This week’s questions are a special Harry Potter edition:
- Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it?
- If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties?
- If you’re not going to read it, why not?
- And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to?
- Are you kidding?! I had it on pre-order from Amazon as soon as they made it available! In fact, I’m getting two copies, so my husband and I can read it at the same time (and I read faster, so I’ll have to wait for him to finish before I can talk about it…grrrr!)
- I think I answered that in #1. 🙂 We won’t be going to any of the midnight parties, but at least one of us will be sticking around the house on Saturday until the delivery guy shows up, since Amazon will require a signed receipt for the package. This is my third time with this routine, so I know the drill by now. We’re hoping it doesn’t come too late in the day, though, since we haven’t seen Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix yet, and we want to do that this weekend too. I am currently reading a book of essays that can be put aside quickly if I haven’t finished it by the time Harry arrives, and that’s the plan. It’s going to be DEAR time (this was what my son’s “Drop Everything and Read” period in the fourth grade was called).
- N/A, obviously
- I’m actually not speculating much on the outcome. I’d like to have the questions about which side Snape is really on answered, though, and see Hermione and Ron finally get together. I hope that however it ends, it feels satisfying and right, and I think we just need to trust JKR on that – but I also really hope the good guys win. I’d like to see something bad happen to Draco Malfoy, and I don’t really care what it is. I hope Hogwarts reopens, and I’d like things to wrap up with some idea of where these characters will be going in the future, even if we’re not going to see them again (sigh).
I’m actually approaching this one with mixed emotions, since it is the last one. I really want to try not to read it too fast, and that will be a definite challenge. And I feel sorry for my sister; she has a copy reserved at Borders, but she’s going on a cruise this weekend and won’t be able to get it till she returns, and then she’ll have to hide for awhile to avoid spoilers because of the late start. I’ll have to be very careful to hold my tongue till she’s done ;-).
EDITED for a related follow-up: There’s a “Book Club” discussion on Slate regarding hopes and expectations for Deathly Hallows, and one of the things I noted is a feeling that no matter how good it is, it won’t make everyone happy, and that’s probably true. Their discussion will continue into next week once the participants have read the book, and it warns of spoilers, so it might be wise to stay away until after you finish reading it yourself. I’m already trying to figure out how I’m going to approach that issue when I post my own review here.
I absolutely had to see OOTP before reading book 7 . . . there’s no way I could blithely go from knowing how the whole story turns out–if Harry dies, if Snape is good, who DOES die . . . all of that–to going “back” to watching the whole thing with Umbridge. I said that if I hadn’t seen the movie by the time the book was out, it was just going to have to wait until DVD. Luckily, I saw it on Tuesday….
…Counting the hours….
I’m not sure I would be able to wait for my husband to finish it (he’s a bit slower than I am when it comes to reading). Unlike him who is insisting one copy is plenty, I would probably have to buy one of my own if he wasn’t letting me read it first. Haha I’m terrible, I know.
Enjoy the book! I hope it comes early!
So how did you feel about Draco in Deathly Hallows? I’ve always had a sneaking sympathy for him – I’d much rather see him redeemed, which he kind of is, I guess. I found it interesting that Dumbledore should place such a high priority on his reclamation, while Ron (at least) is unwilling 19 years later to give up the old feud.
Deb – I was almost halfway through Deathly Hallows when we took a reading break to go to the movies, and it didn’t interfere. It actually made for a great HP weekend.
Literary Feline – the books came just after lunch on Saturday, and we jumped right in!:-)
Bubandpie – I’m not sure I’d say Draco is redeemed, exactly, but I do think he and his family are definitely humbled. They’re still paying for his failure to kill Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince (of course, we now know more of what THAT was all about too), as well as various other failures on Lucius’ part, and they are definitely not where they expected to be after Voldemort’s return, at the head of the Death Eaters queue. I think their ending up in that position is good enough for me.