Couple things.
Saw Howl's Moving Castle for the second time Saturday Night. Excellent movie, improves with multiple viewings. Whether you regard it as a love story, or read it in a Jungian framework, there's lot's to it. It is layered thickly and deeply with good mythic scenes and imagery.
Also read HP&THBP. The writing is tighter than OOTP, to my great relief. But overall I was unimpressed. My initial theory about who THBP was was correct. The person I thought would die died. The means of death was at most mildly surprising, though the killer's post-killing behavior was mildly intriguing. All of the characters ran through their usual scripts as they have so many times before. The only real surprise was the steadfastness shown by one of the shallower characters. All in all, Rowling's writing has become formulaic enough that the read was more a chore than a delight, but better than doing yardwork in 97 degree heat. She's left herself a lot of work to do if she really aims to wrap this thing up in the next book. If she fails to accomplish that in that one book, her writings going to have to become a LOT more interesting to make me come back for a hypothetical book 8.
Also read HP&THBP. The writing is tighter than OOTP, to my great relief. But overall I was unimpressed. My initial theory about who THBP was was correct. The person I thought would die died. The means of death was at most mildly surprising, though the killer's post-killing behavior was mildly intriguing. All of the characters ran through their usual scripts as they have so many times before. The only real surprise was the steadfastness shown by one of the shallower characters. All in all, Rowling's writing has become formulaic enough that the read was more a chore than a delight, but better than doing yardwork in 97 degree heat. She's left herself a lot of work to do if she really aims to wrap this thing up in the next book. If she fails to accomplish that in that one book, her writings going to have to become a LOT more interesting to make me come back for a hypothetical book 8.