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snowbenton's reviews
3316 reviews
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
3.0
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT HAGRID. He is actually a menace. Bringing hippogriffs to a bunch of thirteen year olds and trusting them not to do something stupid is one of the dumbest things an adult does in this series, and that's really saying something considering the quality (poor) of the teachers at this school and the adults in Harry's life. Hagrid is number two on my list of Adults Who Harry Would Be Better Off Without, with Dumbledore being the first (Snape is three and the Dursleys are four and five imho).
WE ALSO NEED TO TALK ABOUT SNAPE. Snape is 33 in this book (give or take a year but I think he was James and Lily's age). He's a gross incel who is taking his lack of social ability out on children. (Part of me is like, of course he followed Voldemort; he was a young impressionable unhappy teen.) It makes it even ickier to think of him that way instead of as the menacing and much older Alan Rickman from the movies.
Despite this I actually liked this better than the first two. There was a great sense of tension hanging over the entire story, between Black, the dementors, the Quidditch Cup (but Wood for real needs a life), Buckbeak.
HOWEVER. I AM NEVER GOING TO FORGIVE LUPIN FOR CHAINING HIMSELF AND RON TO PETTIGREW WHEN HE WAS GOING TO TURN INTO A WEREWOLF. HE IS THE REASON HE ESCAPED AND THE REASON BLACK WASN'T FREE AND WHY HARRY HAD TO GO BACK TO THE DURSLEYS. FUCK YOU LUPIN.
Though I do love Ron and Hermione in this one. In one day Hermione slaps Malfoy and storms out of Trelawney's class and that is the moment Ron falls in love with her. Also when Sirius says he can have the owl he used to send the letter to Harry, he holds it out for Crookshanks to approve before keeping it, which made my heart happy. Honestly, I now support their love.
Dumbledore again gets the best line. "You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us?"
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
2.0
I KNOW that children's books are very often cringe, but this one is too much for my adult millennial heart. From the Dursleys, to Dobby, to the Whomping Willow, even before we get to Hogwarts I was reading through my fingers because the secondhand embarrassment was making me want to end my own life via a mandrake's cry.
I did like that no one died from the basilisk, and it was very clever how each one of them got petrified. Hermione is a lot better in this one too, though Harry and Ron have overcompensated for her by becoming even more stupid.
Once again the adults are the worst. Molly Weasley publicly humiliates Ron via Howler, which I could almost forgive, but I think it bears mention that not only did the Weasley parents leave 12 year old Harry and Ron at the platform alone, but Ron was so terrified of getting in trouble by being late to school that he stole the flying car rather than wait for his parents to return. The Dursleys are foul brutes. Snape's behavior remains wildly inappropriate for an education setting with children. At one point Harry is in Dumbledore's office after once again stumbling across the petrified body of a classmate and Dumbledore asks if Harry wants to tell him anything and then sends him on his way without even asking if his regrown arm feels better. Also, McGonagall is mad at Ron for not being able to transfigure a button when his wand is broken? WHY CAN'T YOU HELP HIM YOU ARE A TEACHER AND CAN DO MAGIC.
Other things I also hate: Harry never offering to share his money with the Weasleys. At least buy your BEST FRIEND A NEW WAND, YOU SELFISH ASSHOLE. Magic food? The Weasleys conjured a huge feast via magic. If they can repair things and create food of out of nowhere with magic, why are they poor. And if food can be conjured, why are there house elves at all. And seriously these people need an actual education because if they had learned even a little bit about WWII they might not have let Voldemort get so strong in the first place. The discrimination between the houses: Crabbe and Goyle don't even have lines, they are just lackeys; every Slytherin is described as ugly or sneaky or both; the Hufflepuffs are all scared babies.
The best part of this book is the line "It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
Once again the adults are the worst. Molly Weasley publicly humiliates Ron via Howler, which I could almost forgive, but I think it bears mention that not only did the Weasley parents leave 12 year old Harry and Ron at the platform alone, but Ron was so terrified of getting in trouble by being late to school that he stole the flying car rather than wait for his parents to return. The Dursleys are foul brutes. Snape's behavior remains wildly inappropriate for an education setting with children. At one point Harry is in Dumbledore's office after once again stumbling across the petrified body of a classmate and Dumbledore asks if Harry wants to tell him anything and then sends him on his way without even asking if his regrown arm feels better. Also, McGonagall is mad at Ron for not being able to transfigure a button when his wand is broken? WHY CAN'T YOU HELP HIM YOU ARE A TEACHER AND CAN DO MAGIC.
