"Sólo permiten 15 kilos of checked baggage," my friend warns me when I tell her I'm flying with RyanAir for the first time. Whoops. Mine is always la maleta that comes through with the orange etiqueta indicating that 'it's heavy, man.'
Fortunately, I'm only flying out with them, not ida y vuelta, so I may still be all right on the return journey after raiding the bookshelves of every charity shop in the Midlands and South Wales. But the trip is not going to be exactly breve, nor static enough to get washing done and dried during a typical verano inglés of torrential rains and inundaciones, so most of the space in my equipaje has to be given over to clothes rather than reading matter.
Which is a pity, as summer must surely be the season when you finally get time to do some serious reading. If not, why publish cuentos de verano in every suplemento dominical? And why such a roaring trade in novelas baratas at the airports?
True, it's fun to curl up with a book by the estufa de leña on a wet weekend in autumn, but it's also fun to snuggle on the sofa and watch a trashy film whereas, even with the temperatures above 40ºC, I can't feel quite comfortable about spending a whole summer afternoon indoors delante de la tele. And although ipods and laptops and all la tecnología actual should make films portable, I tend to think of the cliché image of reading summer fiction specials, aga sagas and whodunnits, stretched out on a beach towel en la playa.
My UK trip may not include beaches, or suitable weather to enjoy them, but there will still be waits at estaciones and aeropuertos, and horas de viaje when it's often really useful to appear to be reading a book para evitar talking to the weirdo who's sitting alongside.
Who and Why?
Presumably the summer fiction phenomenon is one reason J. K. Rowling's publishers decided to bring out the final Harry Potter instalment to coincide with fin de curso for los niños de medio mundo. It must have made it so much easier to arrange and justify those late night bookshop parties if there was no school the next day and the children were actually going to have time to read the brick of a book without neglecting their deberes.
And, of course, it was all so much more exciting because of the "who's going to die?" hype. Personally, I just don't understand what the big deal is. There was one article I read, escrito por un "Corporate Ethics Consultant" - whatever that might be - which claimed that "Giving away the secret at the end of the last book [...] betrays both author and audience." I disagree, and suspect el autor del artículo is not much of a lector himself.
He doesn’t seem to understand that it's worth reading a good book a pesar de saber cómo termina. And there’s far more to be got out of most stories than finding out quién queda de pié en la última escena. A good story isn’t just a question of the punch line.
Incluso el misterio más tradicional can be more, rather than less, fun when you know the answer. The first time through, you’re looking for pistas to see if you can guess the murderer. The second time you’re probably buscando the clues you missed. Y, la tercera vez, you’re admiring how well the writer wove the information into the plot so it was all there but, aún así, you missed it.
If the spoilers tell us that Harry muere, this isn’t what should really matter. If they tell us that Voldemort lo asesina it’d be no big surprise, but (assuming we care at all) we’d still want to know qué les pasa a los demás, how he dies, and why Hermione and Ron Weasley aren’t there to save him…
If they tell us that it was actually Ron who did the deed, then we’ll want to have followed cada paso of his journey hacia "el Lado Oscuro" or, if it was unintentional, to agonise over the dreadful accident and to find out how everyone else reacts and what happens next.
Even knowing, groso modo, all the main events of the story wouldn't be enough. It’s like adaptations of classics for children, and the reason these so often fail: in order to bring them in at under the word limit and at the right point in the Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level, they have to be stripped of all los detalles que les hacen literatura. All the "hard words", the complex sentence structure, the description, the incidental details and subplots are removed. Just like a spoiler, you get the hechos principales without any of the pleasure of reading the book.
If we’ve followed las seis previas entregas it’s because J. K. Rowling has shown herself capable of providing a good read. If you're satisfied with only the spoilers, you'll miss the pleasure of the humour and the twists that precede el desenlace. It would be stupid to think that the only thing that matters es cómo acaba: it’s the whole story que importa, the way that is taken to reach the end.
The Harry Potter books have justifiably been labelled as un fenómeno and Ms Rowling is credited with single-handedly reviving the reading habit amongst una generación entera. In this electronic age, kids are reading libros tradicionales. And they certainly are traditional. On every page, los valores más básicos - loyalty, friendship, courage - are positively depicted. La maldad is shown as a force which we can - and should - fight. Presumably we want the readers to take these ideas to heart.
Which is why I'm worried about this idea of the "spoilsports" who threatened to disclose el final before the publication date: we're risking encouraging the idea that the ending is all that matters. And, by letting our children see that we think the outcome is the be-all and end-all, we're suggesting that the end always justifies the means.
Do we really want to encourage the belief that our actions don’t matter as long as la última página reads well?
I suspect I won't yet find the Deathly Hallows on sale in any of the charity shops, but that's OK: sin duda, I'll find a few familiar friends to re-read, and that'll do me just fine. Especially as I reckon half a dozen old paperbacks will weigh less.
