A couple people have alerted me that they tried leaving very witty, insightful comments to my last post. However, it appears that because I left my reactions to Deathly Hallows as a really long comment, Blogger refuses to accept any more for that post.
So please respond here if you wish...
I finished HP and the Deathly Hallows at 3am this morning but I was too tired to post anything before grabbing some Zs. I was very happy with the book overall and you can read more details (and spoilers) in the comments...
With only a couple days until the release of the seventh and final installment in saga of our favorite wizard, Harry Potter, I'm actually getting quite nervous. Nervous to see what scrapes he and his pals will get up to, sure, but really it's his final fate that has me on edge. Would Jo be so bold as to leave us crying?
I hear there are all kinds of spoilers all over the internet which I'm trying very hard to resist so please no comments or emails with the latest rumor you've heard. I'd like to see what Jo has come up with for us with nothing to ruin it.
CAUTION: Spoiler Alert
I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last week and it was great. I had purposefully kept my expectations low—since I had not been so happy with HP and the Goblet of Fire—but I didn't need to.
Number Twelve Grimmauld Place and the DA and Harry's detentions with Umbridge and the Hall of Prophecies were all like we had dropped into them out of the book. I especially liked the purring, meowing kitty plates mounted on the walls in Umbridge's office. The sound design made me want to look around the theater for all the kittens who had escaped from the pet store. (and to take one home, of course)
New additions Kreacher, the thestrals and Mrs. Figg were well done but the best has to be Luna Lovegood. I'm so glad she was given several scenes in the movie in which to shine. Lucius Malfoy was again a superb bad guy and this time he had sexy fighting robes and a new evil sidekick, Bellatrix Lestrange.
The only complaint I have is that I wished it could've been twice as long. So much that I loved in the book was sacrificed to tell the story within a reasonable time. Here are some of the things they had to omit:
Yes, that's right. Not trash can, trash car.
I was filling up my tank (10 gallons for $31) at the ARCO after work this evening when I noticed something sticking out of the driver's side back door. I tugged it out and it was a candy wrapper! Of a sort I would never eat. (soft centers? yuck) There was something else stuck further in so I unlocked the door, opened it, and another wrapper fell out.
Someone has been using my car as a trash receptacle and I don't like it. I guess it could be worse. At least it wasn't gum.
I was happily working along last night finishing up a few items before leaving for our brief one-day midweek holiday when I remembered I needed to get to my library before it closed at 8pm. I had two books on hold that I wanted to pick up to read today.
I hurried as much as I could all the way back home: from rushing through the July 4 holiday vacationers in the City, to pre-walking through the BART train so I was positioned for a quick departure from the station, to speeding along the surface roads and taking the highway, to just skimming the back end of a yellow light...
but I was 5 minutes too late. The lights were off and the sign read "Your Library Is Closed." I'm just glad the date by which I must pick them up or risk paying a fine is Saturday. I still have some time.
So far they've excavated a few rectangular blocks of pavement from the pink marked-off lanes. Then they replaced them and covered them with fresh black goo. The next day there were more pink lanes going almost the entire length of the street (it's not very long). I think a saw a machine that was slicing through the pavement along the lanes as I left one morning but I haven't seen any more signs of excavation. It's all very curious.
