Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Hallelujah Chorus
| I just finished the book at 8:45 PM this evening (and Jo-2, amazingly great to hear your lovely voice again :) and Harpazo, sorry for not replying to your comment but I will ... it was a great comment, I just got caught up in getting the book and reading it and all and I had a trip last Saturday to retreive my car from a garage near Hazelton PA, that was 6 hours driving round-trip with 3 hours in the middle of visiting an old friend , on no sleep because of the time spent at the B&N opening [sorry, no Jim Dale for me ... will explain later] and then making it to page 80 or so [end of "Fallen Warrior" Chapter] before setting out driving at 5:30 am .. busy, busy, busy - but your comment was great H. and I want to revisit that them some) ... WOW!!!!! .... I think I started reading the series in spring of 2003, so a little over 4 years of an odyssey ... and ... WOW!!! That is all I can say at present ... my head is still reeling from it! I actually do have some things to say - 2 posts planned right now for a start - (more on that in a mo') - but wanting to be considerate of those who have not yet finished it: I know Pauli and Lissa did not get the book upon release because of a trip to Upstate NY and may still be up there and will not have read it yet, Nate and Julie's daughter Elizabeth had first dibs on their copy and today Nate emailed me and said she is 3/4 of way through, planning to finish today but Josh and Julie are maybe halfway through and Nate is only a couple chapters in and can only read when the others have gone to bed. So my posts will probably try to say some things without giving spoilers yet. But first, congrats to some like Felicity and others who nailed some major Horcrux material. Felicity made one big miss but some big hits and RH's Shrieking shack stuff from her essay in Granger's "Who Killed Albus Dumbledore?" book, while a little altered, still nailed some serious material material (the redundancy there is intentional). So, congrats to those who scored some decent prediction points. I'll say more on y take on material plot predictions and why, in the scope of what literature like this is and what discussion of it really is, I would not call even the "inaccurate" ones "wrong." I didn't really hit any though ... except one that was very important to me from recently, but it was not a "material plot prediction point" that can be as easily verified so I expect to have to do some pretty hard literary defense of it for some time to come .. but such is life - it will just make me do my homework a lot more thoroughly, which I need to do anyway :) On writing posts that have serious content discussion but without material spoilers ... I will just list my credential at doing so. I got an "Outstanding" for in the OWL in this bit of muggle magic ... ... My friend Dom came up once from the home theater in the place we were living after having just watched fightclub and said " I can't BELIEVE you did that ... you gave me the ENTIRE plot of fightclub without giving me the 'changeover'" (the revelation that Tyler [Brad Pitt] is Jack's [Ed Norton's] alter ego) ... I thought I might as well watch it because I already knew the whole plot, because you gave it to me, and you did give me the entire plot ... but without the changeover and it took me totally off guard" So, the two upcoming posts: 1. "The Side Beyond the Flipside" 2. "Home Away From Home" (this one is for you Jo ... flowing from that post I did way back whenever on "homecomings" in book 7 and U2's "A Sort of Homecoming") |
Comments on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Hallelujah Chorus"
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jkr2 said ... (July 24, 2007 6:29 AM)
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Pauli said ... (July 25, 2007 8:18 AM)
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Merlin said ... (July 30, 2007 1:09 AM)
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post a commenti feel like such a fool! i've been refreshing this page for 2 days waiting for the "i've finished" post! and i realized just then that i've been refreshing that actual entry and missed all this! AAARGHH!
anyway.....
hoorah for finishing.
i got the book 9.05 am saturday our time (which is the same as midnight fri in the uk) was reading by 9.45. finished (after getting a couple of cups of tea, and going to the loo a couple of times. dozed off at one point for 20 minutes) at 6.05pm that evening. i was so blessed to be given an entire day - uninterrupted! - to read, and really did take advantage of that fact.
i was exhausted emotionally by the time i finished.
my major concern throughout was that dumbledore WOULD in fact be shown to be purely a pragmatic, manipulative, conniving old so and so. and even though i could tell it was building up to a twist of some sort, i was still just tied up in knots over it. that no matter what the explanation it wouldn't be enough....
i'm glad to say i came away with even more love for him. his hesitancy when talking to harry in the 'between' state - 'did i do right?' that kind of knowledge of his faults and the effort he had gone to, to move beyond that type of user who sees people as serving his purpose and nothing else.
but he really HAD moved beyond the 'for the greater good' imperative. and was now so conflicted of the apparent need to revert to that thinking.
the moment that filled me with hope for that was harry insisting that dumbledore had given ron the deluminator because he knew ron'd want a way BACK.
ok. raving. sorry about that.
lovely to talk to you again.
and OH 'a sort of homecoming' yes - top 5 favourite songs of ALL time.
jo
I finished the book at 2am on Tuesday morning. Merlin, please don't fear to post "spoilers". This is an HP discussion site and people shouldn't come here if they aren't finished with the book. I don't like spoilers in book reviews or movie reviews, but on a discussion site everyone is inherently forewarned.
I'm planning to post some stuff soon, especially on some of my favorite scenes (I have about 20 of them!) -- but the ones I'm thinking of especially are the burial of Dobby and the interior of Luna Lovegood's house.
Also -- I'm seriously considering redesigning the look and feel of the site. I know -- I've been "threatening" to do that for awhile now....