Other things I also hate: Harry never offering to share his money with the Weasleys. At least buy your BEST FRIEND A NEW WAND, YOU SELFISH ASSHOLE. Magic food? The Weasleys conjured a huge feast via magic. If they can repair things and create food of out of nowhere with magic, why are they poor. And if food can be conjured, why are there house elves at all. And seriously these people need an actual education because if they had learned even a little bit about WWII they might not have let Voldemort get so strong in the first place. The discrimination between the houses: Crabbe and Goyle don't even have lines, they are just lackeys; every Slytherin is described as ugly or sneaky or both; the Hufflepuffs are all scared babies.
The best part of this book is the line "It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography by Stephen Knight
informative
slow-paced
4.0
Another old college book for the read-and-yeet journey. The writing was dry but the material was surprisingly interesting. Knight did such a deep dive into all the different aspects of Robin Hood lore.
The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth
4.0
A fun story that holds up surprisingly well considering it was published in 1956.
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
5.0
"But it's not legal. It can't be. I wasn't the best student but Miss Hurston made us recite the Constitution in second grade."
"The Constitution? What, exactly, do you think the Constitution is? A magical spell? A dragon, perhaps, that will swoop down to defend you in your most desperate hour? I assure you it has only ever been a piece of paper, and it has only ever applied to a very few persons."
To be reading a book about burning witches while living in a country where it doesn't seem at all farfetched, is a special kind of hell. This took me weeks to read because my heart would grow so heavy I would have to put it down. This is a powerful book about sisterhood and womanhood and magic, and I wish more than anything that it wasn't so relevant.
In the end it's still your life or your freedom, your sister or your daughter, and someone still has to pay.
"The Constitution? What, exactly, do you think the Constitution is? A magical spell? A dragon, perhaps, that will swoop down to defend you in your most desperate hour? I assure you it has only ever been a piece of paper, and it has only ever applied to a very few persons."
To be reading a book about burning witches while living in a country where it doesn't seem at all farfetched, is a special kind of hell. This took me weeks to read because my heart would grow so heavy I would have to put it down. This is a powerful book about sisterhood and womanhood and magic, and I wish more than anything that it wasn't so relevant.
In the end it's still your life or your freedom, your sister or your daughter, and someone still has to pay.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
2.0
My parents gave me this book for Christmas when I was 9, and I loved it. Like any good millennial I went to midnight Borders book releases and like any good nerd I was a member of many HP RPGs in middle school and if you ask me my house I'll tell you Hufflepuff. I've read this a million times as a kid, a handful of times in high school, and once in college circa fifteen years ago and so I figured they need one more go before I yeet them out of my house because I don't really want anything with Rowling's transphobic name on it.
But despite the nostalgia and cultural phenomena, this isn't actually a very good book.
It's simple. It's a doofy children's story and that requires you to ignore a lot of logic. This is mostly par for the course, but I fully get why so many publishers rejected this. Like, for example, detention. Yes, do send four eleven-year-olds into the forbidden forest that even adults are afraid of with the only chaperones being a useless groundskeeper and his dog, and then spice it up by sending two of the eleven-year-olds off with the dog as their only chaperone so they can search for something killing unicorns from 11pm until DAWN and then make sure the useless groundskeeper tells them that he doesn't even know anything powerful enough to kill a unicorn, great idea, good job.
The plot holes are also so frequent and so large that it's like driving through a small town in the northeast after a particularly bad winter: juddery and irritating. Why is Harry given to the Dursleys when any wizard family would have taken him in? How did Ron not know about the Sorting Hat (to the point of scaring Harry by saying he thought they would be wrestling a troll? BRO YOU LIVE IN THIS WORLD)? Where are the teachers families, and when do they sleep if they're always patrolling the corridors? Why did Rowling have to decide that all Slytherins are evil and ugly? It's weird at best how clearly the text supports bullying of Slytherin students (endorsed even by Dumbledore and his points bullshit at the end). If Harry can do so much magic as a child without a wand, why does anyone need a wand at all? If the wand chooses the wizard, why is Ron using Charlie's old wand if Charlie is still alive and presumably in need of it while he's fucking around with dragons? Who is paying for this school to exist? Am I to believe that wizards don't ever learn basic high school physics, math, or literatur, and is that why they're all so useless?
