Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - ****SPOILERS BELOW****

Hey everyone! So my grand plans for reading Harry Potter did not work out as I hoped. To give you an idea, by noon 7/21 I was still frantically waiting for my book to arrive, thinking I'd already missed out on at least two prime reading hours. An hour later after cursing a mad Swede to Azkaban, I was at home, exhausted, with 2 copies of HP7 sitting on my coffee table. Thomas managed to not strangle me during this entire disturbed period. A feat for which he should be awarded the Order of the Phoenix. Okay, enough of that. By the end of the weekend, instead of having finished the book I was only half way through. You know you're tired when reading exhausts you. I continued to read about 100 pages/day and completed the book on the morning of 7/28. Now for the review. Be warned there are plenty of spoilers!!!
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HP7 started out once again with Harry at his Aunt and Uncle's home. He was quickly whisked off, but not before Dudley had a chance to redeem himself and be decent to Harry. His parents chose not to do the same. I was hoping for more from Petunia. What a cold-blooded freak. She so would have been a Slytherin had she not been a muggle. During the journey to Ron's house, we quickly had the death count jump to two. I wasn't too shocked by Moody's death (but was saddened by it) and was stunned by Hedwig's - killing Harry's pet seemed especially cruel. When I told Thomas about this he immediately thought of a little kid he saw dressed up as Hedwig waiting outside Boulder Bookstore on Pearl St at midnite on 7/21 (in other news, he really needs to post the pics and video he took of this - it was crazier than Halloween). Anyway, this brought up the first potential mystery. How did the deatheaters know when Harry was being moved? Who was the turncoat?

Next up was the big wedding scene for Bill and Fleur. It was nice for us to get a little levity and happiness here and I was especially intrigued by the appearance of Luna and her father and the mysterious symbol he was wearing. Unfortunately, JKR couldn't let us have one full happy day and had to have the death eaters crash the wedding and send Harry, Ron and Hermione (HRH) off on their search for the horcruxes even earlier than expected. This led to the portion of the book that I must admit I was a bit frustrated by. The constant camping and moving and squabbling I found a bit depressing. I'm sure this was her intent, but I wish she would have gone in a different direction here. It seemed overly long and too focused on the 3 leads. I kept wanting to know what was happening elsewhere in the wizarding world and particularly what was going on at Hogwarts. I wish she would have had some scenes set there to break up the HRH trek which started to seem a bit Fellowship of the Ringsish to me. We did get the departure of Ron. As I'm not a huge Ron fan, I had pegged him to be a turncoat so I was very excited when he abandoned H and H. However, he made a fairly quick return and took over for a glum Harry. This gets us through about the first half of the book which I would have to rate a 7 out of 10.

Things dramatically pick up though around page 400 when HRH visit Luna's dad to find out about the mysterious symbol - the Deathly Hallows - and then end up captured and locked in the Malfoy's basement with Luna and some others. I started LOVING the book from here on. JKR is a master at building and sustaining momentum - and that she was able to successfully do so for almost 350 pages is an amazing feat. I was utterly enthralled from this point and the story just kept getting more and more riveting. The escape from the Malfoys was thrilling though Dobby's death upset me more than I expected, given that I wasn't a huge Dobby fan. I was of course happy to get Luna back in the picture, but we also got other characters involved - Bill, Fleur, Dean, Olevander, the goblin and many more - as well and got an update on events at Hogwarts and in the wizarding world.

Things escalated even more of course with the return to Hogwarts and the introduction of Dumbledore's brother. Did NOT see that one coming! I won't cover the battle in detail but will say it was totally awesome, that I especially loved: Neville's role , the entire school - everything from teachers to paintings to statues to magical creatures fighting in the siege of Hogwarts, and the Prince's tale. I was one that totally thought Snape was a Foe, so hearing his whole story and finding out he actually was a Friend was shocking but great. I took his death the hardest. I'm still a bit confused about why he treated Harry so poorly this whole time though. I guess it's because he thought he was so much like James and James took Lily, but this seemed a bit of a stretch.

I was also confused about a couple of other things - how was Malfoy the true owner of the Elder Wand and did Harry really die in the forest when Voldemort cursed him? One of these is answered by JKR here (this explanation also seems a bit of a stretch, but I guess we are dealing with a whole bunch of magicians so suspension of disbelief is already a given). As for the other, I'd appreciate any thoughts.

