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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
March 2022: Classics
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[WPF] Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling - 4 stars
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I am at 80% with my little guy and hope to be finished with it by the weekend!
I had wanted to say more when you post a review on the fifth book. Off and I only have just a few minutes between patients so I don’t get the opportunity to really muse as well as I’d like. People are often commenting on how much they dislike the order of the Phoenix because of how angry hair is. I never felt that as strongly. Maybe because my training always has me look to what’s underneath or what walks alongside anger. But to me, what book 5 does, is really outline how alone Harry is. And how alone he feels. Kind of left out and rejected by everyone. And with that which Dolores Umbridge, his isolation is really underscored. He loses Quidditch, he loses his reputation, nobody believes him, the whole Wizarding world is seeing him as a fraud. Which is why two beautiful things happen in that book. The first, is Dumbledore‘s army. When people look to him to teach and they believe in him, that changes everything. When he knows that he’s fighting he might not necessarily be fighting alone, this is when the idea that he is protected by love and friendship, (tears emerge when I speak of this) really gets powerfully underscored. And that’s when the second amazing thing happens. Because when he goes to the ministry to fight, five people from the DA will not let him fight alone. Which is of course the foreshadowing of how this ends in the series. But ultimately
Damn my phone did it again, and now I’m late for my patient, but I have to continue I must! That ultimately everyone who ever loved him, Dumbledore, or Hogwarts, finds their way for the fight of their lives. So to me the whole idea of the order of the Phoenix, which of course was his parents fight, and Neville’s parents fight and the Weasley’s fight, is the idea that he goes from isolation and aloneness to power and community. And of course the deep loss that happens at the end of the book sends him spinning, but ultimately he is not alone. And then of course it ends with the prophecy.Book 6 to me never really and because it inexorably leads to book 7 which is all about horcruxes and hollows. But you’re right there is some set up with a simpering teenage love relationships. Romilda, lavender, Cho from the past, and of course Ginny. But there is also great Quidditch. But what I wanted to say is that more than the angst of book 5, what really bugged me about Harry was book 6! Because I was really pissed off about how crazed and obsessed he was about going after mouth way. I found more irritation of that, and his obsession about what Malfoy was doing, than anything else. I’m not just my opinion because practically no one agrees with me there. But I have been meaning to add it and now I better go because I have been holy irresponsible
I am not saying Angry Angsty Harry isn't appropriate or necessary in Order of the Phoenix. I am saying it is to one note angry angsty, with no variation and too long at 800 pages. The anger is all one note, never varying in degree or type. It doesn't increase or decrease, shift type of anger, just 800 pages of exactly the same. That is the problem. For me, this time through, it completely undermined all the great parts of Order of the Phoenix.
Hmm, thanks for that insight into OOTP. I don't think I really considered the underlying themes of isolation and loss to taking on a role and forming a group. I'd still have to say that the half blood prince is possibly my favourite of the series .... certainly it is up there. But that is because I am a secret fan of Severus Snape ;)
We are all secret Snape Fans.
Especially in the form of the incomparable Alan Rickman
100% agree on Order of the Phoenix and this is my absolute favourite in the HP series.
Snape fan from day one…way back when. There is something about him. Alan Rickman would have made me love him even if JK hadn’t. ‘After all this time?’ ‘Always’.
Jemima, I agree! Snape was always fascinating to me. Alan Rickman just upped the ante! So often casting or how characters are portrayed are disappointing, but he nailed it.
Jemima wrote: "Snape fan from day one…way back when. There is something about him. Alan Rickman would have made me love him even if JK hadn’t. ‘After all this time?’ ‘Always’."Oh, that monent....yes, Alan Rickman understood Snape ... his complexity and contradictions.
Totally agree, that Alan Rickman is the best snake one can imagine! Book 6 is interesting, because it really sets up our understanding about the horcruxes, and leads us into the inevitable understanding about Harry that is the crux of the book. Kids, and it tolds too, really think about the stuff very deeply. We were just watching movie number six, and my little one asked the big question. What if Harry….. But I also think six is a direct route into seven, that it’s unfinished. At this point you just have to plow on.
I feel this is an important transition book in the series, both in the maturing of the youngsters, and in providing the information and character development of several critical characters needed for the final confrontations in Book 7 to work. In fact, Rowling does a good job of disguising what are really info-dumps.
Once again I am reading the British edition with gorgeous cover