The beginning and the end of Harry Potter

I found this on a tumblr and just had to share it, even though I don't have a tumblr account and have no intention of getting one.

The first and last lines of each Harry Potter novel.

i can teach you but i have to charge

via polyvore

B re-reads Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Christ I love this book. I know I said that Order of the Phoenix wasn’t as bad as I remember it being, but then I re-read Half-Blood Prince and it is so freakin’ fantastic that book 5 is once again ordinary.

I’m not at all ashamed to say that I cried when Dumbledore dies. Looking back at it, you see the slow build towards it but as a reader, Harry's shock is your shock. How can Dumbledore die? It's DUMBLEDORE! This is why you should read the books when they come out and before watching films. I’m so glad I was one of the tens of millions of Harry Potter fans who read the books immediately and so was not spoiled by the internet spoilers ‘Snape kills Dumbledore’. I read it and was full of:

It's still so emotional.

All of the scenes where Harry and Dumbledore dive into the penseive are fascinating. So much more so when reading the books back to back because you are more amazed than. Rowling showing us young Riddle, making us understand where he comes from and why he is the 1/7-of-a-man that he is, is just a brilliant storytelling technique.

Creepy evil child.

The denouement comes a little earlier in this book. Because Dumbledore can't explain everything at the end … because he's DEAD!

Don't stand near edges. Or people with evil-sounding names and animated tattoos.

The revealment of the challenge facing Harry (and Ron and Hermione) in the destruction of Voldemort's horcruxes is so daunting, even to the reader. It's like a window into the seventh book, where we know exactly what the next installment will be about and we're desperate to go there.

Slughorn is a great character and I think brilliantly protrayed in the movie by Jim Broadbent.

Painful memories are painful to extract.

Then of course there is this moment:

!!!

Image not by me, by an artist calling herself Kama, from here.

Like all Harry Potter fans I wish there was SO much more of this!

I just love book 6. There seem to be fewer of the signals than the earlier books but it's reaching the end. The smug re-reading in this book comes from the recognition of horcruxes, understnading the background to Snape and in the crazily obvious Ron / Hermione sexual tension. Side note: Lavender Brown sounds like such a scary girlfriend, we would not be friends. All the 'romance' in HBP is supremely entertaining and so accurately high school.

Bullies wear black. And have emo tendencies.

B re-reads Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix

I won't lie – this is my least favourite HP book. In fact, it's the only episode I prefer the movie over the book. Because the book is short and well-edited, unlike the book.

Re-reading it now, I find I'm not as pissed off at Harry as I remember being. He is still an annoying, selfish overly-dramatic snot who can't manage his temper or his testosterone. But somehow, it doesn't last for as long as I thought. The irritation I feel at the book is annoyance at Harry for the first third of the book and then anger at Bitch-Features Dolores Umbridge for the rest. With intermittent Harry-anger as well.

Bitch-features!

However, all that annoyance-whingeing aside there is so much to love about this book. I adore everything to do with the DA. The Harry / Cho story I'm not keen on, however it's kind of important as character development for Harry and the progression of the romantic story lines, which feed and bounce off each other for four novels.

Luna is just fantastic. How can you not love Luna? I think she's brilliantly portrayed in the movie – just as I imagined her to be. Different and dreamy and wise beyond her years.

Don't mess with Luna.

Then of course this is a starring book for the Weasley Twins. The novel is full of their Weesley Wizard Weezes, their glorious fireworks – which allow the teachers to rebel against Umbridge (bitch features) – and then when they leave so dramatically – it's fan-freaking-tastic!

And then there's ... foreshadowing!

“De - men – tors,” said Harry slowly and clearly. “Two of them.”

“And what the ruddy hell are Dementors?”
“They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban,” said Aunt Petunia.
“How d'you know that?" He asked her, astonished.
Aunt Petunia glanced Uncle Vernon in fearful appology, then lowered her hand slightly to reveal her horsy teeth.

“I heard – that awful boy – telling her about them years ago,” she said jerkily.

She means James. NO she doesn't. 'That awful boy' is the young Severus Snape. But we won't know that for another 1,000 page.

When they walk into the Hogs Head for their first DA meeting:

The barman sidled towards then out of a back room, He was a grumpy-looking old man with a great deal of long grey hair and beard. He was tall and thin and looked vaguely familiar to Harry.

Because he's Dumbledore's brother! And we won't find that out for another 1,000 pages either!

The scenes in the Ministry are horrifying, because they're ALL HARRY'S FAULT! So dark and full-on. Then … when Sirius … dies ... oh wait, give me a minute ... re-reading it, I still cried.

Don't mess with Dumbledore. He's a total bad-ass.

B re-reads Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The book opens with 'The villagers of Little Haggleton still called it the Riddle House...' and I was completely non-plussed for a moment until I remembered how awesomely this book opens! Not with Dursleys and Harry being treated badly – that doesn't come around until chapter 2. No, the start of GoF is intense!

