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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!

    Potter (spoilers on the first 1/2 of the book)

    I am about 400 pages into the book, reading it out-loud to my kids. Sadly, they are hanging at the beach this week while I am back at home so we will not be able to read for a week or so.

    I imagine there are other people who are reading the book somewhat slowly for various reasons and I wanted a thread where we could discuss what has happened so far.

    Heck, if nothing else, I can make thixs thread into somewhat of a "live blog" sorta experience and I will post my thoughts as I progress along until the end -- reading about a chapter or two a night. It may be fun for those of you who have read the whole thing.

    Just to get the ground rules straight-- please do not post spoilers that go beyond what this thread is discussing. Don't even say something leading.

    Thanks...

    -Jason "I'll start the comments with 1/2 of the book spoilers in them in the next post" Evans

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!

    spoilers to the middle of the book... and no further!!

    Ok, I am not sure exactly what page I am on but I stopped right after Xenophilous Lovegood told them that the Wand, Stone, and Cloak make up "The Deathly Hallows" and that whoever has all three of them has control over Death... or something like that.

    Again, please do not spoil what comes next for me.

    My thoughts so far:

    - I like that it appears the Deathly Hallows will be a significant plot point. I think that some of the previous books had chosen provocative sounding titles that were really fairly unimportant to the book. For example, both Goblet of Fire and Half-Blood Prince are exciting sounding titles but the books were not really about either of those things. Having just read this little tiny bit about the Deathly Hallows, it does appear to me that this could be a very significant plot point and a worthy thing to title the book. I may be wrong, but I am now thinking that Voldemort (who is obsessed with cheating/defeating Death) wants the great wandmakers not because of some problem with his own wand versus Harry but because he wants to find the Elder Wand. Harry's cloak is the Invisibility Cloak. I am not sure where the Resurrection Stone will show up but I really think this will be significant.

    - I hated the way Harry found Griffindor's Sword. HATED IT! I am sure the silver doe patronus will be explained and it will make sense at some point, but from where I sit right now, this was lazy storytelling.

    - For 3 smart kids, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are really stupid. Why are they not exploring Dumbledore's gifts further to figure out what they really mean? Especially now that Ron's Deluminator has shown itself to have a secondary ability (to hear what your love is saying, huh??) and now that Hermione has found a secret marking (The Deathly Hallows) in the Tales of Beedle the Bard. Of course the Snitch has special powers or some secret hidden in it!?!?! Why are these stupid kids ignoring it? Grrrrr. I find this to be too obvious for them to ignore all this time. On the other hand, there better be more to Hermione's book than the small scribbled symbol of the Deathly Hallows. If Dumbledore left it with them because he knew Hermione would find that symbol (while the Ministry's professional sybologists spent 30 days looking at it and never noticed it) that is, again waay too convenient for a good storyteller. I hate it when storys only resolve themselves because of chance and luck. I am starting to fear that JK is going down this path a bit too often. Dumbledore, who considered finding the Horcruxes and defeating Voldy to be hugely important, seems to have left an awful lot to chance when it comes to how he is helping the kids. At least that is how it appears right now.

    - I am really sick of JK making Harry's lack of faith in Dumbledore a central theme... again! Over and over again in the past few books Harry has had these deep soul-searching trials where he figures Dumbledore does not care about him or that Dumbledore is not a good, wise wizzard. And over and over again we get an explanation later in the book where wee find out 'Dore is exactly the opposite of what Harry thought. Sigh. Of course we are headed down that path again. I am tired of it. And for Harry to be trusting of Rita Skeeter's book on Dumbledore... come on!! How dumb is Harry? And whatever happened to Hermione's threat to expose Skeeter as an illegal Animagus if she kept on acting up? I guess they are just ignoring that right now.

    - I love the rehabilitation of Kreacher! I think it was very well done and I really like him as a character now. I hope he comes back into the story, though I am skeptical he will. The backstory about Regulus and Kreacher and how they were involved with the locket was some of the best stuff in the book so far. I still do not even begin to understand why Regulus drank the poison potion to get the locket? Why not have Kreacher drink it again? After all, Kreacher would probably have gladly endured the pain of doing this if he knew it would save Regulus' life. Seeing his master die like that was almost certainly more painful to Kreacher than drinking the potion would be. Oh well.

    - Talkign about Kreacher's story reminding me of one other thing... does Hermione spend this entire book crying or what? It seems that every time anything happens, she enjoys a good cry about it. I am not a fan of this as the books have done such a great job so far making Hermione into a very strong female. Not that I think it is feminine to cry or that it is bad to cry but it feels like Hermy is doing it CONSTANTLY in this book. It is just a bit much. I half expected her to cry at the end of the story of the Three Brothers.

    - As I read the books, I cannot help but imagine how they will translate onto film. So far, this one has a few strong action sequences (the aerial fight with the Death Eaters, the escape from the Ministry of Magic, and -best of all- the encounter with Nagini at Godric's Hollow) that will probably be a lot of fun on film. It is worth noting that Polyjuice Potion plays a huge role in all 3 of these sequences which presents a cinematic challenge because we want to see Daniel Radcliffe fight these battles, not Harry transformed into some older man we have never met before. I imagine the Polyjuice plot points will be abandoned in the Godric's Hollow scenes though the potion plays such an important role in the Ministry of Magic scenes that it has to be used there. Also, on a cimematic note, I am betting that the entire wedding is left out of the movie.

