Here's Where The Story Ends
I have been rereading Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince this past week. I had thought the next book would not be published until 2008, so imagine my surprise when I saw that J.K. Rowling has announced the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, will be released on July 21, 2007.
I am excited. I feel like bursting into tears.
Once the book is out, it will be out. And for all the rereading of it I know I will do, you only get one first time.
I have held off reading Shalimar the Clown so that there will remain a Salman Rushdie novel I have not yet read (I know I will eventually break down and read it, but or now, it sits on my bookshelf still brimming with unknown possibilities). But I know I will be unable to keep from devouring this book just as I have swallowed all things Harry Potter for the past seven years.
I didn't start reading the Harry Potter books until Thanksgiving, 1999. I remember I had avoided them up to that point because I thought I was above any publishing phenomenon and because I erroneously believed they would be mere copies of the Ursula Le Guin Earthsea books which I had loved as an adolescent. But I bought a paperback copy of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and began reading it Thanksgiving night and didn't go to sleep until I had finished it. And then, after I had the books in hardcover, I began pressing that paperback book on everyone I knew, many of whom also fashioned themselves too cool for anything mainstream. I have read all the books, seen all the films, and even written some Harry Potter fan fiction. If I were still in school, I would probably be writing papers discussing all the veiled references to English Literature which abound throughout the novels and/or discussing the sociological and political statements Rowling is making through these books.
I cannot wait for the next book and I never want the series to end.
And yes, I am getting my name on the list and we I will be taking Julian to the party on July 21st.
I am excited. I feel like bursting into tears.
Once the book is out, it will be out. And for all the rereading of it I know I will do, you only get one first time.
I have held off reading Shalimar the Clown so that there will remain a Salman Rushdie novel I have not yet read (I know I will eventually break down and read it, but or now, it sits on my bookshelf still brimming with unknown possibilities). But I know I will be unable to keep from devouring this book just as I have swallowed all things Harry Potter for the past seven years.
I didn't start reading the Harry Potter books until Thanksgiving, 1999. I remember I had avoided them up to that point because I thought I was above any publishing phenomenon and because I erroneously believed they would be mere copies of the Ursula Le Guin Earthsea books which I had loved as an adolescent. But I bought a paperback copy of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and began reading it Thanksgiving night and didn't go to sleep until I had finished it. And then, after I had the books in hardcover, I began pressing that paperback book on everyone I knew, many of whom also fashioned themselves too cool for anything mainstream. I have read all the books, seen all the films, and even written some Harry Potter fan fiction. If I were still in school, I would probably be writing papers discussing all the veiled references to English Literature which abound throughout the novels and/or discussing the sociological and political statements Rowling is making through these books.
I cannot wait for the next book and I never want the series to end.
And yes, I am getting my name on the list and we I will be taking Julian to the party on July 21st.
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