And why is every single adult in Harry's life so absolutely fucking terrible? McGonagall doesn't stand up to Dumbledore and insist Harry shouldn't be left with the Dursleys. Dumbledore regularly lets Harry put himself in harm's way, and it's not subtle -- even the three eleven-year-old heroes realize he left them the cloak on purpose knowing they would hunt down Voldemort. Molly Weasley is a terrible mother: she makes Ron a sweater he hates every year, she left most of her children at the school from September until summer break, and she doesn't seem to care about them at all. I really don't have any idea how any of us liked her character. The Dursleys themselves are terrible. Hagrid is a danger to himself on a good day and a danger to others on most days. There isn't one worthwhile adult in the whole thing.
If I was reading this book now for the first time, I would have finished it and then promptly forgotten it entirely and never bothered with the rest of the series.
But despite the nostalgia and cultural phenomena, this isn't actually a very good book.
It's simple. It's a doofy children's story and that requires you to ignore a lot of logic. This is mostly par for the course, but I fully get why so many publishers rejected this. Like, for example, detention. Yes, do send four eleven-year-olds into the forbidden forest that even adults are afraid of with the only chaperones being a useless groundskeeper and his dog, and then spice it up by sending two of the eleven-year-olds off with the dog as their only chaperone so they can search for something killing unicorns from 11pm until DAWN and then make sure the useless groundskeeper tells them that he doesn't even know anything powerful enough to kill a unicorn, great idea, good job.
The plot holes are also so frequent and so large that it's like driving through a small town in the northeast after a particularly bad winter: juddery and irritating. Why is Harry given to the Dursleys when any wizard family would have taken him in? How did Ron not know about the Sorting Hat (to the point of scaring Harry by saying he thought they would be wrestling a troll? BRO YOU LIVE IN THIS WORLD)? Where are the teachers families, and when do they sleep if they're always patrolling the corridors? Why did Rowling have to decide that all Slytherins are evil and ugly? It's weird at best how clearly the text supports bullying of Slytherin students (endorsed even by Dumbledore and his points bullshit at the end). If Harry can do so much magic as a child without a wand, why does anyone need a wand at all? If the wand chooses the wizard, why is Ron using Charlie's old wand if Charlie is still alive and presumably in need of it while he's fucking around with dragons? Who is paying for this school to exist? Am I to believe that wizards don't ever learn basic high school physics, math, or literatur, and is that why they're all so useless?
And why is every single adult in Harry's life so absolutely fucking terrible? McGonagall doesn't stand up to Dumbledore and insist Harry shouldn't be left with the Dursleys. Dumbledore regularly lets Harry put himself in harm's way, and it's not subtle -- even the three eleven-year-old heroes realize he left them the cloak on purpose knowing they would hunt down Voldemort. Molly Weasley is a terrible mother: she makes Ron a sweater he hates every year, she left most of her children at the school from September until summer break, and she doesn't seem to care about them at all. I really don't have any idea how any of us liked her character. The Dursleys themselves are terrible. Hagrid is a danger to himself on a good day and a danger to others on most days. There isn't one worthwhile adult in the whole thing.
If I was reading this book now for the first time, I would have finished it and then promptly forgotten it entirely and never bothered with the rest of the series.
Mickey7 by Edward Ashton
4.0
A fun scifi story that prompted me to ask all my friends, if there was a clone of you, would you make out with them or not? Highly recommend asking this at parties.
The Shortest History of Israel and Palestine: From Zionism to Intifadas and the Struggle for Peace by Michael Scott-Baumann
4.0
Inventing religion is the worst thing humanity has ever done.
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
2.0
Brandon Sanderson disappoints me for the second and final time.
Only one female character, and she's a brat.
No character development or personal history in a 640 page book.
How do you make a heist boring?
Ugh.
Only one female character, and she's a brat.
No character development or personal history in a 640 page book.
How do you make a heist boring?
Ugh.