    Well, I have more but I will stop for the moment. Just putting all this down in cyberspace so I can look back on it

    --Jason "I can't believe I have to wait another week to start reading again!!" Evans

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Durham, NC
    Trying to write some answers that aren't looking past page 400...

    I think the issue of Rita Skeeter is that Hermione is on the lam with Harry. She can't out Rita, b/c she would have to go puublic herself. And, my guess is that given the current regime, as long as Rita is a pureblood, the Animagus status will be overlooked.

    I think that the reason Hermone keeps crying is that the kids are under a lot of chronic, low-grade stress. They are basically magical Ann Franks. for me, the first section of this book did a geat job of building suspense and giving a sense of foreboding.

    Nothing here is substantiated by the book - its all my speculation.

    Exiled

  4. #4
    I'm looking forward to the point where you finish, to discuss potential movie scripts. I'll be interested to hear what everyone thinks must be in and what can be left out.

  5. #5

    Harry vs. Dumbledore

    I think the reason Harry questions Dumbledore is that he values honesty and dislikes uncertainty. He is hurt that Dumbledore apparently wasn't honest with him. He realizes that what Skeeter said could be true, and that he has absolutely no evidence to the contrary from Dumbledore, since Harry never asked him. He wishes Dumbledore was there so he could just ask him and be done with it, or that Dumbledore had just told him.

    One thing you have read that I didn't like - I thought the bringing back of Umbridge, while fun, was not really necessary. It just seemed cheap to me, like Rowling felt she was obligated to tie up that loose end, when I never thought it needed further explanation.

    Oh, and I believe you are now in the middle of the "Harry, Ron, and Hermione wander around in the woods for what feels like 4,000 pages" stage. Take heart; they don't do so the entire book.
    "There can BE only one."

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    About 150 feet in front of the Duke Chapel doors.
    Quote Originally Posted by Highlander View Post
    I think the reason Harry questions Dumbledore is that he values honesty and dislikes uncertainty. He is hurt that Dumbledore apparently wasn't honest with him. He realizes that what Skeeter said could be true, and that he has absolutely no evidence to the contrary from Dumbledore, since Harry never asked him. He wishes Dumbledore was there so he could just ask him and be done with it, or that Dumbledore had just told him.

    One thing you have read that I didn't like - I thought the bringing back of Umbridge, while fun, was not really necessary. It just seemed cheap to me, like Rowling felt she was obligated to tie up that loose end, when I never thought it needed further explanation.

    Oh, and I believe you are now in the middle of the "Harry, Ron, and Hermione wander around in the woods for what feels like 4,000 pages" stage. Take heart; they don't do so the entire book.
    I thought Harry's disillusionment with Dumbledore, especially in Deathly Hallows, was very similar to the one with his father in OOTP - that is, when he see Snape's Worst Memory and Harry realizes that his father and Sirius could be bullies and pompous jerks. Harry had to take the pedestal out from under his ideas about his father and about Sirius, too (if he ever had them about the latter). Harry's frustrations with AD in this book made me think back to that whole bit of OOTP.
    JBDuke

    Andre Dawkins: “People ask me if I can still shoot, and I ask them if they can still breathe. That’s kind of the same thing.”

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Durham, NC
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    - For 3 smart kids, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are really stupid. Why are they not exploring Dumbledore's gifts further to figure out what they really mean? Especially now that Ron's Deluminator has shown itself to have a secondary ability (to hear what your love is saying, huh??) and now that Hermione has found a secret marking (The Deathly Hallows) in the Tales of Beedle the Bard. Of course the Snitch has special powers or some secret hidden in it!?!?! Why are these stupid kids ignoring it? Grrrrr. I find this to be too obvious for them to ignore all this time. On the other hand, there better be more to Hermione's book than the small scribbled symbol of the Deathly Hallows. If Dumbledore left it with them because he knew Hermione would find that symbol (while the Ministry's professional sybologists spent 30 days looking at it and never noticed it)

    And whatever happened to Hermione's threat to expose Skeeter as an illegal Animagus if she kept on acting up? I guess they are just ignoring that right now.

    - ... does Hermione spend this entire book crying or what?
    As for the symbol, it doesn't seem that many wizards know about it. Xeno wore it to the wedding, and only Viktor had a beef with it, maybe b/c Grindelwald's realm was mostly outside Britain. It could have just looked like a doodle to the Ministry folks. As for the snitch, it became obvious to them right away that they couldn't open it. It said "I open at the close." What do you think that means? What are they supposed to do, use a nutcracker?

    The ministry could care less about Skeeter being an animagus right now. even before the Death eaters took over the Ministry.

    And Hermione's crying a lot because IT'S A STRESSFUL SITUATION!!! Geez, they're barely scraping out a life on the run. They're hungry. Ron left her. she has no idea if her family and friends are safe. She could be killed at any moment. Oh, AND SHE'S SEVENTEEN!!! I'd have been bawling my eyes out, too!

    By the way, this was my favorite of all of the books.

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