Quarterly Meeting

[rowyn]

Not much to say, but I thought I'd start writing and see if anything occured to me while doing so. I've got another 10 minutes left to my lunch hour, and I'm current on LJ. So I may as well write something.

I considered reading the latest Harry Potter book, which I brought to work today on the thought that I might want something to read while waiting for the quarterly meeting to start. But if I start reading, I may not want to quit that after only ten minutes. Not that I'm terribly anxious to read it; book V killed most of my enthusiasm for book VI, but I got it anyway and I'll presumably finish it sometime in the next few weeks.

My boss saw it on my desk and exclaimed over it, prompting two other people to share their Harry Potter stories. My boss hadn't known it'd come out yet. I chuckled. "Oh, I knew when it came out. Y'know, I had to Google to find out exactly what had happened with the terrorist attacks in London two weeks ago, but I've heard plenty about the new Harry Potter book being released."

This is probably a sign that I should read more news sites.

The meeting tonight is a quarterly affair. Every three months, Toddler Bank holds a mandatory meeting after business hours. I've managed to schedule two of my vacations this year to coincide with the quarterly meetings in April and October, so I didn't have to go to those. But my summer vacation was a month too soon; gotta plan better next time.

But the meeting's not that bad: everyone starts trekking to the main bank branch around 5:00PM, dinner is served from 5:30 to 6:00PM, and from 6:00 to 7:00 various bank officers talk about bank-related stuff. Then we go home. On the bright side, we all get paid for two hours of "work" for this. On the downside, I'd rather go home at 4:30 and exercise like I normally do. But it'll be OK, and I'll (probably) exercise when I get home at 7:30 tonight anyway. Even though that'll mean that I only have an hour of actual free time this evening. Oh well. I'll go home early the next couple of days to make up for it. It all evens out.

And my ten minutes are up. Guess this is all I get.

Comments

[level-head.livejournal.com]

That meeting regimen -- for the regiment -- is rather less onerous than some.

It seems to me that it's more of an internal presentation than a business meeting per se -- and such business-oriented dinners are common enough in community doings, though perhaps not common within a given business.

I suppose that I should read a Harry Potter book at some point, to further my education. I've seen the movies, and read a rather well-done fanfic, but not the books themselves. Your reaction to them is fairly common, it seems. I wonder; would the book have been acceptably good without the tremendous fanfare and buildup that accompanied the release? Forgetting movies, fanclubs, and "The Franchise" -- would it have been decent with "normal" expectations?

Best wishes!

===|==============/ Level Head

[rowyn]

No, I think book V failed on its own merits -- or lack thereof, really. Although in one sense, I do blame the hype for some of the problems with book V. If Rowling hadn't been under such pressure to produce a book, she (or one of her editors) could've taken the time to edit the book properly. There's a lot of stuff in the book that doesn't need to be there and doesn't add anything to it. This isn't a slam against Rowling; it's the way most people write. Silver Scales and Prophecy both have a lot of words in them that don't need to be there and don't add anything. That's what editing is for.

But her publisher was in a hurry to get the book out the door because they know it was going to sell like hotcakes no matter what it was like. So as soon as it had a whole plot, it went to press. I doubt anyone had time much less inclination to comb through it for words and sentences that could be painlessly excised. I don't blame Rowling for this; when I finished Prophecy, I certainly had no interest in going back immediately and trying to improve it.

But there are other problems with book V, most of which I covered in an entry some time back. I actually did not have high hopes for book V, since I read it more than a year after almost everyone else I knew who was reading the books, and every person I spoke with had been disappointed by it.

[rowyn]

And my post about Book V is here, btw. :) It's got a bunch of spoilers in it, though.

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

Give The Half-Blood Prince a chance. I think you'll enjoy it so much more than you enjoyed Book 5. I know I sure did! (And I can still say that even though Grave Things Happen. ;-)

HP, spoilers, and RYN

[krud42.livejournal.com]

1. Having finished Book 6 within 24 hours of the book's release (in an effort to avoid spoilers, an effort that I've since seen was somewhat justified), I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by it, since I half expected it to be as sucktastic as the 5th one. (The "climax" of which still leaves me somewhat befuddled.)

2. It seems there are numerous people online whose only joy in life is to ruin books for others. In this case, by revealing certain events and revelations from book 6. On the Broadcast channel of City of Heroes, no less. That is, I think, as close as one gets to evil in an MMORPG...

3. RYN@OD: That wouldn't work for yet another reason: I often go for a day or two w/o checking my e-mail. But it's a good idea for people with reliable, relatively spam-free e-mail. (I have no idea how many years it's been since I had a regular POP account.)