Why is “Harry Potter” so popular? But there are so many books in the world! Why?!
"It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live..."
– Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
***
I think it is appropriate to argue on this topic. Because it’s nice to think that’s exactly what the best-selling book in the world has. So why has this book become so popular? Does this book really have its own magic? Otherwise what? Exactly why did this work capture the hearts of millions? For a good plot? I don't think so! Because there are so many works that can be discussed in the plot section! (remember the works of Stephen King)
Maybe in dialogues? I think there are other works that go through this as well. Or because the movie was made? No, because the book is just too much for a movie! What then? Why is this work so popular? Is this a coincidence? Or luck? Or people’s stupidity and excessive panic? If you’re interested in my opinion, I can’t call this work a “royal masterpiece”! There are so many more powerful works in world literature!
THE ASHES OF TIME
The urn that had been placed on the passenger seat of the car had miraculously remained intact as it was ejected from the crushed vehicle and thrown into a rocky raven, far from the EMTs that responded to the scene. I was trapped inside, locked within the walls of an unbreakable container, unable to escape the walls of fear and despair of my confinement; unable to escape phantoms of my past lives. My obituary read, “when he leaves life behind may he become the wind.”
The wind would carry my ashes through skies of freedom that blow over land and sea, traveling to lands that are both known and unknown to the minds of man. Perhaps those ashes would have landed on the wings of an eagle and I would spend my rebirth as a wanderlust. As a time traveler, I would be resurrected again and again on the whispers of the breezes, and seeds of repeated conceptions would take flight and be beholden only to the winds of time.
How can I uncover past incarnations or be reborn again if I am encased in this portable tomb that is hidden from sunlight and breezes and the songs of birds? My spirit will never experience the liberation of constraints or forces that constrain the physical presence of the human body and spirit on earth.
Oh, Aeolus, God of the winds, listen to my pleas and liberate me from this tomb of imprisonment. End my journey through this world and use your mighty powers to shatter this earthly vessel and disperse my cremated remains to the ashes of time.
Typical
Fucking fucktoids, I love saying the word fuck. It is perfect for any fucking situation. Hare your fucking mother in law? Fuck her! Fucking want to get laid? Go find someone to fucking fuck. Finally get those fucking concert tickets after fucking waiting for a fucking hour for some fucktard radio host to fucking ask you the simplest shit on earth? Fuck yeah! Now, we're going to fucking go see Katy Perry in fucking Illinois. I've never fucking been to Illinois (Maury determined that's a fucking lie), so I'm so fucking excited. For fuck's sake I'm so easily fucking distracted. Anyway, fuck is the best fucking word on this whole fu-- Oh fuck, was this one of those fucking "PG only" challenges? Fuck!
Character Ideas
Another extract from phone notes - random character ideas I probably won’t use, am using, or don’t know what to do with.
- A villian who has the power to speak to and control whales
- A retired army-type man who has five immortal indestructable sheep he uses as weapons in his mercenary/vigilante work
- An elf raised by dwarves. Acts like a dwarf, scandalizing any other elf they ever encounter.
- Mother earth, but Metal. (reflecting the brutal, hardcore side of nature)
- A timid, sentimental guy who’s in love with a female werewolf who’s tough as nails.
- A huge, old dragon or similar mythical creature that lives in a museum (which is also its hoard) and can turn into a stature at will
- A shy sphinx whos cat-like presence attracts any type of cat within a 5 km radius, regardless of type. (tigers, strays, whatever.)
- A fighter type who listens primarily to k-pop and brittany spears while beating up enemies
- A character that can transform into something extremly destructive and chaotic who hates unnecessary violence and drama
- An extremly buff and macho cyborg who has rainbow hair, and will never explain why.
- Identical twin superheroes with opposite powers who do tag-team hero work and flip a coin every morning to see who goes to school and who fights crime. (They don’t fight on weekends or holidays unless it’s an absolute must.)
- Tiny dragons that sit on people’s shoulders and shoot fireballs into the faces of jerks.
- A character who has way too many shoulder dragons, and keeps aquiring more somehow.
- A were-kraken. That’s it. It’s terrfying enough.
