Harry Potter

When our friends Rich and Laura were here (it was Rich who got me on this 50 books thing), I was grumbling that these Harry Potter books may not have been the best choice for the 50. “They are just so long!”, I said. Laura said that they read so quickly, but I replied “but 800 pages is 800 pages!” Laura was right. I plowed through Order of the Phoenix in a week, even while busy at work.

Spoilers below, if you haven’t read the book yet and are planning to.

This wasn’t my favorite of the series so far, but I’ll certainly cop to it being good. Harry is 15 now and every bit the teenager. No one understands him. He’s angry all the time. He gets a girlfriend, sorta. That could all have resulted in a very annoying Harry and a very lame book. Rowling handled it well, however, externalizing those emotions and making some of Harry’s isolation literal. Dumbledore doesn’t talk to him for most of the book. Harry has legitimate abusive authority to rebel against when Hogwarts gets taken over by a new Headmaster.

It was also interesting to see Harry loose some of his innocence. He learns new things about his parents and Sirius that aren’t entirely rosy. He comes to understand more about Snape. And he directly faces the death of someone close to him. I thought the later was handled well, too. Harry’s anger and sadness was palpable without being overwrought. I felt bad for him.

Plus, there was a very cool wizard battle at the end, the first really big battle so far. That was tense, cool, and fun to read.

All in all, I am loving the series and really liked Order of the Phoenix.

As with any of my thoughts on books, films, or whatnot, there are spoilers below. I don’t think that matters so much here, as I am probably the only person in the world who hasn’t read all the Harry Potter books who doesn’t consider them part of a liberal satanic plot to corrupt the young.

I first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2000, not too long after it came out in paperback. My thoughts then were “A nice book I would have loved if I were 12.” I didn’t think much more about it and let the whole Potter mania pass me by. As Sarah deftly reminded me, we did see the first movie when it came out in theatres, but that was about it. I’m not sure what made me want to read the whole series now; likely just a desire for some fun reading and finally feeling the need to belatedly get involved in the cultural phenomenon. Plus, I think it’s latent hostility to Twilight.

I read the first three books in the three or so weeks between the end of classes and the new year, then started Goblet of Fire on the 1st. My brief summary of the first three:

Sorcerer’s Stone — Good, but it’s still really a kids book. Nothing wrong with that, but never engaged me beyond a certain level.

Chamber of Secrets — Again, good, but really juvenile fiction. I liked the diary device. Nice suspense regarding whether Harry was the Slytherin heir, but the deus ex machina ending that wrapped everything up really made it feel like a kids book.

Prisoner of Azkaban — A major step forward in complexity, maturity, and, well, length. The dementors were scary. The story was complex and did a good job keeping me in suspense regarding Sirius and what was going on there. Everything does not work out nicely in the end, with Sirius exiled because no one will believe that he was framed. We get the first hints of love interests. And we get to see more and more of the wizard world. What I think is nice about the Rowling stories is that she engages in “world-building” only in service to the story. We get details of the wizarding world, but only as Harry sees them. And fundamentally, the story is about him, not about Rowling showing off her cool creation (which is where a lot of fantasy series go awry).

Goblet of Fire — Holy. Freaking. Crap. Diggory dies! Voldemort returns! Dumbledore is at odds with the Ministry of Magic! Hermionie likes Ron! Wow.If it isn’t already obvious, I really liked this one. Not only did I really like it — I was impressed by it. I thought Rowling fairly skillfully wove together the fantastic (it is a wizard school, after all) with the common (and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way at all). These common elements — the burgeoning feelings toward the opposite sex, the petty arguments between friends that drag on for days when you are 13, the different ways boys and girls handle conflict — made me fully turn from caring about the characters as vehicles for plot to caring about them, well, as people. Rowling even extends this to minor characters, as when we (via Harry via a magic device) learn what happen to Neville’s parents. It’s a simple and relatively quick way to give a minor character that had been fairly one dimensional some depth. And, whoah, about the plot itself! No clear resolution. The book ends in struggle, setting things up nicely for the rest of the series. Things turn Epic in a way that reminded me of the end of The Two Towers — a gathering of breath before the plunge. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

Except I can, because these books have officially gone from Books In Which I Want to Know What Happens to Books That I Will Be Sad to Finish Because I Will Never Be Able To Read Them For The First Time Again.

Ever have books like that?