harry potter

am just reading it, i didn't get it until a couple of hours ago, but i'm on page 286 right now, so i'm positive i'll finish it until tomorrow noon. depending on how much i sleep. but i quite like it so far.

NOOOOOOOOOOO! I don't even have it yet

i'm still waiting too

I've been finished since yesterday morning its wreckin my head i can't talk about it!! But i loved it!! I had to keep stopping to cry!! Fantastic ending!!!

You're right, the ending was really great. I read some reviews and I can't believe the critics didn't all love it. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

i actually haven't read any of the books,i have,however,watched all the movies.

was up in namibia for holidays recently when order of the pheonix opened worldwide,it oly showed for a day there,they don't actually have rights to show it till the 26th,hehe

the books are good (just got the newest one) but the movies...well there's censorship on this forum but you inderstand that they DO NOT represent the caliber of the books.

i agree. i found the first two pretty good and the third one very bad, am now waiting to see the 5th one in english.
anyway, finished the book after exactly the time i calculated. i liked it much better than the last two, though jkr killed off most of my favourite characters. but it's good work, it made me laugh at least as much as it made me cry and it's definitely gripping. *thumbs up*

Just finished reading it not ten minutes ago... I wouldn't say that it was superb, but it was certainly good - I think part of the problem for me was that I expected most of the twists.

MS

To be honest im not really into harry potter, but one of my friends (yes i have a friend!! ) stayed up till 12 and got it and read it all in one go, he told me what happend, sounds a bit obvious though, i may read it someday but i don't think anytime soon.

Because i havn't read any of the books i think the films are ok, i have only seen two but they seem pretty good.

Angua

books were on sale at 1:01am here in SA,i was asleep at the time

I wa sasleep too when they went on sale at midnight. I guess there's something to be said for living in a small town so I can just saunter down to the bookshop at 10 the next day and there still be a pile of books left.

How anyone can say the films were good I don't know, they are so unlike the books, and I think the acting is terrible.

finished it half an hour ago. i agree with most that was said here, especially with MS: it was quite obvious who RAB was, and where the locket will be (initially, that is), and i pretty much suspected what was Snape's real position, and that Harry was a...... , and that he'll have to........ (you know how to fill the blanks ). and i dont think the movies are that bad, execpt maybe the third. the new one is the best so far, i think.

Dewi just bought it this evening and will be starting it just after he fixes two bugs on the site.

I, myself, have never read a Harry Potter book and won't be starting to anytime soon. The movies are OK (the scenery is superb!) but in my opinion, HP is really for getting up to speed with fantasy reading before you discover the Discworld

(dives into the flame-proof bunker... )

i think youre right, its sort of... fantasy light. not the huse detailing of Tolkien, not a whole new world with completely different rules like DW, but still with good, gripping writing. thats why so many love it. its fantasy to the people (god that sounds arrogant )

it better be lettuce proof too.
I have an arsenal i use to fit in with the americans
an arsenal to survive Israel (I sorta kinda said that ALL the banks belong to Palestine...my bad) (no offence BD & Dibbler)
and I have an arsenal for people like you. How dare you! HP teaches tolerance to ppl. I will exteminate you and all like you for this insult to literature untill u get the message!

Isn't it interesting how most DW readers also read HP..but then again who doesn't..it was fantastic till she got seduced by money..[sad]

I agree, although soe of them are good actors...and emily watsi\on is hot (if she hasn't turned 16 yet i retract my statement and/or will move to new mexico where she is definitely legal)

wikipedia says she is 17. born 15 April 1990.
maybe nobody reads this till next year.

I, too, haven't read any of the books yet and only seen the movies, which I quite like and think are well done. I intend to buy a HP boxed set, now that all the books are released, when I have found a job and have the money to do so (and bought some new DW stuff first).
I read a review of the 7th book which told me about a rather long boring and repeating part in the middle of the book and that there were too many obvious hints and Deux Ex Machina situations. Can anybody confirm that?

I can't really say that there were any Deux ex Machina times. There were several points when totally useless stuff from previous books turned out to be really useful. But If so had it all planned out like she says she did, I don't think that really counts. I also didn't notice any repeating parts in the book, but I don't really read carefully so I might just have missed it. Even if the plot is full of holes, It doesn't matter, because, the rest of it is just so gripping.

i did noticed a few DEMs, and there was a part that did repeat itself, which seemd to me quite odd: the stories of the Dumbeldore brothers, which pretty much identical. however, these didnt hurt my enjoyment too badly, probably because the DEM werent so farfetched and were based on previous books, as was pointed out. so on the whole, a big thumbs up to JKR for finishing the series in the best possible way.

and what pray does DEM mean? is it like a huge coincidence or what? i did my latin and i still don;t know

It's a term from the earliest forms of theatre where a god went on stage and solved all the problems of the play (woooe, what a plot device...). It means that solutions to big problems are just given into the hands of the characters without or with a pure explanation or reason.
For more details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

gosh!!didn't you know that sgt l?

