Relishing a return to Rowling's humour

I've spent the past three weeks or so working my way through Stephenie Meyer's final three books in the twilight series: new moon, eclipse and breaking dawn. And, through a book sale at work, I managed to pick up all four of Meyer's novels in their French translations, which should help with my continuing effort to learn to read and speak that language.

Hooray for me.

This morning, however, I finally got the chance to get back to Harry Potter. More specifically, I picked up on The Goblet of Fire where I had left it off to start up with Bella, Edward and the twilight gang. I was delighted to find myself laughing out loud almost as soon as I began to read J.K.'s prose: the first scene I read was the one at the camp-site before the Quidditch World Cup, when Hermione, Ron and Harry return to their tent to find Mr. Weasley struggling to light a fire the Muggle way: with matches.

I just loved this line: "'Oops!' he said, as he managed to light a match, and promptly dropped it in surprise." I can just picture it happening: the scratch of the match, the flare of the flame, the surprise on Mr. Weasley's face and then his wrist flicking the burning match away from himself.

And that's yet another aspect of the Harry Potter novels that I think sets them apart from so much of the other Young Adult fiction out there: Rowling's sense of humour.

I found the twilight novels to be almost completely without humour, rolling along in a single consistently somber mood. I'm not sure The Hunger Games trilogy was any better.

But Rowling manages to find ways to brighten the tone of even her most challenging, frightening or intense scenes, often with a single turn of phrase or surprising observation. Her writing is quite Shakespearean in that way.

I shall keep an eye out for more examples that just this one as I continue to read and try to point out my favourites in future blogs.

Meanwhile, my friend Miranda chose to go out for Hallowe'en this year as Bellatrix Lestrange, putting together a convincingly evil costume and just the right sneer on her face. I'm told she encountered only on "Harry Potter" on her walk through the neighbourhood; fortunately, no duel ensued and both parties walked away unscathed.