The epilogue? I was pleased by everything I read and was glad that she didn't wrap up everything too tightly and provide too many details. Though I do hear she's going to write an encyclopedia that provides more details (for example, she said Luna became a naturalist and roamed the world). But most importantly we found that Harry got his happily ever after. The 2nd half of the book gets a 10/10 from me.

I did experience a huge feeling of sadnesse last page because I knew this was it. No more to the story. And nothing - no book or series or even movie - on the horizon that can even come close in the whole expectation game. I will really, really miss having another HP book to look forward to. I don't know if any book will ever match the hoopla that this one generated. It's not my favorite book of all time or anything, but I think the series is in the top ten.

But all is not lost. In 8 days I should be having Boomer and that's something real and concrete and amazing for me and Thomas to look forward to. Something tells me I'll be way too busy in the coming days to read - or even miss Harry.

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: Jimmy Buffett for President.

-sunday

Waiting for Harry

Hey everyone! Tomorrow is the day. Or for the true diehards, 13 hours from now is the hour. My HP book is set to be delivered by UPS to our house sometime tomorrow - hopefully in the morning. I've used all of my engineering skills to devise a plan to finish the book unspoiled. I understand it's about 750 pages and I read around a page a minute, so this means to finish the book this wkend, I'll need to read it for 6 hours and 15 minutes each day. This is all that's on my schedule, so it should not pose a problem. Until then I'm in media blackout mode. This means no internet, cable or NPR news. I've been at this for a week now, and it's somewhat refreshing. I'm also using it as an opportunity to blast Boomer (yep, still no name. we've about given up) with classical music while driving in my car. Better late than never, right? He seems to sleep when I drive, so I don't know if this is doing him much good though.

In other Boomer news, we are down to 2.5 wks and counting. I cannot believe I will actually have a baby then, but everyone assures me this is the case. It all still seems very theoretical even though I am all kinds of huge in the stomach department. If it weren't for Boomer's pummeling of my insides, I would be convinced that I'd just let myself go in a big way. Anyway, theoretical or not, I am very excited and we've almost got his nook ready. Ambyswing (our crib), changing table (my old dresser), hanging racks and shelves (my reconfigured 2nd closet) all somehow fit together perfectly in his little nest. My mom and I made blackout curtains a couple of wks ago for it and I have to admit I'm very pleased with the whole shebang. Hopefully he will be as well.

As for movies, I've seen 3 of note:

• Live Free, Die Hard - surprisingly awesome. Bruce Willis still rocks and the Mac guy was a great sidekick. The special effects were great, especially the ones at the end when some crazy jet that Thomas tells me actually exists chases and fires on Bruce as he drives an 18 wheeler. Unreal. The bad guy (Deadwood's Sheriff Bullock) was also great - funny and his motives actually made sense. All in all this did NOT let the franchise down. Way better than DH2 and even 3.
• Transformers -not surprisingly horrid. For some reason I had a fondness for this cartoon when I was young. It makes no sense as most of my fav cartoons around this time were more along the line of Smurfs. But there you have it. Even though the previews for Transformers looked beyond stupid, reviews weren't bad and a couple of friends said it was good. Plus it was really hot outside so what else are you gonna do if you're pregnant? The first hour wasn't too bad. The problem came with the last hour and forty minutes. Once the transformers started talking the movie started sucking in the hugest way possible. It was absolutely terrible. What can you expect from Michael Bay though. I fully deserved the suffering since I contributed my $5 to its bottom line.
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - good, but nowhere close to the book. This book was my favorite so far, so my expectations for the movie were pretty high. The movie did a good job representing the general plot of the book, but so many good parts were cut that I was inevitably disappointed. The ending fight scene was trimmed by a ridiculous amount and this was one of my fav parts of the book so I just can't get past it. On a good note tho, book 5 introduced one of my fav characters the spacy but sweet Luna Lovegood, and the movie did not cut her role at all. The actress perfectly captured her character and I especially enjoyed all the scenes she was in. One of my big complaints with Book 6 was the lack of Luna and Neville. Hopefully this will be remedied in book 7.

That's it! I'll post my thoughts on book 7 sometime next week after I've recovered.

Enjoy all you HP fans!

Boulder Bumpersticker of the Day: If you're not outraged, you voted for Bush. Twice.

-sunday