Harry Potter and the Splintery Broomstick

  • Well, I really try to hold fast against any tidal waves of pop cul­ture, but I couldn’t do it — I had to go out today and buy the last Harry Pot­ter book (which Greg irrev­er­ently referred to by the title above). I haven’t even opened it yet, because I know that it’ll take way more time than I want to give to it to fin­ish the thing. I tell myself that I’m not just suc­cumb­ing to the hype, and that might be partly true. I look on this kind of thing as a mat­ter of self-defense — if I don’t hurry up and read it, peo­ple will blab all the spoil­ers. So off I go to hole up some­where with a pot of tea and start find­ing out what hap­pened to all these folk, and try­ing to recall who they are and why I cared.

    Before I get into it, I’ll just say what I’d like to find in this last tome:

    • I’d love it if J. K. Rowl­ing car­ried through with hav­ing this year feel like the world of an 18-year-old, as the first one felt like the world of a 10-year-old and so on. That was one of the motifs I thought was really pretty cool, though it was rough when he was 15 and all he ever did was shout at peo­ple in all caps.
    • I don’t know what should hap­pen to Snapes and the Mal­foys (lesser and greater), but it should be nasty.
    • I’d like to see the Mug­gles world enter into things again. I almost felt like Rowl­ing was mov­ing towards a sort of con­ver­gence a book or so ago, and then she dropped it. Maybe I’m the weirdo for want­ing that, since our rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mug­gles are just Harry’s awful, awful adop­tive fam­ily, but I thought there was a mes­sage about magic and the real world that could have been quite profound.

    As far as how things wrap up with Volde­mort and all that, I’m happy to have no expec­ta­tions. There doesn’t seem like much chance of a dis­ap­point­ment on that front. It’s bound to be a page-turner. And it’s been fun to go through this sort of lit­er­ary pil­grim­age, even if it wasn’t very weighty mate­r­ial. But heck, it started get­ting mythic in scope sev­eral books ago, so I guess it’s as good a thing to waste a week­end on as anything.


    Related posts:

    1. And speak­ing of Harry Potter …
    2. Harry Pot­ter — yeah, why not?
    3. The morn­ing after — ahhh.
    4. Got a favorite Lenten book?
    5. The dog, the band and blogging

    July 21st, 2007 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • Robert Mahoney 07.21.2007

    I think Draco will either turn good, or be destroyed. I think Snap is like Jack Spar­row, Snape is on Snape’s side, but I think he leans towards good.

    My wife is read­ing it now, and from what she has told me about it, it really sounds good.

    Also, after hav­ing read Order of the phoenix, I came to the con­clu­sion that James Pot­ter was a real jerk for treat­ing Snape the way he did, and I can under­stand why Snape has such an hatred for James that sadly gets spilled onto Harry.

    I look at Snape, and Star Wars kicks in where Luke tells Vader “There is good in you, I know it.”

  • Word­mama

    Mine was sup­posed to be deliv­ered yes­ter­day but wasn’t, blast it. I’m deter­mined not to care that much, but I fully intend to open it to the last page first and find out who dies. I’m not good at sus­tained tension.

    I agree about Snape; Rowl­ing seems to like turn­ing per­cep­tions of char­ac­ter on their heads. Draco, on the other hand, is pretty clearly a Deathe­ater in train­ing and deserves what­ever he gets. Wouldn’t it be lovely if he’s the “major char­ac­ter” who bites it?

    Of course, by this time you prob­a­bly know, don’t you? Argh!

  • Anam Cara

    We got out copies at 2 AM Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Of our chil­dren who live in this ciry, the two girls (ages 28 and 23) are read­ing as fast as they can, what with work and church and life get­ting in the way). The youngest, a 20 year old son, and I are com­plet­ing a jour­ney we began 10 years ago as we take turns read­ing Harry Pot­ter and the Philosopher’s Stone to each other. (Poor Dad couldn’t get through the first one.….) Again, with work and church, we have only read 4 chap­ters (must do two a day to com­plete before he returns to college).

    Today we are both off work! I have great hopes for progress in Deathly Hal­lows today.

  • Grace

    Robert & WM: I’m inclined to agree that Rowl­ing gives you rea­son to go this way and that on Snapes. Up until the last book, I really was sure he was with the good guys, but I did find his char­ac­ter loath­some. (I mean, what kind of grown man has to con­stantly work out his past humil­i­a­tions on one of his stu­dents?) But, yeah, the rev­e­la­tions about the kind of treat­ment he got from Harry’s dad are eye-opening.

    It’s all part of what makes this series unusual — there’s a con­stant smudg­ing of the line between friend and foe, hero and vil­lain. I’m not say­ing it’s some master-stroke by Rowl­ing — I don’t really know. Some­times I find it irri­tat­ing. But I’ve been think­ing about that as I make my way through this one. 150 pages to go — I’m going off to find a Star­bucks, and I bet I won’t be the only one in there with this 4-pounder. ;-)

    WM: Deliv­ery — yep, I know. I thought I had pre-ordered mine with Ama­zon. But I have got­ten no word from them, and so I just threw up my hands and bought it at Wal-mart. Very low-tech, but hey, I got the darned thing into my hot lit­tle hands before peo­ple could pipe up with spoilers.

  • Grace

    Anam:
    So it’s a fam­ily affair, as the old song goes. That sounds like a lot of fun. You remind me that I didn’t get into Pot­ter­ism until the sec­ond book was out, and then it was just because I was curi­ous to find out what all the fuss was about. I was par­tic­u­larly intrigued that my mother, who gen­er­ally has no use for things like this, had the bug.

    It really has been a good expe­ri­ence for a lot of peo­ple right now, I think, to have a book series that makes you *want* to read. I’m sure we’d all love it if peo­ple could be more inter­ested in weight­ier mate­r­ial, but hey, it’s still bet­ter than com­puter games and itunes for your cul­tural repository.

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