragnarok: The End of the Gods" by A. S. Byatt. At this point with my library account, I'm just guessing. I know there was something by Byatt there? I suspect there was. I did not know what to make of this book. Strange, but it w

What I read: March 2024

LHC #240: "Vita Nostra" by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko. Translated by Julia Meitov Hersey. All I knew going in was dark academia. This was a neat thing to read after A Deadly Education last month. The students can leave this school at summer and winter break, but maybe they shouldn't. Also, interesting education method, providing Sasha with a CD player and punishing her if she leaves it in the mode where it plays all the tracks in sequence. "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman. When I finished Ragnarok by AS Byatt (last month? January?) I was thinking it might have made more sense if I had any knowledge of the subject matter. The boy had left this lying around, and it was not a tough read. LHC #241: "Science on a mission: How Military funding shaped what we do and don't know about the ocean" by Naomi Oreskes. I deferred this once because it was so long. History of science is challenging for me to read, because of the need to get a grasp on dispr

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