Best Books of 2007... not so much.

I was browsing amazon.com the other day trying to compose my Christmas list, when I came across a link reading, "The New York Times: Best Books of 2007." Naturally, I clicked on it. I've made countless decisions based on recomendations from The New York Times, but after reading their so-called list of best books, I'll never trust their word again.

The New York Times: Best Books of 2007

1. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
2. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross
3. Tree of Smoke: A Novel by Denis Johnson
4. Then We Came to the End: A Novel by Joshua Ferris
5. Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish
6. Out Stealing Horses: A Novel by Per Petterson
7. Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
8. The Savage Detectives: A Novel by Roberto Bolano
9. The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley
10. Man Gone Down: A Novel by Michael Thomas

I'm ashamed to admit I have not read any of these books. And to think I call myself a reader. I read some reviews on the above books, and they actually sound pretty good, but I still feel like something's missing from the list. I can't quite put my finger on it. Wasn't there some book that came out in 2007 that sold something like eleven million copies in the first day it was released? I think it was the final instalment in some best selling series, which has had five award winning movies. The author, thanks to her books, is a millionare. I seem to have forgotten about it. Looks as if it slipped The New York Times' mind as well. Gee, what was it called again? It's on the tip of my tongue.... Oh yeah! HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS! Hmm.... I wonder why The New York Times didn't think it was worthy of their little list. Maybe they thought nobody would notice. =)

Seriously now, whoever made this list should be sent to some other planet where nobody's heard of Harry Potter.

Harry Potter the Musical?

"Boy wizard Harry Potter is taking to the stage in a musical based on the smash-hit books."

The article was published in The Sunday Mirror, a tabloid. More than likely it's a rumor, but it's fun to think about nonetheless.

My initial reaction: shock. I've let it sort of sink in now, but I'm still caught off guard. How does a hard core Harry Potter fan react to the idea of live theatre? First a theme park, now a musical? Harry Potter is taking over the world! I'm not sure how they're going to manage to get all seven books in one show. It seems like they should stick to one novel. Daniel Radcliff (the guy that plays Harry in the movies) is quoted as saying, "The plan is for spectacular flying scenes [like Wicked! (see photo)], live Quidditch and big showdowns with Voldemort." There are no current plans for the show to come to America, but when it does I'll be first in line. Robin and I joked that we should study abroad in London when for a semester. I can imagine the application now: "What's you're motivation for applying for our highly competitive study abroad program?" "Harry Potter the Musical!"

Click Harry Potter... the Musical to read the article yourself.

I Lied

click to enlarge

I know I said no more Harry Potter posts, but I thought this comic was sort of cute. I found it while browsing the BLOGS OF NOTE in a post by The Caffeinated Librarian and I decided to steal it for the pleasure of my readers. It's a really fun blog. I suggest you go check it out.

Also, JKR just gave an interview that leads me to believe she is in fact planning on writing an encyclopedia type book about the Harry Potter world. I can't wait.

Reflections on Deathly Hallows *SPOILER*

I've been done with the book for about 36 hours now and although I'm still sort of processing, it's about time I posted some reflections. I came to the conclusion a review would just be an insult to Harry Potter fans everywhere this soon after the release. Deathly Hallows was exactly what JKR wanted it to be. Right now we're all just marveling in the book's perfection.


*SPOILER ALERT*





I KNOW IT'S TEMPTING,





BUT IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED BOOK 7





OR IF YOU'RE ONLY HALF WAY THROUGH BOOK 5





(I'm talking to you mom)





YOU SHOULD STRAY AWAY FROM THIS POST IMMEDIATELY.





YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.




Okie Dokie. Where do I start? Some favorite points in the story (in no particular order) were...

• Sirius Black's magic mirror. I must admit I was slightly disgruntled in Half Blood Prince when there was no mention whatsoever of the walkie talkie mirrors. I was even more pleased that it turned out to be a fairly major plot point--Aberforth's reflection.

