I enjoy critical essays on subjects I love, yet this book touched on several topics I wasn’t all that familiar with. It starts off with an essay on Harry Potter. I read the first volume aloud to my children and found myself daydreaming often as the nights wore on. It’s also a family joke about how I fall asleep during the Potter movies. But I found myself fascinated by the subject within this essay on color choices within the books. Now I will have to read the first book again, and go through the others. The authors definitely got me interested in the boy wizard.
I’ve always liked the Oz stories, and have read a few of the books, besides seeing the original movie and Return to Oz, which is a closer rendition of the written stories. But after reading the essay focusing on the Wicked Witch, as portrayed in the book and show “Wicked,” I do feel I will stick with the original. Although the writers seemed to appreciate this deviation from the source material, I could tell I wouldn’t like it. So this book at least kept me away from something I had been considering as a future read.
The next essay focused in on The Planet of the Apes. I’m an apes fan, and have been for many a decade. This essay was interesting and I’m glad I had the opportunity to read it.
Following that we get some in-depth detail on Spirited Away. This was worthwhile reading, as I’m also a fan of Miyazaki. Based on the Potter, Apes, and Spirited Away essays, this volume was worth it; not to mention the fact that I can gladly skip reading Wicked.
The Triplets of Belleville was a film completely unfamiliar to me, but the essay on it was interesting enough that I may have to catch it sometime. The article on Pan’s Labyrinth was fascinating. It’s one of those movies on my “must” list, and it moved up the chart after reading about it.
While the article on actors and their mythic heroes was entertaining at times, and infused some nice humor, I found myself let down with the portions on William Shatner. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but I couldn’t read it fast enough to get past it. On the other hand, this did make me interested in Doctor Who, which I’ve never viewed.
The last two essays, on Second Life and Ghost in the Shell, didn’t mean much to me. I have experienced neither, and have no desire to. This helped confirm it. But for those who do love virtual reality in Second Life and fans of GITS, I’m sure they would appreciate these articles.
A book such as this will rarely have complete appeal for readers, as many of us haven’t experienced all this contains. However, on the whole, this was a worthwhile reading experience and I look forward to reading more of these types of works that McFarland produces.
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