January Prompt: A New Year Rises

[Prof. Tarma Amelia Black]

Part of the fun of leaving behind an old year is looking at what works, and what doesn't work, and feeling free to discard that which doesn't work. That's what 'New Year Resolutions' are somewhat about.

But it's also an opportunity to look again at things and maybe, from a different vantage point, think about them and 'oh, I feel different about that now!' It's like, suddenly, whatever bugged you about the situation just doesn't bug you anymore, or you've gotten some distance from it and the effect just isn't the same anymore.

What book have you read and at first you just didn't care for it, and then, maybe months, or years, later, you think it's a great book! Or maybe it is a character in the book that you didn't like, and by the end of the book (or the end of the series of books), that character has gone through experiences that changed him (or her) -- and you find that you like him (or her) after all.

Your write-up needs to be at least 200 words to count towards Beans (and any possible award)! If you post a graphic, please keep it to 600x600 or smaller, and write a brief description underneath what the graphic depicts.

You will receive 20 Beans when you post. Any replies in here, through the school year, will be credited towards a possible award. As always, please keep to HOL appropriate sources for your post.

There is no deadline as such for these prompts but if you’d like it to count towards your chance of earning the award for a specific year, we’ll need it by the end of that school year. If you’re comfortable sharing, then post below. If not, email your story to us via hol.bookclub @ gmail.com (without the spaces).

Remember to click preview before posting to look for spelling and grammatical errors -- or see if auto-correct changed what you wanted to write to something entirely else!

[Dibyarup James Potter]

Imgur Link - Larger Version [1200 x 1200 px]

I will be honest here and say that when I was young, till the age of 10, I did not really like Harry Potter. Neither the movies nor the books. It just did not attract me enough for some reason. However, everything changed when I turned 11, and I decided to watch the movies, out of the blue, for no particular reason. For some reason, I instantly fell in love with the series. I watched the movies back to back because I was hooked from the very first scene when Dumbledore is walking towards the Dursleys’ at Number 4, Privet Drive.

After finishing the movies, I was feeling empty in a way, because it was over for me. But then my school friends told me that the books were much more detailed and had a lot of things that the movies did not cover. At that very moment, I decided that I must read the books. So I begged my parents to buy me the book set, and after a lot of negotiation, they decided that only if I managed to score 85% on my class test, would they buy me the books. And I studied hard and scored 90%. So they bought me the books, and I, who had till that day never read one single book, instantly became a bookworm. The details in the book left me in awe. Since then, I have finished the book series four times and binged the movie series 15 times. Yes, I am completely mad, haha!



6.20.2024 - Beans sent - Tarma

[Galena May]

I will be speaking about Cho Chang.
I understand that many people including myself tend to be superficial in school and high school, and being pretty or handsome is something that turns heads in a romantic way far more than depth of character does. It is not a fundamental flaw, but just something that comes with being of that age. We do not exactly know how we would personally define depth of character, so we tend to focus more on superficial traits that societal conditioning and our intake of books/movies and media make us believe about attractiveness.
When I first got acquainted with Cho Chang in the Harry Potter series, I thought she was just an unnecessary obstacle on the path of Harry Potter's story, or rather that she was only used to add more reality to the series by highlighting Harry's romantic life as a normal teenager. Cho was popular for her beauty and was described as a British witch (Source: Harry Potter Wiki), with her name hinting at a possible Chinese descent, and we tend to associate Chinese women with a different kind of beauty, small eyes and a fair face with dark luscious hair. This is a good representation of the kind of superficial beauty a teenager can be portrayed as attracted to, and we see Harry noticing Cho as being pretty in the series. He develops a crush on her, solely based on her superficial beauty, for we don't see him observing anything else about her personality at first. Later, when they date, he describes the kiss with Cho as being wet and thinks that she cries too much and is overemotional, which somewhat turns him off and becomes the doom of their relationship. It is a somewhat typical play on teenage attraction that is done in many stories to indicate how teens realise that beauty isn't everything and then move one step closer to liking their intended partner, in this case how Harry moves on from Cho after he is no longer impressed with her because of her overemotional nature.
For my first time or two reading Harry Potter, I agreed with JK Rowling here about Harry deciding to stop dating Cho and like Harry, I personally didn't like Cho as well.
But, gradually, as I aged over the next few years, my understanding of grief and normal emotions deepened and I realised that Cho wasn't that bad after all, rather she got the shorter end of the stick. She lost her noble, fair, and handsome boyfriend to the clutches of death and got herself a rebound in Harry. She deserved support from Harry to grieve. A truly mature partner would have provided that support instead of finding her normal grief unattractive and leaving. Cho not only lost her boyfriend to something as serious as death, she also suffered alone at such a tender age, and even got left by Harry when she was already hurting. It was extremely unfair to her. Like Cedric, the series discarded her as another spare. This made me realise that beauty can have negative consequences. You attract people who aren't serious about you, only infatuated. There was potential for a relationship had Harry not been only infatuated with her, but had had the maturity to understand what a real relationship entails. Hermione better understood the situation, though, and pointed it out to Harry.
My perception of Cho changed completely after that. I no longer hate her, rather I empathize with her for who she is.



9.28.2024 - Beans sent - Tarma