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A review by shannonmcewen
Repotting Harry Potter: A Professor's Book-By-Book Guide for the Serious Re-Reader by James W. Thomas
3.0
This is a good book for people who are re-reading Potter, or any book, for the first time. It gives a first-time re-reader a lot of things to think about and look for. It's very elementary, however, for those of us who have been re-reading Potter for years, and who are experienced re-readers of literary fiction.
The conversational tone of the writing is nice to an extent but does become distracting in places; Thomas uses some weird colloquialisms ("what all" is a particularly annoying one) at times.
There are for sure places where I feel he completely misses the point (a discussion about Sirius Black and the lengthy Marauders reveal in book three springs immediately to mind), but that's sort of the fun of a book like this -- my own disagreement with the scholar. I also feel that he makes a lot of statements and then sort of backs off of them -- like there are a lot of unfinished thoughts. But perhaps that's intentional and he felt like offering his own interpretation to the work wasn't really what he was trying to accomplish with this book.
One thing that did annoy though was his failure to include actual quotes from other pieces of literature he was referencing, instead suggesting over and over that his reader go check out those works to see what he's talking about. I get what he's trying to do (he's a teacher, for heaven's sake) -- he wants us all to read further and learn something. But seriously, no amount of cajoling or half-truths about William Faulkner will ever get me to read William Faulkner again. And I'm far too lazy to seek out unfamiliar poetry. So just give us a few lines here and there. Without these, it weakens what Thomas is trying to do.
And finally, his use of "Dumby" as a nickname for Dumbledore made me feel super stabby.
The conversational tone of the writing is nice to an extent but does become distracting in places; Thomas uses some weird colloquialisms ("what all" is a particularly annoying one) at times.
There are for sure places where I feel he completely misses the point (a discussion about Sirius Black and the lengthy Marauders reveal in book three springs immediately to mind), but that's sort of the fun of a book like this -- my own disagreement with the scholar. I also feel that he makes a lot of statements and then sort of backs off of them -- like there are a lot of unfinished thoughts. But perhaps that's intentional and he felt like offering his own interpretation to the work wasn't really what he was trying to accomplish with this book.
One thing that did annoy though was his failure to include actual quotes from other pieces of literature he was referencing, instead suggesting over and over that his reader go check out those works to see what he's talking about. I get what he's trying to do (he's a teacher, for heaven's sake) -- he wants us all to read further and learn something. But seriously, no amount of cajoling or half-truths about William Faulkner will ever get me to read William Faulkner again. And I'm far too lazy to seek out unfamiliar poetry. So just give us a few lines here and there. Without these, it weakens what Thomas is trying to do.
And finally, his use of "Dumby" as a nickname for Dumbledore made me feel super stabby.