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Annoying Cliche's
Fri, 08/22/2008 - 21:20 — Jonathan_Avery
I was reading a fic today when I came across one of my most hated cliche's. Harry and Ginny were touring Potter Manor (another cliche I dislike but not the focus of this blog), when they come across the "library that was as extensive as the one at Hogwarts."
Why do so many writers feel compelled to provide the Potter family, or the Black Family, with impossible libraries? I would assume that these are people who have never been to renowned library, like Hogwarts' Library would be. The Hogwarts library, like all great libraries is not the result of an individual spending money to buy books. I doubt many people in the world could ever replicate a great institutional library with their personal money. Oxford contains almost 40 individual libraries creating one of the largest collections of research and information in the world.
But more important to the cliche is that the Hogwarts' Library, like the Oxford libraries, would be comprised of not only the materials purchased by the school, but also contain countless family libraries and personal collections that were donated over a thousand years. To have a personal library even come close to that is ridiculous.
Now, that does not mean that a Potter family library would be useless. It just means that the collection is not going to have millions of titles, more like thousands or tens of thousands at most.
Personal collections do have one benefit over most institutional collections, they are not limited due to rules and policies, and so can have extensive information on a narrow breadth of subjects. The Black Family library could easily have several extremely rare books on Dark Magic, or Uncle Arcturus' collection on Persian Blood magic that includes a half dozen books collected throughout his life and written in ancient Greek and Persian.
Lastly, be realistic. Merlin's Journal, or Salazar's Secret Serpent Scroll of Parsel Magic are not going to be laying about in a vault or on some dusty shelf. Such books would have been well known to close friends of the house if that were true. Only copies of ancient books are well protected, or forgotten in some dark corner, or even split up and secreted among dozens of other books. Items like this will change the course of plot and should require the plot of an entire story to find.
Anyway, that is my cliche' rant for the day,
-Jonathan
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Comments
To say that my family has a
To say that my family has a library would be wrong. We have a bunch of books. Almost 2k last time I checked. That's the result of over a century of adding books to it. Basically, one day, my own books will go into the collection.
In writing Meddle, I included "a huge library filled with thousands of books." The important part is that it doesn't exceed 10k volumes. Why? Croatia is an old country full of old families with old family homes, which many times include family libraries. I've never seen one above 8k so that was as far as I was willing to stretch it. Not to mention that the majority of those are Muggle books.
I like the idea of existence of the Potter Manor. As long as it's not some impenetrable stronghold which flies around and throws fireballs. Or hides Harry from everything under the Sun. It's a fun mechanism to explore what would a wealthy Wizarding family achieve if they were open to Muggle ideas.
A few months ago I finished the plan of my version of the same building. All in all, it's a fun place. I'm only slightly irked with myself that I didn't give it a more original name.
But your point is well taken. It's impossible for a single family to collect enough books to rival Hogwarts.
And it could have been worse. What if it had said "as extensive as Amazon"?
Library size
"As extensive as Amazon?" I don't think so. :-) Amazon is supported by multiple suppliers, so they are "bigger" then a normal "library". Or that's how I see it. :-)
To Jonathan's original rant, I can see your point, but I think it depends on how big you see the Hogwarts library to be. I'd be surprised to find that any High School library to be over 10K books. Hogwarts is essentially a high school. So I don't see Hogwarts to be all that big, and so a dedicated family, over time, could equal that.
Also, many of Hogwarts books could be duplicates, at least for the most common books. There is the "restricted section" (which I would expect to mostly "singles"), but I could see that there might be many books that would not exist at Hogwarts at all because they're too dangerous. So if Hogwarts had 10K books, perhaps only 8K of them are unique, making it smaller than it appears. I suppose that's an addition to your point about a private individual not having restrictions.
Lastly, I don't expect many categories of books that I'd find in a muggle library to appear in Hogwarts. Sure, Hogwarts would have Charms, Transfiguration, etc. that a muggle library would not, but I think a muggle library would be more diverse. By having a more restricted category of books, that would also tend to make it smaller.
I have a story on my hard drive (which will probably never see the light of day) that has a "Potter Manor" with a library the size of Hogwarts. I don't have a problem with that because I don't see Hogwart's library to be all that big, and the Potter family has been around as long as Hogwarts.
Someone else ranted about the idea of Hermy reading thru the entire Hogwarts library, and I have to agree with that. Seven years would only give her about 2000 days of school. Even at 1 book a day (not realistic), she still won't make it. :-)
Kevin
Library Size
Yeah I always thought that it was a bit of a stretch to have such a possibility. If Hogwarts is Great Britain's largest (only?) magical school then they have likely been the recipient of many a donation from a lot of magical families over the years. Although as mentioned above likely any really dangerous books likely wouldn't even be in the restricted section, or if they are they'd require more than just a pass from a professor to gain access, perhaps a personally signed pass from the headmaster. ("Just why do you need a reason to read Top Ten Ways to Skin Your Enemies?") Which doesn't mean a scrupulous and talented wizard/witch like Tom Riddle couldn't sneak a peak at said books either.