- A anti-hero/villian with the power to stop time. Caused a world crisis when they stopped time, killed everyone (that they thought was) evil in the world, thinking this would make them a hero. That backfired, and they were shunned/hunted. Now they live on time’s very borders, waiting for a moment to either strike back or seek atonement (it’s unclear)
- An army of foxes lead by a small girl
- A pirate who’s half-siren, who works with his sisters to lure and plunder ships in the family territory.
- A character that gives every single enemy or monster they meet a name like fluffy, and then refuses to call them anything else.
- Death itself, except with a very, very thick accent. An unexpected accent. The one you’re thinking of right now.
Flies
The jurors were dropping like flies!
I smiled wickedly to myself in the jury lunchroom as I nibbled on my sandwich which I had brought from home. I knew the defendant was not guilty and I had enough remorse to make absolutely sure that the jury would not bring a guilty verdict.
The first two deceased jurors were replaced by two alternates. How did they die, you ask? Well, the first one died in the cafeteria of an alleged “heart attack” but I knew that I had slipped a small vial of sweet antifreeze in his iced tea. I had watched him two days ago and knew that he enjoyed it rather sweet. We were not sequestered so I was able to go home at night and slip the antifreeze into a hand sanitizer container in my purse. After all, who would suspect a hand sanitizer because we all knew the surfaces in the jury room were not very clean.
Unfortunately, the second juror slipped on spilled grease as he was getting into his chair in the lunchroom. Obviously, someone must have dropped something slippery by the chair where he usually sat. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital with a cracked skull and a hematoma and unfortunately did not make it.
Now there were ten! Somehow, I smirked as I thought of the nursery rhyme “Ten Little Indians” where the little Indians met their fate in nefarious ways.
Well, I knew I need not go further because without alternate jurors, a mistrial was called. The evidence was not deemed sufficient to retry the case although the “double jeopardy clause” did not apply in this case. The original witnesses were shaky at best and the evidence was circumstantial so it was decided not to retry the case.
I’ll bet you are wondering why, in my second paragraph, I admitted I felt some contrition. Do I seem like the type of person who would feel any sadness at their deaths?
I have to admit that I knew the murder victim. He had picked me out on a dating website and we began an affair (I later found out he was married, the skunk!) One night, after absolutely glorious hot and heavy sex, I stabbed him in the ear with a hatpin. After all, he deserved to die for his deceit. I could not let the innocent person, the defendant, suffer for my walk on the wild side, could I now?
Mate
I misplayed the Caro-Kann Defense when I was nine. Father fed me only bread for three days.
Chess is everything, everything is chess. Everyone moves in patterns. A boy will never lose if he knows the patterns. A boy must only focus.
A boy faces nine pawns, a bishop, and a knight, all neatly arranged in black cloth chairs around a white table to which the judge sent us. The others all say guilty for now. There are two windows through which they uneasily glance for escape. A boy does not. A boy focuses.
“Blood is sensational. It is memorable. But when one views blood dispassionately it does not prove guilt,” I say.
The bishop holds forth with enmity not evident three hours before; his position is exposed. “Fine! Blood by itself proves nothing. But that man showed his character,” he says. “His poor girlfriend, don’t forget, found a flash drive full of violent, degrading pornography. Disgusting pornography.”
“And they fought about it,” nods pawn f2, but I’m observing pawn a2, whose eyes look down at the mention of degrading pornography.
“Many people watch many kinds of pornography,” I reply, “and your personal repugnance for it gives you no right to condemn a man. Or a woman, for that matter.” Nearly imperceptible gratitude softens the features of pawn a2. The athletic woman likes it rough.
A boy focuses.
“He punched the wall!” the bishop thunders. “She confronted him about—I’ll say it again—disgusting pornography, and he put a hole in the drywall. He’s a vicious, angry killer.”
His hold loosens with his temper. Mine remains firm and even as a tower wall. “That was the day before, and are we also to condemn anyone who has ever punched a wall?” Pawn f2 considers. “If you’re determined to lock up or execute every person who has ever accessed an adult website or hit something inanimate, then you’ll find yourself in a very lonely society.”
“Literal blood on hands.” The bishop, obviously immune to irony, pounds the table to emphasize each word: “Blood. On. Hands.”
