{"id":321,"date":"2003-06-21T00:46:50","date_gmt":"2003-06-21T00:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/?p=321"},"modified":"2003-06-21T00:46:50","modified_gmt":"2003-06-21T00:46:50","slug":"on-the-good-mr-potter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/archives\/321","title":{"rendered":"On the good Mr. Potter."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So SarahScott, Nick Ferraro and I all went down to the Bethesda Barnes and Noble tonight to go Pottering.  Harry Pottering, that is &#150; Nick had reserved a copy of <i>Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,<\/i> and while SSB and I had hoped to pick up copies of our own, our efforts were foiled do to their entire allotment having been sold to the preorderers.  Which means tomorrow I may well go hunting at the Targets and such things around the area, looking for a copy of my own.  We shall see if I am successful.  One hopes.  If not, I am sure I will have plenty more chances to find one.<br \/>\nBut, oh, it was wonderful.  Kids in costumes, adults in costumes, all in full party mode celebrating the worldwide release of <i>a book.<\/i>  I mentioned to SSB in passing, &#8220;I wonder if this was what it was like on the docks when Charles Dickens&#8217; serialized novels came in?&#8221;  The only other events in recent history that I can think of that generated this degree of excitement were <i>Star Wars: Episode II<\/i> and <i>The Lord of the Rings,<\/i> and, well, let&#8217;s take note of something here.  Each of these works are &#8220;genre&#8221; works.  They&#8217;re fantasies, works that are enjoyable more or less by all ages, made millions of dollars and aren&#8217;t literary in the least.  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, O &#8220;literary&#8221; ones.  A good, entertaining story with a quick plot and endearing characters will trump your stodgy, plodding &#8220;art&#8221; any day of the week with the populace.<br \/>\nI can&#8217;t <i>wait<\/i> to get my own copy.  Maybe I can pilfer Nick&#8217;s while he&#8217;s sleeping.  \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So SarahScott, Nick Ferraro and I all went down to the Bethesda Barnes and Noble tonight to go Pottering. Harry Pottering, that is &#150; Nick had reserved a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and while SSB and I had hoped to pick up copies of our own, our efforts were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4e5QR-5b","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geoffreylong.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}