Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows



There are less than three months until "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (Part 1) arrives on the big screen (November 19th) and since it's been a few years since I read the book I have decided to reread it so I'm fully prepared when the movie opens. Some of you might roll your eyes, after all it is 784 pages. But it's 784 pages of GREATNESS. I feel about Harry Potter the way most teenage girls feel about Stephenie Meyer's books. Except, and I don't care if I piss people off with this statement, Harry Potter is on a completely different literary level than Twilight. I mean, the imagination and planning that went into conceiving the seven books is just astounding and I read in an interview that Jo Rowling knew while writing the first book how the seventh book would end. Crazy, no? Jo Rowling is simply amazing and in my head I think we could be the best of friends.
This is where you learn about my level of geek-ness. You probably had no idea, since I read a lot of romancy, chick-centric books. But really, I'm a big dork. For example, every year on Christmas Day my dad, sister and I watch episodes 4-6 of Star Wars. How many girls do you know that do that and actually enjoy it? But I digress.
The eve of the Deathly Hallows' arrival at book stores I waited in line. Yup, I'm one of those people. I took off from work early, drove up to Nashua, NH with my sister, waited in line just to get a number so we could stand in the actual line later, wasted a few hours by watching Transformers in the movie theatre, went back to B&N around 8pm and then found our spot in line. The parking lot had been cleared and people had set up camp. I luckily had a fold-up chair in my car and we basically just sat there for four hours watching everyone around us grow excited. There were little kids yawning and trying to stay awake, there were teenagers chasing each other around while yelling spells at each other, there were adults too (not just me). My sister and I weren't dressed up but plenty of people were, in capes, hats, school sweaters (it was a chilly night), scarves and lots were waving plastic wands around. It was ridiculous and yet amazing to be sharing in the same excitement as other people. And then at midnight we were ushered slowly into the store through a maze of shelves until we reached the counter.
I was moving to a new apartment all weekend so I didn't finish the book in eight hours like my sister but I was done by Sunday night. I didn't want to accidentally hear about the ending or see it on the Yahoo homepage come Monday morning.
For my level of obsession (did you go to the Museum of Science's exhibit that had HP movie props? I did and it was AWESOME) I'm actually a latecomer to the world of wizardry. My sister read the books first and I had always thought they looked childish, but I took her to see every movie because I'm a great big sister like that. And then when Voldemort killed a dapper young Robert Pattinson in The Goblet of Fire I was like, wait a second, what just happened? I had no idea how dark the books were. I mean, up until then the movies had always turned out okay in the end. So, realizing my ignorance in thinking they are simply kids' books I obviously had to go back and start reading from the beginning. And I became even more obsessed.
And so now we're three months away from the beginning of the end. I'm actually glad they turned the seventh book into two movies 1.) because they can do it justice in not having time constraints and 2.) it gives me a longer amount of time to deal with
the fact that it's all coming to an end. I will be devastated, as I'm sure millions of fans around the world will also be, but it can't go on forever. And anyways, there are other books to obsess about.
Speaking of which, I keep hearing things about "The Hunger Games", mostly because "Mockingjay" came out last weekend. I haven't read any of the series but I'm thinking about giving it a go. Has anyone out there read them and have any thoughts???
In the meantime (during the day) I'm reading "Apart From the Crowd" by Anna McPartlin. Enjoying it so far but I do have a gripe that'll come up in the review. Happy reading to all of you at home curled up with a book on this rainy day. I envy you more than I can express.
~Stephanie
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