One cliche I can't stand though (and I've stopped reading a few stories because of it) is a ridiculously over sized Potter family vault. You know the kind where there is like 200 billion galleons or some such ridiculous number. Honestly if Harry had that kind of money he could just buy himself an end to the war.
Matt
I laughed when I read that.
I laughed when I read that. The reason they put cliche number 1, was to get to cliche number 2.
Cliche number 3? Do they find a restricted book to get to back in time?
High school or not, it's the only one in Britian. So yes, a good collection. But please...no forbidden books.
Point well taken, and I
Point well taken, and I agree.
But I suspect that often it's simply a way of avoiding a plot complication. You need the character to discover a bit of ancient knowledge that no one else knows, but you don't want to spend 3,000 words getting to it. Easy solution? Give the character access to a source of records that most people don't have.
Here's one cliche that in my
Here's one cliche that in my opinion is starting to get over done in time travel fics. Sirius gets proven innocent and when year three starts, Pettigrew and/or LeStrange escape from Azkaban. Can't people come up with some other death eater besides those two?
Another over done cliche: Snape being revealed as Harry's father. There are a few stories where that happens that I like but there's so many stories out there where that happens. If people want to write a story where someone else is Harry's father, can't they choose someone else besides Snape?
A fish without a bicycle cannot contemplate his navel.
Oh, is that all that gets your goat these days?
Sheesh, libraries. Right, then, hands up if you have a personal library. Oh wait, I can't see your hands . . .
Text books are large and of a different size/caliber in material than paperbacks and generic hardbacks. I have a personal library I've built over some few years (I started with zero books), and it now has around -- by approximation, mind you -- 2,500 volumes. (I am not counting copies of IEEE periodicals and such here.)
Just how much space does it take? On the one hand, way too much if you have to move it. On the other hand, depressingly little space. Eight 6' x 3' book cases, crammed in multiple deep. It's safe to say that if I doubled the number of bookcases, it would conveniently fit so you could actually see every book title. However, roughly half of my collection is paperback, not textbook or hardback in nature. So it would go up again by around a factor of two.
I'd argue based on this very loose, informal, non-scientific effort that took less time to type than think up that 2,500 books occupies around 30 bookcases of roughly 6' x 3' dimensions. Now factor that in to all those stories (and canon) about the numbers of books, the sizes of the rooms, and so on . . . and think about just how few people get it right.
Moreover, when was the last time you tried to pick up and move 20-80 books in a bag? Or box? Shrinking something does not change its mass, you know. You need more than a shrinking charm of sorts to carry so many books and still be sane (or humane) at the end of the day.
But those are books. Books, books, easy to deal with and grapple with, most people have seen and consider books. But Gold! That's where the money's at!
When Harry has that vault with the twenty-seven trillion galleons in it (nevermind he has more liquid capital there than the top ten nations combined yearly GDP), or the bounty of properties he finds himself owning -- at least one of which is better protected than Hogwarts but for some reason slipped his parent's mind . . .
Of course, we can't forget having his parent's wedding and engagement rings turn up in a box somewhere, along with every other bit of family jewelry since time began. It's like they rob graves when they're bored or something.
Didn't I read a story about that somewhere?
I guess the point of this meandering commentary is that there are so many fine cliches to pick on. Why limit yourself to just one? And I always recommend a good parody for an outlet. Or even a bad one.
Here's another cliche that's
Here's another cliche that's overdone:
In those evil Dumbledore stories, the Weasleys (or most of them) are part of Dumbledore's plan to "control" Harry.
A fish without a bicycle cannot contemplate his navel.
Why Limit to One Cliche?
Well, to be honest, that was the one that pissed me off when I decided to write this entry. Although I am considering a weekly entry called: Debunking the Cliche. Or maybe Cliche Busters? No, I'd need interns for that and lots of explosives. Maybe Man vs Cliche?
Anyway, there are a lot of cliches out there. Some are ignorable, but others are just horrendous. I have to admit that the library issue is minor on the cliche level, but it caught me on a bad day. In general, my problem with cliches are not the cliches themselves but the ignorance of the authors that use the cliches. Sure, have a Potter Manor, but make it reasonable and don't make it the invincible fortress of solitude. If it was, Lily and James would have stayed there. And if you want Harry to be rich, fine, let him be rich, but at least understand the basics of economics. As Josh said, having hundreds of billions of Galleons is ridiculous. Gringotts may have that much but no single person will have the wealth of a first world nation at their fingertips. Since, remember, a Galleon has been said to be worth about $10 (although if you actually analyze what it buys, I'd say it is worth more around $31 per galleon), so hundreds of billions would equate trillions of dollars.
So, soon to arrive, Avery's Weekly Cliche Rant, published on an irregular basis when the mood strokes me.
- A good novel is an indivisible sum; every scene, sequence and passage of a good novel has to involve, contribute to and advance all three of its major attributes: theme, plot, characterization.
Ayn Rand - The Romantic Manifesto p. 74 (pb 93)