This is such a good episode in the series. There are some really glorious scenes, such as when the Weasleys come to pick Harry up for the World Cup, the World Cup itself, dress robes, dance lessons ... anything that features the suddenly cool and hot Ginny. (I'm a total Ginny fan girl)

The scenes where Harry and Ron are struggling to ask out a couple of girls to the Yule Ball are just so accurately written you can't help but smile the whole way though. Ron's a bit of a tosser, only wanting to take the prettiest girl possible and J.K. Rowling also gives us the first hints in the series of Ron and Hermione and their upcoming emotional tug-of-war in Ron's petty anger and jealousy of Viktor Krum and Hermione's unhappiness at Ron's shallowness and bitterness.



I have bad memories of the horror and embarrassment that went along with having to ask boys to dance practise and eventually graduation in primary school. High school dances were easier – that asking to dance was just a tap on the shoulder, and shrug of acceptance and then some uncomfortable grinding and ass-grabbing.

The dance lessons scenes in the movie don't exist in the book, but I forgive the movie makers, just for this:



Goblet of Fire also has my favourite little moment in the series and it goes something like this:

Moody swept the dead spider off his desk and onto the floor.“Not nice,” he said calmly. “Not pleasant. And there's no counter-curse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me."

Thrills me very time. Shivers down the spine sort of stuff.

It's in GoF that we first learn of Snape's Death Eater past and the absolute faith Dumbledore has put in him and his conversion to the right side. Harry sees all this in the Penseive and when he asks Dumbledore why he trusts that Snape stopped supporting Lord Voldemort;
“Harry, that is a matter between Professor Snape and myself”.

But WE KNOW!

Then of course, there are final scenes where Voldemort comes back. There is no way anyone could have been expecting that at the start of the book. These books tend to have whole block of chapters at the end where you can't put the book down! That starts here somewhere around the beginning of the third task somewhere around page 540 and doesn't stop until page 636.
It's SO GOOD!



The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Harry...and Harry stared back into the face that had haunted his nightmares for three years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes, and a nose that was as flat as a snake's, with slits for nostrils …

Lord Voldemort had risen again.



Shit is getting REAL!

B re-reads Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

OMG, I wish I could have sat down one morning and read this book cover to cover because that is just what I wanted to do! I took to reading it in the morning before going to work and it kept making me late! SO GOOD!

Prisoner of Azkaban was one of my favourite Harry Potter books, along with Half-Blood Prince (which I cannot WAIT to re-read). I’m not sure quite why I loved it above all others for so long. It contains just as much unpleasantness and evil. Ron is a complete prat to Hermione for most of the book. Poor Hermione. Yet somehow then this book feels different from the others. You get a sense of the characters maturing into young adults with all the issues that entails (Cho Chang fore-shadowing).

The story also feels more acceptable. The school year progresses relatively normally. There are lessons and Quidditch, and the students actually have exams. I enjoy the exams scenes. There are no monsters or mysterious cursed objects or overly-grand adventures. Events which characters have been working towards for the duration of the book occur, then the protagonists go back in time to fix them. Simple.

The final revelation scenes and then the do-over is still exciting, but somehow more tension laden because you know it’s all going to go wrong and you want to leap in and interject and stop it all going bad! Hurry up with the explanations! Don’t go out into the moonlight! Keep rats in cages, not pockets! My heart bleeds for Sirius and Harry at the end of it all.

Things I like about Prisoner of Azkaban:

1. That Voldemort doesn’t make an appearance and that Harry doesn’t have to battle him…again.
2. The dementors – which in my head look exactly like the ghost of christmas past from the Muppet’s Christmas Carol – are so vile and such fantastic creations. You can imagine them existing in our every-day world.
3. That we get to see the students sit exams.
4. Lupin!
5. Sirius!

Things I don’t like about Prisoner of Azkaban:

1. Ron being a dick.
2. The idea of carrying around a full-grown wizard for years as a pet. Eurgh.

Also, can I say? Sirius in the book – SO NOT SEXY. Sirius in the movies – hell yeah.

Sex symbol. Siriusly.

Dear Harry Potter

Dear Harry Potter,

I'm only on page 13 of the 5th volume of your selective biography and already you are pissing me off.

Please stop being an annoying tosser and help me to enjoy the book in a way I failed to the first time around.

Regards,
B

B re-reads Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

I started reading this book on a weekend away in Melbourne. For more details, see Chuck’s tumblr.

I almost didn’t take the book with me. After all, I had da little bit of Philosopher’s Stone left over and I wasn’t planning on doing too much reading over the weekend. Thank god I did take it because I devoured it!

Chamber of Secrets is one of my least favourite HP books. My levels of love for the HP books goes something like this:

Adore: Prisoner of Azkaban / Half-blood Prince
Love: Deathly Hallows
Have a crush: Goblet of Fire
Date: Philosopher’s Stone
If you asked me out I’d be really mean about saying no: Chamber of Secrets / Order of the Phoenix

So I was only really reading Chamber of Secrets because it’s part of the series but it was so much more than that! In my head, issues like the school being horrible to Harry run through the whole novel like a bad analogy, ruining it for me. However, it’s all drama, drama, drama and so exciting! The Harry-hating actually isn’t too bad. I must have been feeling very sensitive the first time I read it. The giants spiders are terrifying, the basilisk is super-scary and Fawkes is a Legend.

