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2/5/08 12:38Things that are going on this weekend:
-Drinking (very little) with the hipster-librarians
-Sheep shearing at Prospect Park Zoo (I'm a couple weeks into a knitting program at the library, and getting decent attendance, so I'd love to snap some pictures of the whole process)
-Sakura-matsuri at Prospect Park (conveniently located in the same spot)
-I may go down to one of the libraries that has a reference copy of the latest Children's Writers/Illustrators Market
--
Orson Scott Card has slipped in my estimation, over the last six or seven years, from "reasonable person I really disagree with on some subjects" to "reasonable person who is loony on some subjects" to "Wait, WHAT?"
His recent column is about the fracas between J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter Lexicon. My own off-the-cuff feeling is that it's the kind of work that ought to fall under fair use, but I don't really care enough about it to have looked deeper into it. Card thinks that Rowling is being hypocritical because... she stole all her ideas from other people. Like, say, OSC himself. And the author of that book from that controversy many years ago that had a hero named Larry Potter. (Seriously, if you intend to steal from someone, and if you have three brain cells to rub together, wouldn't you hide it better than that?)
And then OSC disputes Rowling's claim that the Harry Potter books involved seventeen years of hard work, by saying that must include "the timeframe in which she was reading - and borrowing from - the work of other writers." Well, I don't know much about the publication history, but it seems that if book #1 came out in 1997, that's ten years to publish the seven books; and I can easily believe that she spent seven years in writing, revising, submitting, getting rejected, getting accepted, and being put through the publication process.
Honestly, all the griping about Rowling's "borrowing" and "greedy evil-witch behavior" seems to add up to a textbook case of How To Suppress Women's Writing - "She didn't REALLY write it, she just stole from other people."
I don't think JKR is the best thing since sliced bread, but that is truly nasty behavior.
-Drinking (very little) with the hipster-librarians
-Sheep shearing at Prospect Park Zoo (I'm a couple weeks into a knitting program at the library, and getting decent attendance, so I'd love to snap some pictures of the whole process)
-Sakura-matsuri at Prospect Park (conveniently located in the same spot)
-I may go down to one of the libraries that has a reference copy of the latest Children's Writers/Illustrators Market
--
Orson Scott Card has slipped in my estimation, over the last six or seven years, from "reasonable person I really disagree with on some subjects" to "reasonable person who is loony on some subjects" to "Wait, WHAT?"
His recent column is about the fracas between J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter Lexicon. My own off-the-cuff feeling is that it's the kind of work that ought to fall under fair use, but I don't really care enough about it to have looked deeper into it. Card thinks that Rowling is being hypocritical because... she stole all her ideas from other people. Like, say, OSC himself. And the author of that book from that controversy many years ago that had a hero named Larry Potter. (Seriously, if you intend to steal from someone, and if you have three brain cells to rub together, wouldn't you hide it better than that?)
And then OSC disputes Rowling's claim that the Harry Potter books involved seventeen years of hard work, by saying that must include "the timeframe in which she was reading - and borrowing from - the work of other writers." Well, I don't know much about the publication history, but it seems that if book #1 came out in 1997, that's ten years to publish the seven books; and I can easily believe that she spent seven years in writing, revising, submitting, getting rejected, getting accepted, and being put through the publication process.
Honestly, all the griping about Rowling's "borrowing" and "greedy evil-witch behavior" seems to add up to a textbook case of How To Suppress Women's Writing - "She didn't REALLY write it, she just stole from other people."
I don't think JKR is the best thing since sliced bread, but that is truly nasty behavior.