(Spoilers are hidden)

I didn’t like Deathly Hallows for one reason, and only one reason:

Gets me every time. Not to mention how

Also, I’m still stuck on Order of the Phoenix. It always traps me. I could finish all the books in less than a week if OotP wasn’t there. I don’t know why, just is so.

Well, it’s brain-candy. Plus, the twists and surprises caught me off-guard.

Well, you do have a point there. After all, this book is pure brain candy for me, which I happily read instead of other books because I was a little stressed out and busy with dealing with high school work, but when you look closely, it’s not all that great. I mean, in City of Fallen Angels, there was two glaringly obvious mistakes that could’ve been picked up by the editor and the author herself.

Seems I’ve caused a disturbance in the force due to publically admitting Hallow-hate.
If you like (or even love) it, by all means. We all have our different opinions.

I myself hated it because of:
1 – camping forever
2 – cool characters dying in undignified ways.

3 – the sappy epilogue
4 – wizards behaving like muggles (Snatchers tying the trio up by hand, Bellatrix using a knife, etc.)
5 – Harry not being shocked a disillusioned upon learning about Dumbledore’s past.
6 – Harry pretty much not doing anything (almost anytime the trio has to do magic, it’s Hermione. You’d swear Harry is a 1st year.)
7 – the rest of the wizarding world pretty much not doing anything (hosting a radio show doesn’t count as “fighting bravely against teh Evulz”)
8 – canon rules suddenly changing/getting ignored (don’t argue, you know it’s there)
9 – Neville and the DA doing awesomely badass stuff off-screen. Couldn’t JK have switched POV just for this one last book, since everything is vastly different due to the war and such?

Those are my main complaints.

@No One

Honestly, I just didn’t like the characters, like how Clary never really concerned about other people, forgetting them in favor of pretty Jace, and he was just a jerk. Also, when I set the book down after chapter 8, I found the constant metaphors annoying, but when I picked it up again, they enraged me so bad I nearly threw the book across the room. That was weird and extreme, even for me. Seriously, overnight. I have no idea why.

I agree with the one about Neville. He was pretty damn awesome and needed more pagetime.

I still hold the opinion that Harry should have died. I’d have been fine with everyone else getting a happy ending, but Harry should have died a horrible death, then stayed dead. I have nothing against him (well, not that much), but the story would only feel right to me if Harry died, then Voldemort exploded… or was taken down by all of Harry’s allies united by the Power of Friendship.

I also agree on the point of killing off characters. Each character’s death has to have meaning, and emotionally impact the reader past ‘They’re gone now? What?!’. The last section of the book could have been far more poignant if Rowling had taken more time to examine each character’s individual struggle. Neville, especially. So awesome, yet so ignored.

My class just finished reading Catcher in the Rye, and I was interested by the extremely divided reaction. Personally, I really enjoyed the book and even though Holden was hypocritical, whiny, and self-destructive, I saw a lot of myself in him, which made me accept him despite his flaws. A lot of people thought the book had ‘no point’, but I actually disagree. Maybe I’m applying from my own life, but I thought the book was highly relevant, at least to me. There was a lot of that reflection and conflict over identity, human connection, and adulthood that I found myself making on my own before even reading the book. It was really nice to see that someone else, even someone fictional, was getting screwed over by it too.

Thoughts?

@People complaining about HP7: You are all wrong.

Except for the prologues and that one bit in the Quidditch match in Book 1(before the template was firmly established), the series was entirely from Harry’s point of view, and it needed to stay that way. Breaking the style would’ve been a terrible choice. It would’ve undermined the confusion and aimlessness that Harry was feeling during the forest chapters(which aren’t nearly as long as everybody complains about) that you as the reader are supposed to feel along with him if you could step away from him and go follow the more “exciting” story. It’s supposed to be frustrating.

I also don’t think Neville would seem half as badass to the reader if his exploits had actually appeared on-page. Having him appear at the climax as a confident, competent version of himself is so jarring compared to our previous experiences with the character that it makes the revelation awesome, and leaving most of the DA’s resistance to the reader’s imagination gives it a mythic quality it couldn’t have if you’d actually seen it. It’s like an effective horror movie, in that sense.

I also agree on the point of killing off characters. Each character’s death has to have meaning, and emotionally impact the reader past ‘They’re gone now? What?!’. The last section of the book could have been far more poignant if Rowling had taken more time to examine each character’s individual struggle. Neville, especially. So awesome, yet so ignored.