• Dudley's thanks. How poignant?

• Dobby's Death. I sobbed pretty hard, which surprised me. I couldn't imagine a better way of him going. He dominates the death eaters, gets back at the Malfoys, and tells Bellatrix off ("Dobby has no master!") without feeling the need to punish himself for bad behavior. I loved that Harry dug the grave by hand. The "Here lies Dobby, a free elf," about killed me. He's always been one of my favorite characters

• Leadership. We saw a glimpse of Harry's leadership ability in book five, but he completely took over in Deathly Hallows, which was a blast to read about. I knew he had it in him. I also enjoyed reading the subplots about Neville, Luna, and Ginny making an impact at Hogwarts. Especially Neville, but I'll get to that later.

• Lily. Learning about Lily was so much fun. The letter and the scenes in the pensieve were such treats. I have to admit, I've never been a Lily/Snape shipper so I was sort of shocked to find out the Snape loved Lily theory turned out to be accurate. I thought it fit the series perfectly and I was really excited that such a large percentage of the fandom guessed right. The Petunia/Lily relationship has also been long awaited and their story, though heartbreaking, filled up that gap of information more than I ever expected. I sort of thought that aspect of the books might remain a mystery forever and was relieved to find closure.

• Godric's Hallow. I've been waiting to see the village ever since it was first mentioned in book one. The statue of the Potters and the graffitied sign were beautiful.

• Dumbledore's imperfection. I thought I really liked Dumbledore before I read this book, but now I love him. I knew he had to of had some skeletons in his closet and learning about his past was extremely sad, but, in a weird way, thrilling.

• Godfather Harry. I thought it was really nice to see history repeat itself. The marauders are such a great subplot. It sucks that Lupin and Tonks are gone, but the Teddy/Harry relationship resembled the Harry/Sirius relationship too much not to smile at the thought and wish you could read more about it.

• The end of Bellatrix. Molly Weasley finishes off Bellatrix with quite a bang. That scene was hilarious and that line is probably going to be one of the most remembered from entire series. I've always gotten the impression Molly spends most of the time worrying about the boys and often forgets about Ginny. Seeing Mrs. Weasley stick up for her daughter was better than seeing her save any of her other children. I was rooting for Neville to be the one to kill Bellatrix, but the hilarity of that scene makes up for it.

• Ron. I've never been a big Ron fan. I mean, I guess I've always liked him okay, but it wasn't until this book I really appreciated his character. His return was so ideal. I mean, he gets to save Harry Potter. Not bad for a sidekick.

• Luna and Hagrid live. I thought they were going to die for sure, but luckily I was wrong.

• Fred. I saw that one coming since book three. One of the Weasley twins had to go. I'm glad Percy was there. Much better than George, which is what I thought was coming.

• Gringotts and the Dragon. Gringotts is one of my favorite places JKR created and we haven't been there since book one. The dragon guarding the vault was just icing on the cake. It amazes me how JKR mentioned dragons in Gringotts in the very beginning of her series because she somehow knew that it'd play a part in the far off future.

• Neville. Can we get a whoot for my favorite character (after Harry of coarse)? He shined in this book like no other character. I mean, he continued the DA, inspired other students no matter how much pain it caused him, figured out the room of requirement, risked his life to save Harry, killed Nagini--thus a part of Voldy himself, finally made his grandmother proud, and avenged his parent by fighting the Death Eaters. I love him. I love him. I love him. His success might be my favorite part of this book.

• Suits of Armor. Hogwarts fighting back is something I wanted to read so bad. I almost cried with joy when McGonagall got the armor to march down to the battlefield. It makes me get all warm and fuzzy just thinking about it. Having the battle at Hogwarts was also a plus. I couldn't imagine the finale of the series happening anywhere else (except maybe beyond the veil) especially with so much of the book occurring elsewhere.

