Harry Potter - Check
After last weekend and the events of this week, preaching, birthday, health panic, and Greek, I treated myself to an afternoon of reading Harry Potter - and finished the book! I had been able to go slowly at first, just reading a chapter or two each night, but once I was in the thick of it, I couldn't put it down. I curled up in my neighbor's air conditioned apartment, since it was 90 inside mine for the 3rd day in a row and read the book until I was finished, stopping for a walk and some dinner. It was so nice to read something so enjoyable.
And... while I was on my walk I think I got an idea for my August 19th sermon. I will probably try to get some of that written before I head off to baptism practice in the morning. I'm determined not to be fretting about that sermon the weekend that I deliver it. If I can get it written in advance, that will make me much happier.
posted by Merely Human @ 10:47 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Yay advance work!
Also, HP would have been better if there had been about 200 pages less of it. Maybe even more. Of less. Erm, whatever.
I'm starting the book today, at last!
Doug - there should never be less of HP. Sadly there will now be no more.
Raisin - I hope you don't have anything else to do today!
Spoiler warning for people who haven't finished the book.
Each book in the second half of the series left me feeling not merely sated but bloated. This last one was better, because the beginning was so strong and the ending quite good too, but how many gross and rainy days somewhere in England did we need? And what happened in book six, other than Dumbledore dying? Who knows? There were other clunkers in the structure, too (the whole Deeper Magic business of the hallows, that the characters only latch onto because Lunda's dad wears something weird at the wedding, f'rinstance), and on a page-by-page basis -- sometimes line-by-line -- it felt somewhere between loose and sloppy.
By contrast, I liked the fifth movie much better than I remember liking the book. They had to tighten up the story to get it to work on screen, and that's exactly what the book needed, too. I think I'll like the sixth and seventh movies (what did happen in book six again?)
One of the charms of the first three books was the sense that there was this whole wizarding world out there, and we were only getting glimpses. In the second half, though, as more was revealed, less was actually there.
What am I missing? They're fun to read in a big gulp, slurp, and being a part of the phenomenon has been kinda neat, too, but they really would be better books if they were more tightly constructed.
Hey-
Happy (belated) birthday to you. And you may NOT usurp me as Queen of Health Issues - that's my No Fun Chair.
Cheers, and thinking of you,
KNS
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