Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry Potter. Show all posts

29 July 2007

Wow



(If you haven't read HP and the Deathly Hallows yet and plan to, don't read this post.)

One week and several hours after purchasing it, I have finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

What a satisfying end to a tremendously entertaining series. Snape is good - mostly. Voldemort dies. Harry lives, though almost until the very end, J.K. Rowling wants you to think he's going to die, and she does a pretty good job of making you feel like it may happen. Dumbledore's actions, as they are revealed, were questionable, though I believe done for the right reasons. It just goes to show that even the most wise wizards are still human.

Those people we wanted to end up together, did. And in the epilogue, we get a glimpse of their lives after Hogwarts and youth. (If you are left wanting more, you can read an interview with Rowling here to find out more details about some of the characters' adult lives.) My one beef is that none of Harry's and Ginny's children are named after poor Fred Weasley.

Some of it was perhaps predictable, but had the book ended any other way, I would have been extrodinarily disappointed. Now that the story is complete, I look forward to starting over from book 1.

24 July 2007

I'm just wild about Harry



(Professor Trelawney reads the fortune of a Muggle present at a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release party Friday night.)


No. I am not done with the book. It's 759 pages and I have a toddler!

But I did purchase Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows shortly after midnight on Friday. And yes. I attended a book release party. But it was under the guise of reporting on it for my local paper. No. I didn't dress up. But yes. I thought it would be funny to go as Rita Skeeter, horribly annoying reporter for the Daily Prophet, a wizard paper.

It was incredible to see how much excitement a BOOK caused amongst readers both young and old. Nearly 1000 people showed to the party held at my local, independent bookstore, which featured games, crafts, fortune telling, animal demonstrations. treats and a costume contest. The only thing missing was a full-on Quidditch match.

I am about 400 pages into the book, and, well...it's incredible, and dark. As the owner of the bookstore told me, Deathly Hallows is "not something you would normally give your 7- or 8-year-old."

But I, for one, am enjoying it.

My biggest hope? That Draco Malfoy finally gets his.