• Harry wins with EXPELLIARMUS! In other words, love. It's one of the few harmless spells used for defense. I don't know what I would have done if Harry died (permanently), or worse, lost his powers. I'd've probably cried for weeks. The fact Expelliarmus is the saving spell was awesome because Harry's continually used it and more than once defended that spell as not being useless because he used it in book four and it saved his life. I thought it fit well with the theme of wands that ran throughout the book.

• King's Cross. To all the psycho extremist Christians who never read the books and claimed that Harry Potter was satanic, you could learn a lot from reading Deathly Hallows. KING'S CROSS for crying out loud! How can you actually believe these books are so evil with all the Christian values. Ugh. Ignorance kills me. The scene at King's Cross was incredible. I can't get over how beautiful it was--Dumbledore's wisdom combined with Harry's acceptance of death and Voldemort's undesirable fate was so perfect. I was really going to miss the Dumbledore explains it all chapter we get in every other book. I didn't think we'd be getting one due to a particular event in Half Blood Prince, but I was wrong. Thank goodness.

• Epilogue. The final chapter was not at all what I expected. When I realized I wouldn't be finding out about everything that happened from "I've had enough rouble for a lifetime" to Harry's death I was a little disappointed. JKR only gave us about a five minute peek into Harry's future. The truth is, that's really all we needed for closure and that's why the Epilogue was so ideal. At first I was slightly put off by all the opportunities for fanfiction, but that I realized that people were going to write fanfic whether or not she gave us all the details and maybe that's not such a bad thing.

All in all, Deathly Hallows was amazing and I can't imagine a better way of ending what's been my favorite story for the past eight years.

I'm thinking this is going to be my last Harry Potter post for a while. It's funny, seven of my twelve posts this month were related to Deathly Hallows. Somehow I'm not surprised. This is the only book that's come out since my life as a blogger began. I won't say I've overdone it, but it's probably time to move onto other literature: summer reading.

Feel free to post your own thoughts about Deathly Hallows in the comments. I'd love to hear what you all think.

Grand Hallows Ball

Originally I was planning on going to the Barnes and Noble Harry Potter party because that's where all my friends were going, but luckily the got some sense knocked into them and agreed to go to Borders (like we always do). As much I was wishing I had more time being an ignorant fan not knowing what's going to happen next, I went to the party because there was no way I was going to miss out on the fun.My buddy Robin drove. She looks a lot like Luna Lovegood if you ask me.

We got there early, but we still were some of the last to get the wrist bands that indicated the order of which people would be receiving the book. We were going to have to wait a while.

It was hard to believe in a few hours we'd be holding the book we've been waiting for for so many years. All of us reminisced about how when we read Sorcerers Stone, book seven seemed so far away.

There were lots of our friends there.

And the Borders staff gave us free glow sticks.


We met lots of fun characters from the books; this is Professor Trelawny...

and the Whomping Willow (does the Whomping Willow count as a character?)...

and a young Ron Weasley.

(Wanna know a secret? These release parties aren't really all that fun. We just go because we want to be able to get the book at midnight. We had to keep ourselves busy.) Mark worked on his summer reading.
Cassie tried to catch up on all the things she'd fogotten about in book six.

Ben and Corey discovered this... erm... interesting synopsis of the old testament.

We started to get pretty tired.

But soon enough, the sound of a drum echoed through the store. It was time.

The books were here!

Waiting in line got very boring so Robin and I decided to go pick up our copies at Wal Mart. We imagined the line would be much shorter there. We were right.

And then we got lost in the parking lot.

Catharsis

ca·thar·sis: (1) the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions (2) the feeling you get after you've just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last Harry Potter book EVER, for the first time.

