Oh, the seventh and final Harry Potter book. This post will probably contain spoilers for a number of previous books, and likely spoilers for this one as well. Sorry. Can’t help it. Don’t know how to talk about Harry Potter without spoilers. Harry and Ron and Hermione have left school now because they are questing for Horcruxes! They spend all sorts of time running around the countryside trying to find the damn things, and getting into all sorts of scrapes, and at last, you will be pleased to hear, Voldemort gets defeated and everyone is happy. Except the ten thousand…
16 CommentsTag: J.K. Rowling
Booking Through Thursday
Published 5 Jun 2009
by
Gin Jenny
I like this one: This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. So here are my fifteen books that will always stick with me, more or less in the order in which they entered my life: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte Emily Climbs, L.M .Montgomery Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card Macbeth, William Shakespeare The Chosen, Chaim Potok The Color Purple, Alice Walker Harry Potter and…
10 CommentsThe Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
Published 29 May 2009
by
Gin Jenny
If you are about to ask, “Jenny, did you get this book for only two pounds at the Charing Cross Road Borders, along with a number of other kids’ books that were, at 3 for 2, absolutely irresistible?”, then the answer is yes. Yes, I did. And I was really pleased about it, I can tell you. And I also couldn’t resist buying a great big heavy book all about writing Doctor Who, because I am interested in how people write TV shows. I mean how the process works. All very interesting. The Tales of Beedle the Bard is another…
7 CommentsHarry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
Published 9 Nov 2008
by
Gin Jenny
I’m very emotional. I – I – I have so many, so very many, feelings. This was the only one of the books I waited for but not with my family. When the sixth book came out, I was doing a month in London, which was amazing and I saw like twelve plays that month, but it also meant that I got my book from a bookshop in Croydon. Aggravating melodramatic liar Frank Harris is from Croydon. That’s all I will say. Also, nobody stayed up with me to read it. I was with (a different) Jane, and she and…
6 CommentsHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Published 2 Nov 2008
by
Gin Jenny
I saw this graph one time on something connected with the Lemony Snicket books, and it showed how as time went on, the number of fortunate events decreased. And that is what I always think of when I read the fifth Harry Potter book. It contains so many depressing things – dementors, Umbridge, writing lines in blood, everyone thinking Harry is crazy, an acknowledgement of Harry’s psychological issues, Cho Chang – and the end makes me feel so very, very sad, for Harry and for Dumbledore. I stayed up until midnight for this book when it came out, at the…
Leave a CommentHarry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
Published 25 Oct 2008
by
Gin Jenny
Holy God, this book is scary. I had completely forgotten how terrifying the scene in the graveyard is. Damn. Goblet of Fire isn’t as unfavoritey to me as I remembered it being. I don’t know why I was so cranky about it. I mean, apart from the Blast-Ended Skrewts, which were a much less important part of the book than I was remembering, and the fact that this book is hard on poor Harry, Goblet of Fire isn’t half bad. I was expecting that I would reread it and decide after all that I liked it even less than Chamber…
4 CommentsHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
Published 18 Oct 2008
by
Gin Jenny
Mm, this is the one I’ve been waiting for. My original plan was just to read Prisoner of Azkaban, my most favorite of all the Harry Potter books, but then I decided to read them all, since I knew that would take longer and afford me more lasting satisfaction. In Azkaban, a supporter of Voldemort (and, it more or less goes without saying, murderer) breaks out of the wizard prison Azkaban and is out on the lam, desperate – say the prison guards – to get to Harry and kill him dead. Meanwhile the soul-sucking dementors that generally spend all…
1 CommentHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
Published 16 Oct 2008
by
Gin Jenny
You know, if nostalgia was going to cloud my judgment, you’d think I’d like Chamber of Secrets better than I do. It was the first of the Harry Potter books that I bought myself. I remember it really vividly – the Books-a-Million was still open then, and I was young enough that it was a bit of an adventure to buy an expensive hardback all by myself (sheesh, I was a weird fourteen-year-old), and I showed it off to everyone once I got it home, though since none of them had read Harry Potter yet, nobody cared. Except my mother,…
3 CommentsHarry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
Published 14 Oct 2008
by
Gin Jenny
I decided to read these books all over again. The length of my workdays, and the fact that today I was working at one place or another from six-forty in the morning until nine at night, has put the kibosh on any adventurous reading I might feel like doing. I returned all my library books to the library with the intention of reading my books that I already own (but not yet Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me, for which I’m still delaying gratification); and I came up with the bright idea of reading the entire Harry Potter series over from…
9 Comments