It's the weakest plot device you can get and should never be used at all (not even in a comedy). That's why I was so shocked when I read DEM in the HP7 review.

NO! SAY IT AIN'T SO! DON'T RUIN IT!

i dont think its THAT bad, espeacially since in this case the DEM is based on something, and it doesnt look as if she just made something up on the spare of the moment.

the gauntlet has been thrown ppl.

http://bash.org/?111338

funny stuff
someone replaced the word "Wand" with "Wang" in HP1

MOVED here by Mr Scrub - cos it was in a completely unrelated thread...

i'm like 75pgs from the end of the book and i'm certain she's just killing off characters for shock value. it was ok at like the beginning when it seemed like the book would go easier without them or when the deaths were few and quasi meaningful but now...

I have read all the books. this one was great, i cryed a few times but i would definatly recomend

just finished....i can't quite use words yet

thats how i felt... in the next few moments you'll go through happiness, sadness, a bit of loneliness, and then that warm fuzzy feeling you get in times like this (and maybe an urge to read all the previous books and laugh at the characters for not knowing anything )

well i did have an urge to read them all again

but the prob is i is now an addict and NEED MORE. i think she finished on a note of sufficient closure to not warrant any more books but i know if another one came out i'd sell my soul to be able to drift back into that world

i seem to recall she said once she'd do a "what happens later" book, but because of the "19 years later" ending im not completely sure.

same i thought it would be dif, but either she does a "20 years later" like Dumas or she fills in the interim 19 yrs...[psychotic desperation] that's a long time! she can wite at least 19 books for that!

bear in mind this woman has been bleeding out books for all you fans for how many years?she's got more than enough money now and wants to just chill,not carry on forever.

she's a /writer/ that's what she does, she loves to write

pTerry once said that he'd had to change banks because he filled the first one up - I don't think you could ever expect "having enough money" to stop a writer... What's more in question with Rowling than with is whether she's still got the inspiration - I'd argue that (largely) the later HP books were weaker than the earlier ones, whereas just seems to get better and better.

MS

i disagree. i feel that the later books are better, and much darker, than the first ones. and i dont think she ran out of inspiration: i just read shes working on a new book (not related to HP).

i don;t think they are "better". certainly as god but definitely the style changed dratically, io still rememebr how i felt reding the first book and how different it is now, however it think that this was the smartest thing to do. Pterry's books are technically chronologically ordered and reuse characters but like Isaac Asimov's "I Robot" or Stanislaw Lem's "Hyberiade" (originally polish so i don;t know what the english translation was, i'ts been a long time since i read it and am now doing the Hungarian one) they are essencially independant stories. With HP you need to start at page 1 book 1 and finish on page 607(?) book 7. so i think that this was how she could keep ana udience interested in the book even though it's a ~1,088,000 word......epic. and how she could "mature" an audience into the HP world. Seems top have worked...but i miss the, ahem, "magic" if you will of the first few books...but perhaps that was just the novelty of the concept. Nonetheless she is a fantastic writer and to have achieved such a succesful septogy and in the process to have raised the literary levels of so many people (another possible reason for the gradual change form la-di-da to bum-bum-buuuuuum) is a feat that few people can profess to have achieved and I for one and grateful for.

you got it, sgt l.

sorry,but i couldn't put myself through reading sgt l's comment,was too long.but anyway i concede the idea that she probably wants more money,anything else she writes now will fly off the shelves and most likely be of the same quality,but i think she didn't want to have to make her characters grow up too much,any good story leaves you wanting more

if you read the book, you'd see that it does leave the reader wanting more.

damn you "Also", read my comment it's probably the most logical and lucid thing i've ever written on the site

it's so tragic when a writer is over shadowed by their predecessor, even worse to have to live in the lee of your own work

looking for xtra cred are we??

are you?

no

sure?

i think we should stop this now,this isn't very harry potter like

oh, man, i cant breathe... you guys are psychos... *wipes tears*

yes you're right, let's get back to HP