Eight Hours, Thirty Two Minutes, and Twenty Six Seconds

Okay, so maybe I'm being melodramatic, but I'm seriously dreading the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It's strange; I've been waiting for this day for a long time, but now that it's here I'm sort of freaking out. I even had nightmares last night that they sold out of copies before I had a chance to buy it. It's so hard to believe in a few hours I'm going to know how my favorite story ends. I've been reading these books since age nine, and the concept that after won't be anymore sequels is very difficult for me to grasp because I've spent the last eight years continually wondering 'What will happen next?' and after Deathly Hallows there won't be a 'next'. I feel like my childhood is coming to a very abrupt halt. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I can't help but associate Harry Potter with my childhood and now that one's ending so is the other. It's very depressing. The nights I spent laying in bed contemplating if Snape is good or evil, praying Harry and Hermione will get married, and wondering if Harry will survive book 7 are officially over. By tomorrow I'll know exactly how this story ends and right now I'm not quite sure I'm ready for it. I'd almost rather wait a couple years before reading Deathly Hallows, but then I'd be risking hearing about the end through somebody who's not the author. (I hate spoilers!) And as much as I'd like to savor the book, I know I'm going to devour it in one night. In case any of you were wondering how I was going to spend the eve of the release, I'll be at Barnes and Noble celebrating (?) with other fans, and probably crying my eyes out on the way home. There's been rumors a sorting hat will be at the bookstore. I hope I get Gryffindor, but in the words of Hermione, "I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn't be too bad."

The New York Times Spoils Deathly Hallows

The New York Times, after recieving an early copy of the newest Harry Potter book, published a review revealing plot details. I managed to avoid the review until I accidently came across some quotes through google. I'm not going to give any details, but I was very upset and closed the window as soon as I realized what I was reading. Why couldn't they had just waited till the 21st? By then all the hard core fans would have been through with the book. JKR says:

"I am staggered that American newspapers have decided to publish purported spoilers in the form of reviews in complete disregard of the wishes of literally millions of readers, particularly children, who wanted to reach Harry’s final destination by themselves, in their own time. I am incredibly grateful to all those newspapers, booksellers and others who have chosen not to attempt to spoil Harry’s last adventure for fans."

J.K. Rowling on Jonathan Ross

Hilarious! (The videos I had put on here earlier in the week were deleted so they nolonger would play. Don't worry, these two work, you just have to ignore the spanish subtitles.)

part 1


part 2

Stephen King Mourns the End of HP

"When it comes to Harry, part of me — a fairly large part, actually — can hardly bear to say goodbye."

You and me both Stephen King! Entertainment Weekly published this very sad/funny/uplifting article written by Stephen King about his feelings about the end of the beloved Harry Potter series approaching so soon.

"No ending can be right, because it shouldn't be over at all."

Even though King is dissappointed Harry's story won't be able to continue on forever, he manages to wrap up his column reminding fans that there will always be other great stories.

"But there's comfort. There are always more good stories, and now and then there are great stories. They come along if you wait for them. And here's something I believe in my heart: No story can be great without closure. There must be closure, because it's the human condition. And since that's how it is, I'll be in line with my money in my hand on July 21. And, I must admit, sorrow in my heart."

The Ultimate Deathly Hallows Prediction Exam

This is a really cool quiz I found on Leakynews, my favorite Harry Potter fan site. (I know, I'm a total dork). It's called The Ultimate Deathly Hallows Prediction Exam. This is a collection of hundreds of questions about every last detail of book 7. How do I answer questions about a book I've never read? Well, that's the whole point. You're responses show exactly what you think is going to go down in the final installment of the Harry Potter series. The cool part about all this is that, once the book comes out, the exam is going to be graded so you can see how close you actually were. It's proof you knew Harry was a Horcrux or Luna was Ravenclaw's decedent before you even read the book. It's a really long quiz, but you don't have to answer all the questions. I had a lot of fun filling it out. If you're not to interested in making your own predictions, but you want to check out what my take on Deathly Hallow is, click here. *Warning* I wouldn't recommend this quiz for those who haven't read all the books (I'm referring to the movie fans). This exam mentions major plot points, including deaths, that occurred throughout the first six books. Nobody wants to be spoiled.