Completely disagree. Dying offscreen was a way to show how, despite Harry’s “chosen one” status, the whole conflict was bigger than just him. Lupin and Tonks and them were fighting and dying while Harry was doing his other stuff because they existed outside of him, as their own beings. If each death had occurred by Harry, that’d reduce them to little more than emotionally manipulative props.

@sansa
Yes! To everything you said!

...Also, I liked the epilogue, not because I like happy endings but because, as someone else said, the characters went through so much crap and horribleness throughout the books that the survivors deserved a happy ending. I was glad that they got it and glad to know that despite everything, life went on and they were mostly okay. The only problem I had with it was that I didn’t really like what they named their kids for the most part. That’s not really a huge gripe though.

I do agree that I would’ve liked to know what they did with their lives and such, but I probably will buy that encyclopedia whenever it comes out, so….

Finally finished Storm of Swords. Here’s a few final thoughts:

@Apep:

Going to pick up the beginning of the ASOIAF series from the library, since I read them awhile ago and I want to be up on everything for the release of A Dance With Dragons. It’ll be slightly weird since I just finished A Feast for Crows a few weeks ago, but if anything I think I’ll be able to appreciate the series more with a better understanding of the cause-and-effect.

Starting Siddhartha for AP Lit summer reading.

@SWQ – What do you think of it?

@Northmark

Just pre-ordered Snuff, the new Discworld book! I kinda had to, after watching that excellent Terry Pratchett video Taku posted a link to. Besides, I had a Barnes and Noble gift card.

@NP:

I try not to bash DH too much, even though I hated it, cause I loved the other six books so much. OotP, in particular, was my favorite… although I personally think that its movie was the worst adaptation of them all.

OotP, in particular, was my favorite… although I personally think that its movie was the worst adaptation of them all.

For this, I forgive you for hating DH. :)

I love OotP. It’s also the first one that I read, and the movie just made me angry. Longest book translates to shortest movie… yeah, okay.

Plus, they left out the twins “accio brooms” scene, which I was really looking forward to when I read the book.

Same here. I read them in the order 5-4-3-1-2-6-7. Long story.

Well, my order wasn’t quite that erratic. It was 5-1-2-3-4-6-7. I only read the fifth one first because I had seen the first two movies and heard on some show that someone important died in the fifth book, which was just coming out. To my surprise, the person who died hadn’t even been introduced in the first two movies. It was still awesome though (the book, not the death), and it got me into HP.

Nearing the end of the first volume of the Baroque Cycle, and I kind of want to drop it.

Just finished reading Fight Club. Good book, but I haven’t seen the movie, so I don’t know how it compares.

I can’t say that for most of Kevin Crossley-Holland’s writing—he’s one of the best children’s authors I’ve ever read, and I enjoy most of his body of work even more now that I’m all grown up.

I know that I enjoyed The Seeing Stone (the only one in that series I’ve gotten around to rereading) just as much, if not more, than I did when I was younger.

Started Brave New World yesterday for AP Lit…I had tons of time to read standing in line for FotR. :D

^^I saw a Disney cartoon version of that in my high school government and civics class.

Started Brave New World yesterday for AP Lit…

<3 !!

I actually made a decision at the bookshop today! It was terribly exciting. I had £15 of book vouchers which had been sitting in my wallet for yonks. I was going to use them to buy three Percy Jackson books (3 for 2), but my Inner Self yelled at me to think long term and get books I knew I wanted to keep – so chose Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward and Michael Grant’s Hunger.

I also thought it would be funny to buy some childrens lit alongside some Russian lit.

...yes, I have a weird sense of humour.

(On which note, my collection of da Vinci Code‘s has reached 10! Such a proud milestone. <3)

Now I will start Camus’ The Stranger.

<3 <3 <3 <3 !!

I’m sure I have something more to say about those books other than how much I like them.

Ahem, ok, The Stranger is great. Been a while since I last read it, but all I remember is a deep sense of GUH at the end. Only read that and The Plague, which I didn’t enjoy as much, but still good.

last thing I read was Animorphs number 12 and I’m waaaaiting for the next one to come in. Stupid slow library. Also, I’m bracing myself for when the ghost-writers show up. I’m afraid that the series is going to go from awesome to sucky.

