And so begins August

I tried to write an entry on Friday but failed because we went out at lunctime to celebrate Don's final day, and then broke the news to the in-laws that they were going to be grandparents in the evening. I managed to capure that moment on camera.



I tried all weekend to complete the entry that never even got started on Friday, but failed miserably. On Saturdy morning the Dragon was tutoring one of her students at home and I had no access to the internet. Saturday afternoon we were going to travel to Elan and visit a tea farm. But rain stopped play and we ended up completely wasting the afternoon in a tea shop after abandoning the attempt half way.

Sunday looked more hopeful as a day to get things done, but although I woke early with the idea that I could get some computer time before the Dragon surfaced, a noisy and still unexplained exchange occured in the living room of our apartment which woke the sleeping Dragon. We did go out and do some shopping. We even made it to the Page One Bookstore in Taipei 101 and picked up about 200 books on parenthood.

Sunday evening turned out quite well. We went to a reunion of the Dragon's Junior High School class. It was odd, as an outsider, to see everyone meet after about 15 years and not really recognise each other, but they all worked things out very quickly and it turned into a fun evening. I even understood a joke in Chinese about a Bhudist God which, come to think ot it, must have been in very poor taste.

In the news...

I think it's time the space shuttle was mothballed. I read an article somewhere this weekend, and it suggeted that the shuttle is now actually holding things up. It was designed to be a cheap way to put things into orbit, but it was certainly never cheap, and now it's not even putting things into orbit, it's just a hyper expensive way of restocking the space station. I see in today's news that there is some concern over whether the shuttle suffered damage to heat tiles as it launched. There are muliple opinions as to how to handle the situation.

I've never really liked Terry Pratchett very much. I always thought his stupid floppy hat was a rather unimaginative "look at me" tactic, and I would expect better from someone who writes books that are supposed to be, by definition, imaginative. I did start to read a Discworld book once, but I never finished it and the little I did read left me rather deflated. That said, at one time about 20% (that figure is from memory, but I think it's right) of all non-fiction books sold in W H Smith in UK were by Pratchett, and you can't knock that kind of popularity.

This week I am reading that Pratchett has been mouthing off about J K Rowling. He has attacked the media over their coverage of her work and taken a very cheap swipe at Rowling herself because he claims she didn't realise that she was writing fantasy until it was published. This all appears to be in response to an interview Rowling gave Time magazine in which she claimed that she wasn't a huge fan of fantasy and that she was attempting to subvert the genre.

I think I want to deal with this one point at a time. First, the problem of the media coverage of Harry Potter. Given the enormous popularity of Harry Potter, I think the media had a duty to cover it in a broadly favourable light. I know some people aren't fans, but I haven't seen any reviews that I consider to be really awful. I've seen some mediocre reviews as well as good ones. I would suggest that the media circus is probably half driven by popularity and half driven by Rowling who is an excellent self publicist. It seems a strange thing to say given the favourable media coverage Pratchett himself enjoyed when at the height of his popularity in the 80s.

And what about this issue of not realising she was writing fantasy until it was published? What a strange thing to say. I think it's fair to say that Rowling's work steps back a little from what has become the traditional fantasy setting that we all envision when we think of Tolkein, and that's maybe why she didn't consider it traditional "fantasy", but that's a good thing isn't it. It's stretching and exercising a genre that has, in my view anyway, become very stale. And come to think of it, what exactly is the problem with not realising into which pigeon hole your work fits until it's finished anyway?

It seems to me that Pratchett is suffering from a huge case of envy. He has apparently sold 40 million books worldwide over 34 years, which I would suggest is something to be pleased about. Rowling on the other hand sold 9 million copies of her last book in the first 24 hours in UK alone. He's not doing himself any favours with clumsy insults which appear essentially baseless. And surely he must realise that he's just taken on a fan base bigger than anything in living memory. I'd say it wasn't a wise move.