Rook takes bishop. “You admitted not two minutes ago that blood by itself proves nothing. You have no evidence of his guilt. You have only your personal dislike and easily explained blood. He found his girlfriend’s body. He held her. But it does not follow that he made her bleed. It’s just as possible that she went out that night for some sordid Tinder hookup with the wrong man.”
“That’s uncalled for.” The knight sallies forth from the back row, and a few adoring pawns watch him gallop by. “There is no reason to slander the poor woman by saying she was cheating.”
“Supposing is not slander.”
“Yes, it is,” the knight answers. “Lay off her.”
Into the Lasker Trap. An aggressive opponent attacks a deliberately weak position. A boy takes the unsuspecting knight in four moves.
“Very well,” I say. “She met a suffering and unstable friend but misspoke and pushed him over the edge. Or she met a cousin with a dissolving marriage who came on to her, and who took her sainted rejection badly. Or she met her brother, who has sat in the front row every day of this trial with eyes so dry they must burn. Did you not notice his unweeping face?”
“You’re just confusing everyone.” True. The pawns shift in their seats and flick their eyes between us. “It had to be him. The earrings which he bought her were ripped out post-mortem. Why would a brother or a cousin do that?”
“Yes,” I say, “her diamond earrings were gone, nowhere to be found. Certainly not in the pockets of the accused. But very tempting for a random hoodlum.”
He hesitates to think, while the dizzy pawns cannot. The bishop remains out of play, and the endgame becomes inevitable.
***
Afterward, the athletic pawn told me I had done a good thing.
I replay the game in my study that evening. It amused. Perhaps next time a boy will play the white position.
By now the pawns question how reasonable their doubt was, and whether they were wrong to press the bishop and the knight into a corner. They lack conviction. They lack information.
I take up the diamond earrings from their fellow keepsakes in the drawer. Atypical and perhaps risky to play in one’s own county, but she looked fetching in the mornings with her latte.
A boy must take an unprotected queen.
Dream killers
My grandmother had music in her soul. She dreamed of singing jazz or blues in a New York City club; she settled for the shower and my wedding. In the early years, before her dream was dead and buried beneath shots of whiskey and bitterness, club owners would allow her to sit on a hard bench outside their offices and wait all day for a chance to audition that never materialized, while pretty, more acceptable girls, some with a voice, some not, came and left. Her mother belittled her, demanding she get a real job; insisting no one wanted to hear some ugly fat black girl from Harlem sing nothing no how. So, she let a man make her feel pretty and loved and special while helping to kill her dream.
My dad had music in his soul and a brain in his head. He dreamed of playing the saxophone like John Coltrane or Charlie Parker. Or even better. The grandmother who raised him told him to forget the fairytales and get a job. His mother beat the dream out of him daily for eighteen years, blaming her own failure to achieve the fame she sought on his birth. He buried his dream beneath beer and gin, but managed to live a productive life, if not a fulfilling one, working for the same company until he died of a broken soul at 47.
My mother had music in her soul and a brain in her head. She studied opera with an esteemed Austrian voice instructor who had more faith in my mother than she could summon for herself. No one wants to listen to a black opera singer she told herself. This after having attended so many job interviews with her more acceptable classmates post high school graduation, and being turned away despite her straight A grade point average from a private Catholic school. After so much, “no, you cannot apply” and “no, you’ll just not do,” she internalized the lesson for herself and did what she could to have a fulfilling life – she got married (and divorced), had a child and traveled to almost every continent. But she only sang in the privacy of her home with her not-so-appreciative child as the audience.
I have music in my soul. I studied ballet. I participated in musical theater from elementary school through college. I was a straight A student throughout my education. I spoke at my college graduation. But I never had a dream. I saw what dreaming had done to those I loved. Not worth the heartache, my very young self decided. I only wanted what was clearly attainable; what I was good at, what society would not begrudge me. I wanted to be invisible, make no waves. I didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer that people would resent and never seek. I decided that being a teacher was a safe choice; and, most importantly for me, a mother and a wife.
Now, I push my son and my husband – my students, friends and acquaintances – to dream and to pursue those dreams. I am the cheerleader; the enthusiastic voice at your back saying: Dream! You can do this! That is my purpose: to encourage those around me to be who they dream to be. I fan the flames the dream killers try to extinguish.