Just finished reading ‘The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyonesse’ from Le Morte D’Arthur, and I have a few things to say:

First: Tristram is a Stu of the highest caliber. He’s established as basically the best knight in the world (except for Lancelot, of course), a fact that just about everyone makes a point of mentioning, but is otherwise so flat as to be almost two-dimentional, and literally anyone who knowingly opposes him is ‘evil’, even when they’re in the right.*

Example: King Mark of Cornwall. Never mind that Tristram was screwing around with his wife behind his back**, and then runs off with her, Mark’s the bad guy for wanting to kill him.

The same goes for Palomides (another knight in love with Isode), who gets called out for switching armor with another knight so he can fight Tristram, when Tristram did pretty much the same thing the day before so he could fight other knights in secret. I’d go into how the Orkney clan (Gawain and his brothers) get the same treatment, but they don’t get as much focus.

Second: Some of the side characters don’t get nearly enough time devoted to them. Admittedly, this might be the fault of the woman who did the abridging, but still. Take Dinadan, for example: a decent knight, with a sense of humor, who actually avoids fighting whenever possible, actually recognizes other knight’s by their faces, and points out that the whole ‘romance’ thing is kinda overrated.

What about Palomides? When he gets to do his big speech to Tristram, I felt sorry for the guy. He’s basically the decent guy who never gets the girl, because she’s too focused on Tristram to bother with Palomides. Even the morally questionable things he does are because he’s jealous of Tristram.

TL:DR: I’m feeling sick of Malory, so I’m taking a break from it.

*Yes, I know le Morte D’Arthur was written around 1470, and well-rounded characters were almost non-existent in literature, but given that Malory wasn’t exactly a shining example of knighthood himself, he could have potentially added a little depth to some of these characters.

**Yes, I am aware that pretty much the only reason Tristram and Isode get together is because of a magic love potion, but that just makes it worse. Now they don’t even have the argument of it being ‘tru wuv’ to cover it – their relationship is based on entirely artificial feelings.

A Dance With Dragons is getting highly positive initial reviews, but there’s no possible way for me to get my hands on the first four books AND finish them before it comes out when I’m at camp.

I’ve been searching for a copy of Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman for a while; I couldn’t find it in any bookstores and the request list for it at the library is pretty long. But lo and behold, I found a brand new copy jammed in a corner of the sci fi club library while I was shelving books. I’m about halfway through it and I love it! For anyone who feels like they’re lacking for inspiration right now, I think I’ve found a cure :)

I’m starting on Temeraire. I’ve heard a little about this series, and it sounds interesting, but is it any good? Has anyone here read it?

Aw, I read it too! (although I think that might have been because of Nate, come to think of it) But it was good, Miel!

A Dance With Dragons is in my hands!

Review forthcoming!

Finished a couple John Green books, and I’m now starting up The Brothers Karamazov.

Wait, I thought you didn’t swing that way?

Well, okay then :)

Erm, sorry. Anyway, I hope you’re not disappointed.

Finishing up with Rick Riordan’s The Red Pyramid. Nowhere near as good as Percy Jackson, it’s a shame, he seems to have lost his wit, which was something I thoroughly enjoyed in the Percy Jackson series.

But it’s still good fun.

Rereading Gone with the Wind.

Why do we even try? It’s depressing sometimes.

In related news, I was re-watching some MI-5 today, and I find it hilarious that pretty every single time an American (or pretend American, grrr) shows up, they end up being a baddie.

Well no one else has come up with a better second person plural.

sometimes I say y’all

I never say y’all and I’m American and live in the deep south

There are no cities in Missouri.

You could get all of ASoIaF with that!

There are no cities in Missouri.

Just because we share both our major cities with other states doesn’t mean you can be a bully. D:<

Correct me if I’m wrong, Jeni, but I find that American authors trying to write British tend to overuse ‘bloody’, ‘bleeding’ and ‘prat’ (as well as other quintessentially British slang words). Unless someone has lived a substantial amount of time in either place, I don’t think they really have the right to try to fake the other. Contrastingly, I tend to use a lot of British spellings, but I’m fairly sure that’s because I lived a while in Europe.
Anyway, just some observations.
I feel like I should be at least a little on topic:
I’m reading A Dance with Dragons (I’m about 160-ish pages in) and it’s pretty great. However, I think it would have been a good idea to have re-read the series before starting this one, seeing as I’ve forgotten a few plot points. Whoops…

A Dance with Dragons! I’m c.250 pages in, and so far have been surprised by a couple of new developments that seem really obvious in retrospect.

I really should re-read the Skulduggery Pleasant series… I’m forgetting the plot and the new book’s coming out soon.