Rowling

I must start by saying that there will be spoilers in this post, so anybody who hasn’t yet read that Harry and Hermione were really the same person all along…. heehee… ok, that one’s a lie, but don’t read on if you want to keep everything else secret.

I had intended to talk about some of my other holiday reads, but they will have to wait as Mr. Potter et al get their appraisal first. I suppose the best way for me to sum up my response to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is that it is my least favourite book in the series, and that I loved it. Yes, nothing to approach Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as my favourite (and also the first one I read), but still a compulsive dash through the hundreds of pages. It felt very strange to come to the end of a eight year journey, knowing that I’d never read new accounts of Harry again – unless, of course, I learn Chinese and read ‘Harry Potter and the Large Funnel’, which I believe is in the offing.

Any more specific response? Well, I felt the absence of Hogwarts keenly. In amongst the admirable good/evil battle, and Harry busy discovering himself and his past, I’d always loved the school atmosphere, and the lessons and teachers we were treated to. Couldn’t you just imagine Maggie Smith reading the latest book, and thinking “Shan’t bank on that film to cover the weekly shop”? The omission of Quidditch I could cope with happily, but McGonagall, Trelawney, Sprout and Flitwick were sadly underused. In their place came endless wandering through fields to rival the first Lord of the Rings film. In fact, the whole Deathly Hallows plot felt rather unnecessary – but perhaps that was only because, like most people, my mind was wholly fixated on “who dies?!” and I didn’t allow enough of my attention to be caught by the matters of the book itself, rather than the series.

Oh, the deaths. Rowling cleverly killed off characters of increasing importance, through the last few books. I mean, who cared at all when Cedric died? But Sirius… and then Dumbledore. Must confess, I kept expecting him to come back to life… more on that later. We were similarly eased in with HP7 – Hedwig was sad, as was Mad-Eye, but nothing to whip out the Kleenex for. Dobby, on the other hand… and by the time we got to Fred, I was positively inconsolable. Mostly because the twin thing is a little too close to home.

Onto Albus. What WAS that half-dead/half-alive thing? “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” was rather a clever line, but didn’t make the whole scene less confusing. Any thoughts?

All in all, a satisfying end to a brilliant series – my thoughts about the books as a whole, and Rowling’s ability, were mentioned a while ago – and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows shouldn’t just be remembered for the deaths it contains.

Being away from the blogging world for the Launch Day, I’ve no idea about the general consensus…???

Never let it be said that I am out of touch with the populus. In a year where I’ve read more Middle English than your average preteen, I’ve also just finished a book nearly all of ’em will have read. Yup, having reached page 766, have completed my third read of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The film’s coming out soon, and I wanted to refresh my memory…

In the early days, when JK Rowling was producing one of the series a year, Harry Potter was the same age as me. I’ve had the opportunity to overtake him now, but even so, I wasn’t there from the outset. The first time our paths crossed was when I helped out on the school’s Carnegie Prize Panel (which didn’t have any effect on the actual procedure, but was rather fun) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter III) was one of the choices. This was when Harry was big, but not huge. And I was hooked – part of me wanted to loath the book, but… no, I was hooked. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has read any of the series, and still dislikes it.

So what is it about JKR’s writing? Well, if I knew that, I’d probably be a millionaire by now. But we did have a lecture on Harry Potter at Oxford once, in the first week that I was at university, and the lecturer pointed out that JKR rarely used descriptive language, or anything which veered from the action-action-action. This, said Dr. Purkiss (herself, with her son Michael, an author under the pseudonym Tobias Druitt), was either incredibly clever writing, or incredibly bad writing. True, take any chunk of prose and Virginia Woolf it ain’t – but Rowling’s ability to make you read on is unparalleled. Who would have thought children would willingly read 700+ pages? And I read it over a single weekend, so that I wouldn’t have the ending spoilt by friends at school on Monday. Perhaps I’m not the best example of someone who needed persuasion to read, but you get the idea.

So. Where do my musings point? Nowhere, to be honest, except to demonstrate myself not quite the literary snob I might seem, and to hope lots of others hold up their hands in solidarity. No reason why one can’t enjoy Woolf and wizards; Shakespeare and Sirius Black; Austen and Aurors… you get the picture. Speaking of pictures, there must be a thousand sketches I could have done to accompany a post on Harry Potter. But I’m tired… so I’ve copied this one, which is hopefully the way things are heading for the next generation. Fingers crossed.