Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two is first and foremost a play. Plays tend to read differently than normal fictional books in that setting and world are less lush and richly defined. Plays are heavily dialogue driven with some stage cues. Which, to me, makes this less fun of a Harry Potter book because the actual world of Harry Potter is essentially left unpainted, not just leaving a little to the imagination, but almost everything to the imagination in terms of appearance and setting. (Some people might like this, I am not usually a fan.)

A little bit of spoiling may follow…

The plot is heavily focused on difficulties in the relationship Harry has with his son Albus Severus. There is also a lot of time travel and foibles associated with time travel (I may have been singing “Let’s do the time warp again!” in my head as I was reading through this). Having Voldemort’s daughter as a character definitely made things more interesting.

But to me the character development in the play was very shallow, which to be fair there is nowhere near the room in a play for character depth and development the way there is in a novel, let alone seven novels and a rather developed universe. I will admit though, there is some character development or depth added to Harry Potter in being the boy who lived (on multiple occasions).

In many ways I would love to see Harry Potter universe / world novels that essentially leave the boy alone, something more enthralling and with more depth than the other shorter books / plays. (I have the same critique of the Star Wars movies and the fact that we are too often dealing with the Skywalker family, here’s hoping for Rogue One. But the expanded universe, though what is actually cannon anymore is crazy and could be many posts in its own right, at least departed from our main characters and I would love for the Harry Potter universe to do the same.)

If you are a big Harry Potter fan, read it, it is good. If not, I would not say it is a must read or particularly transformative or immersive for the Potter-verse.

Opening the Dragon Gate - The Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard

This is the second Taoist book I have read, the first being The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff.

Opening the Dragon Gate is a biography of Wang Liping, a modern Taoist wizard / master. It discusses the training he underwent, the changes he observed during his training, his relationship with his three elders and masters, and finally how he continued in the Way after becoming a master in his own right.

It is less a book about Taoism per se and more a book about a particular Taoist with Taosim intermixed and flowing through it. I was looking to read something more on practical / practice-able Taoism and this book would certainly not be an introduction in that vein and therefore I was really only able to appreciate it on a biographical level.

Opening the Dragon Gate - The Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard was authored by Chen Kaiguo and Zheng Shunchao and was translated from the original Chinese by Thomas Cleary.