When I read the books, in my head the characters are not replaced by their movie counter-parts. Harry is still my imagining of Harry, not Daniel Radcliffe as Harry. Same with Hermione, Hagrid, Dumbledore – almost all of them. Some pick up characteristics. Snape sounds like Alan Rickman because I want him to and Professor McGonagall looks more like Dame Maggie Smith than she did before. However, Professor Gilderoy Lockhart has completely morphed into Kenneth Branagh. The hair, the smile, the creepiness – it’s all there in my head now, winking at me unpleasantly.

On the topic of the movies, it is delightful to be re-reading the books and seeing how faithful the early movies were. Any changes made were done for the purposes of movie-making and do not impede on the story telling at all. So very rare in a movie adaptation.

Chamber of Secrets was so much better than I was expecting it to be and I am so happy to have re-read it now and enjoyed every minute. Time to read: 3 days

Harry Potter as Anime

I discovered this through twitter and it seemed appropriate to post it during my temporary Harry Potter obsession. Even if you didn’t like Harry Potter, it’s still a cool piece of art.

B re-reads Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

As promised, inspired by seeing Harry Potter 7.2 a few weekends ago, I have discarded my should-read pile and started re-reading the Harry Potter novels from start to finish.

I have all the books of course and they sit on my shelf, all happy and pretty full of literary merit but they are not frequently re-read. The only one I’ve re-read recently is book 7 because I’m trying to read it in German and I like to look through the proper English after struggling with words like ‘Geheimniswächter’ (secretkeeper).

So I would like to admit straight up that the real reason I haven’t blogged in so long isn’t laziness, it’s because every moment I’m not at work/dance/out/eating, I’m reading Harry Potter. The books are just as un-put-downable now as they were when I first read them oh so many years ago. I still can’t stop at the end of chapters and I still hate when Ron is so nasty to Hermione and I still desperately want to go into this world and have a wand ‘choose’ me and fly a broomstick or a Hippogriff and all those other wonderful, magical things.

So, first up with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

(Yes – Philosopher’s Stone, not Sorcerer’s Stone – christ, why does America have to fuck everything up?)

The opening is so wonderfully exaggerated with how vile all three Dursleys are and how desperate Vernon is to escape the Hogwarts letters and the truth about his hated nephew. Seeing the magic of Diagon Alley and Hogwarts for the first time through Harry's eyes is so thrilling and of course meeting all the characters for the first time (particularly the Weasleys!), know what they'll get up to over the next few books and how all their relationships will develop.

Of course, the reason to re-read the series – aside from pure enjoyment – is to pick out all the foreshadowing. And by gum, there is a lot of it. Harry having eyes like Lily’s is mentioned in the first few chapters when Hagrid, the first magical person he meets, comes to give him his letter. The misunderstanding of Snape and Quirrell mistakes, the knowing Sorting Ha - there are little clues and hints everywhere! It’s like a smug treasure hunt where you know what you're looking for, unlike those poor fools reading it for the first time.

Random trivia – Quirrell’s first name is Quirinus. Quirinus Quirrell. Tee hee. Love Rowling’s use of same-letter names; Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Poppy Pomfrey.

So, the first book took me about 4 days to finish, but only because I had just small gaps of time in which to read. It was actually really nice to be reading a book that wasn’t full of adult angst, just a great story, told in a short book. For some reason, I never seem to read short books anymore. Short books are wonderful!

Is it weird that I’m looking forward to putting the book away for another 5-10 years so I can re-re-discover it all over again?

Never trust a man who poses with an iguana.

Adding to the list…

The original ‘purpose’ of this blog was as inducement for Jane and myself to read all the un-read books on our bookshelves. While Jane is actually managing to do this, I am…kind of…failing. I’ve read 2 books on my list so far and it’s been 3 months. I’ve started another 3 but that doesn’t count for much.

Now I’ve decided to really stuff myself up – bookshelf-wise – and re-read the Harry Potter series from start to finish. This is inspired by watching the 8^th Harry Potter movie over the weekend. See review here.

I’ve re-read parts of the series on and off over the years. Particularly book 7, because I’m reading the German version and it makes me want to read the events in a language I can understand. Yet I doubt I’ve sat down and read any of the books cover to cover since my first reading so many years ago. With Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, that’s totally a deliberate choice because in that book Harry just…shits me. He’s really an annoying little bugger who needs and good punch in the face. Plus, that book needs a good editor to take a good slash at it and cut it in half. All the others I can’t wait to re-read! I suspect sitting down again and really working through them I’ll notice all those signaling moments and events and have lots of ‘AH-HA!’ realisations. Bookshelf project – stalled. Harry Potter re-reading project – begun.

Image courtesy of I Love Charts tumblr.