Jo,
Yes, I had similar situations. I did not read it all in one day like that (read about 80 pages first night and then a 9 hour round trip to [pick up my car 3 hours away, work and the rest) ... but at one point I was laying on my side reading in bed and when I would "just rest my eyes for a second" the seconds turned into minutes ... never "dozed off" but more like a closed-eye "dazed off."
On Dumbledore ... wow ... I have been avoiding trying to write on the topic just because I could easily get bogged down and go on for days. But I think it can all be summed up in the one word "remorse." He has remorse, and he knows his limits ... in short, as my neighbors daughter (who is an attorney) put it ... he is human.
In the end though, I would say that he does do everything "for the greater good" ... he just has a different dfeinition of the greater good - one in which the ends never justify "any means necessary." The "means," in and of themself, are a part of the "ends" and the ends are for all humanity, not just the "gifted." Humanity across the board is never a means.
That is one of the things I really liked in Harry's choice is that St Paul decision, "to remain" for the edification of others (in this case "building up the body" by making sure Voldy can't run amok and kill everybody anymore)
Pauli,
yeah ... those two moments in particular are part of a really important theme I think - that is of course aside from the sheer impact of dobby dying. It is important that Harry digs the grave "muggle-style" and that Luna paints the pictures of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville "muggle-style" - with her own artistic skill and imagination.
the LG house itself is pretty interesting too ... speaking of which, one of the sons in the family I know in Eastern PA, where my car spent a week without me, who just had his fifth kid (well he and his wife of course) bought an old house and is doing a lot to it - really good carpenter and builder etc, but is also working on some degree long distance through Lampeter in the UK, in medieval lit. Anyway, the bugger (named Aaron) went and built a 3 stort turret on the corner of his house, 3 story because the domed roof is almosty as tall as another story - and one of the panels is solid high grade clear glass ... has the whole roof on a circular track with a motor to rotate it ... can get the glass ceiling panel into position to see whatever he wants to see with the telescope ... and the inside of the turret has a tight spiral stairway and is basically his library - honest truth - a cross between the astronomy tower and the Lovegood house. ... it was kinda odd seeing it that close to re-reading book 5 and now reading book 7
Now, I will stick it here because I can't feel as much warrant for doing much more - but I saw movie 5 the other day. I didn't "hate it" but it is definitely a "1-viewer" for me. Now in regards to movies this is not always terrible - I LOVED Live Free or Die Hard and spiderman 3 and really liked Transformers, but have seen each of them only once in the theater and am not likely to view more before DVD releases (whereas Pirates 3 I saw 3 times in the theater and walked half hour to 45 minutes through crowded Broadway to even more crowded Canal to grab an interim copy) ... But I am afraid I have to say I don't think I'll be buying the DVD of OotP as I will be at least wanting to get the DVDs of the other films (something like Die Hard 4 is, for me, a "1 view before DVD" movie, whereas OoTP is simply a "1 Viewer" ... by contrast I have already reread a few different chapters in DH after the first read).
Anyway .. entirely too hard for me to say if it even works storywise, with the length of book 5 the alterations necessary are difficult for me to read one way or the other ... like I would have no idea whether or not Kingsley Shacklebolt is "gotten" by somebody who has not read the books or if they just go "what was the deal with that guy ... he was with Dumbledore's people and then he was with Fudge's people? and what is his job again?"
Visuals are stunning - kiss was unnecessary, might as well not even have had it at all if u ask me, let alone on screen (one of a number of things that seemed to me to be very perfucntory). Dan Radcliffe seemed ok (cheesy in some places better in others), Emma Watson was not very good but I heard she did not even want to do the movie and the lines are extremely a charicture of Hermione (screen-writer charged with at least "accomplice to bad acting").
some nice cinematography and some nice iconic moments: Voldemort as a sleek banker type, the solidarity moment of the DA all doing the bleeding hand lines together and Fred and George encouraging the little kid.
Bellatrix I actually liked - I know Carter said in interview that she was going to do here "sexy" but didn't come off to me so much as "sexy" as "truly deranged" (which I thought was a decent pick up on the name "Lestrange")
Other than that comparisons to the book are just not doable or profitable (other than, as usual, the path Dumbledore is being taken down is crappy) ... so I will do it anyway in a place or two that connects with DH material.
Mainly I mean MY favorite scene in DH, which is, for just sheer style ... Aberforth Fricking Dumbledore. Movie 5 as far as any hook up with that in book 7 totally flubbed it. The barman at the hogshead is some dumpy frumpy guy in a kilt who looks clueless ... Aberforth is anything but a dolt - that argument with the death eaters was awesome, and the goat patronus ...
I gotta get the DH US audio set now so I can hear how Jim Dale does Aberforth.
The other one was the "ominous kit" scene with Snape .... when he unrolls the bag thing or whatever that has all the various "scary looking stuff" and pulls his wand out of it ... but they did the same thing with the sword of Elendil in the LOTR movies ... reserved it for a "special moment" setting. except for an underage wizard now wizard would ever leave their wand stowed in a rolled up pack (and even Harry as an underage always has his wand with him in case of emergency) ... the wand is always on the person of the wizard or witch, just the way Aragorn always has the shards of Narsil with him.
but anyway, these comments are days old now and I must needs be off to write newer content and rebuttals on the raging debate over Harry and Hermion that Jo and I are having ... and all other manner of good stuff to fill up the wee small hours of the dead fo night here at the dispatch desk during summer :)