Expect a lot of Harry Potter posts the next month or so. With the last book coming out this July, I'm doing my best to soak up all the HP I can get. I'm planning on rereading the series the week leading up to the release date (July 21) and I was thinking about posting a little something to go along with each book. Maybe some favorite moments or something. I don't know; we'll see.

HP Deluxe Edition Cover Art

Scholastic has released the cover art for the deluxe edition of the U.S. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. This is my favorite cover art yet for the Harry Potter books. I wasn't planning on buying the deluxe edition, but these images look great. Too bad it's $65. Oh, and in case you haven't heard by now, there's going to be a Harry Potter theme park built. It's about time. Harry Potter is, like, the biggest money making thing of all time. As excited as I am about being able to visit Hogwarts, I feel like a theme park is potential overkill.

Author Blogs and Websites

In no particular order...
(1 ) Stephanie Meyer author of Twilight and New Moon- There's lots of fun stuff on this page. Stephanie Meyer truly made this site for the fans of her books. It's got the standard news, faq, and a biography, but it also has excerpts from upcoming projects, playlists to match the books she's already written and pictures of her and fans from her book tour. (2) Jo Rowling author of the Harry Potter Series- This website is a blast. It's visually the most creative blog I've seen. The site is an imitation of her desk, which is apparently cluttered with gum wrappers. Everything on the webpage comes straight from JKR herself, which I love. It's very personal. Not only that, but there are lots of fun hidden games. Put certain clues together from all over her site and you get rewarded with first drafts and even doodles of characters by Jo. (3) Augusten Burroughs author of Running with Scissors, Dry, Magical Thinking, Sellivision, and Possible Side Effects- Augusten Burroughs webpage mimics his books. It's hilarious. My favorite part is the blog, which, unfortunately, he only updates every couple months. (4) Meg Cabot author of the Princess Diaries Series, The Mediator Series, Avalon High, and lots more- I don't go here very often, mainly because I don't read much Meg Cabot these days, but I though I'd include it because it's a really great site. Her online diary is updated very frequently and includes pictures of Meg, which is always fun. Most of the words on the site are written by Meg- so it's a great place if your craving a laugh.

I may do a continuous series of these "Author Blogs and Websites." It's inevitable I find more authors with great sites.

The Cover Art is Here!!!

The last big Harry Potter news story is here! The cover art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has arrived. It's so exciting. Not only are there pictures to go along with my future book, but there's also the summery on the inside cover. It's a little more information than I wanted this early, but whatever. I can't keep pretending it's never going to come out. I should be emotionally preparing myself for the end. I just can't believe this is all happening so fast. :-(

U.S. Edition

U.K. Children's Edition

U.K. Adult Edition

I'll probably post any other favorites I have from other countries cover art. They're all different, which personally I think is a lot of fun. I want it now, but then I never want it to be published either. This is so depressing.

I Think I'm Going to Cry (Deathly Hallows comes out July 2007)

EVERYONE PANIC! The end is near! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is going to be published on Saturday July 21st 2007. That's not even six months from now! I'm so upset. I don't want the Harry Potter era to end... ever. Please wait at least until next summer. One more year. Please. Please. Please. I'm not ready yet.

I'm glad I was born when I was. And the books were published when they were. I'm lucky to be a part of all this Harry Potter fun: release date parties at book stores, theorizing, and all the hype. I am so blessed to be able to grow up with these books. I can tell my kids (Harry Potter will be required reading in my future house) about how we all used to argue about weather Snape was good or evil and if Harry would end up marrying Ginny or Hermione. Really, the only people who get to experience this Harry Potter phenomena are those who are reading the books right now. It won't ever be the same after this summer. :-(

Here's the links to Jo's website or LeakyNews if you want to go check it out for yourself.

Ugh. This is all so dramatic.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Our good friend Jo just announced the title for book seven on her website.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Oh! I'm so excited!