I’ve been re-reading “Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince” and just as before, my eyes started welling up with tears when it came to The Death.
It’s amazing because I don’t fancy J K Rowling to write great prose. Her sentences can be long and unwieldy, her narration a wee bit too one-dimensional and plain. Perhaps the best thing about Harry Potter is the brilliant idea of a magical world that coexists with the real thing. The notion of the underdog also spurs people to continue reading: afterall, we want The Boy Who Lived to continue living and finally get the chance to have a go at happiness.
Will he live and will he find the strength to kill Voldemort? Will Snape be revealed to be a good man after what he did? Will Sirius ever reappear from the portal into which he fell? I guess we can only find out more on Saturday when “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is finally on sale.
I really must thank the boyfriend for getting me started on the series. Back in 2001 or thereabouts, he saw that I was constantly bored (and bugging him) during my school holidays and surprised me with the first three books of the series. They were slender tomes and I finished them in no time. But I was hooked from the word go. I started pre-ordering the books months before they arrived and though some were less enjoyable than others, the lush imaginations of that world never fails to lift my spirits up.
Just like Sex in the City and The Lord of the Rings, I will mourn the end of Harry Potter this coming Saturday.
In other magical news, I caught the trailer of the movie adaptation of Philip Pullman’s excellent “Northern Lights”, the first from the “His Dark Materials” series. It looks really exciting! The series was one of those where you couldn’t put it down unless you had to – it was a stranger, darker tale than Harry Potter, far more mysterious and sinister. The casting of Nicole Kidman as the cruel, cold Mrs Coulter is sheer genius.
What with The Chronicles of Narnia and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust still in production, the magical world of fantasy has never looked more tempting.
Yannisms 
Something to look forward to – “Prince Caspian” may be a year away, but “Stardust” will open this October. I’m not so thrilled about the casting of Claire Danes though. But that’s me.
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monoceros – Why not Claire Danes? =P I was quite pleased with the casting when I heard the news.
With Stardust in October and The Golden Compass in December, my yearend excitement has just gone up a notch!
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Among other reasons, her histrionics in “Romeo and Juliet” got on my nerves. She’s also in this other screen adaptation of a favorite novel (“Evening” by Susan Minot), and her presence is barely redeemed by Vanessa Redgrave, Toni Collette, and Glenn Close. I guess we’ll agree to disagree about Ms. Danes. =)
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