listening to my harry potter audiobook cd

6:16 PM 1/10/11

I'm listening to the CDs of Azkaban right now. I'm comparing it to what I remember from reading the Twilight books and also the His Dark Materials trilogy.

The reason it was so expensive was because there are actually 9 CDs in the box, not just one or two. I didn't know how many there were. I wasn't sure how many hours of book reading could be crammed onto one CD.

The Harry Potter books are filled with a huge number of warm, likeable characters. A lot of the writing is dialogue and interactions between the various characters. It isn't all 'action.' They're not running around outside all the time 'having adventures,' you know, dangling from flying cars and motorcycles or flying around the turrets of the castle when the dragon breaks its chain and goes flying after you (which were things added to the movies to create more excitement). The stories are about social interactions.

A lot of authors complain that writing dialogue is the hardest part. I've tried fiction writing, years and years ago when I was a teenager, and dialogue was hard. Everyone sounds the same - like YOU, the author. It's hard to make characters different from yourself. It's hard to make characters you don't like. It's hard to make characters who believe differently than you do.

But the Harry Potter book characters have a variety of personalities and beliefs, and 'we,' the readers, and the narrator, don't necessarily always agree with them. They all have a different speaking style and thinking style. Just being around them, listening to them, spending time with them, is enjoyable.

When I read Twilight, I felt 'cold.' It was a lonely story, with fewer people, and I didn't really like or find interesting the few there were. I read some of the Twilight books but sort of abandoned it in the beginning of Eclipse. I might pick it up again someday though. But it has a much colder lonelier feeling.

When I read the 'His Dark Materials' books, they also were antisocial, lonely books, with adventures happening to one or two characters alone. The characters traveled long distances to other worlds and saw amazing things, but they were alone, and so the books didn't satisfy my need for companionship. And, grrr, spoiler warning... a terrible ending, where the main characters, who were in love, had to separate from each other and live in separate worlds instead of living together, and that was the end. That sucked.

So the HP books meet the need to be surrounded by large numbers of warm, likeable people who all have different, interesting personalities.

It's also about 'seeing wonderful new things you've never seen before.' Sort of like playing Myst, the video game (which is a 'lonely but beautiful' game).

I really enjoy having the stories read out loud to me. I haven't had that since I was a very young child. This is something more people should do nowadays.