SPOILERS BEHIND CUT: Chapters 10-25
While I recaffeinate, and before I finish the book this morning, I should record my reactions to yesterday's reading. There's waaay too much to process, so these will be very random observations. (I'm already looking forward to doing my traditional second read in the form of listening to Jim Dale on my next drive to MomCity. I always notice different details when I hear something read.)
- I was happy when Ron went away and I was happy when Ron came back. Ron's just kinda like that. On the former point, honestly my first reaction to Ron storming off was, "So she's finally realized she has a character with no useful skills to contribute to the quest." And even though I was glad for Harry and Hermione when Ron came back, he seems to have gotten even stupider in recent chapters.
- This feels much more like a stand-alone fantasy novel than any of the recent books, and that's fine. I had a couple of chapters where I thought, oh, come on, a whole nuther set of quest objects? But my disbelief has been resuspended in time for the last day's read.
- Periodically I pause and let my eyes unfocus and think, "Snape is headmaster and we can't see what's happening in that office!" Not unlike my reaction to HBP, when we were denied any real chance to see how Snape taught DADA. Lots of room for ficcage, there, though. I can't wait to see what the Snapecasters have to say about all this.
- This isn't a Ch. 10-25-specific point, but in all the prognosticating about whether H'warts would reopen, did anybody guess that it would, but would be under the control of dark forces? I sure never did. What do you suppose the Sorting Hat did this year?
- It's felt liberating, mostly, to be freed from the school year as the governing organizational scheme for the story. But whenever Jo mentions weeks passing, I get a little panicky - probably an intended audience reaction - and also think, "Oh, she's just stretching out time to make the plot conform to the school year" - which is ok, and kind of narratologically interesting, but it does seem to be one place where the paradigm of the other books works against the tautness of plotting in this one.
- Manically-happy!Remus is almost as scary as Depressed!Remus. I'm still worried.
- I'm glad we got to rescue Ollivander.
- I was sort of hoping that the loss of Harry's wand would propel him into spending some of those fruitless weeks in the woods practicing wandless magic.
- Horcruxes and mirrors with eyes are really creepy.
[If any of these musings raise questions that are answered in the remainder of the book, please don't spoil me in comments.]
- I was happy when Ron went away and I was happy when Ron came back. Ron's just kinda like that. On the former point, honestly my first reaction to Ron storming off was, "So she's finally realized she has a character with no useful skills to contribute to the quest." And even though I was glad for Harry and Hermione when Ron came back, he seems to have gotten even stupider in recent chapters.
- This feels much more like a stand-alone fantasy novel than any of the recent books, and that's fine. I had a couple of chapters where I thought, oh, come on, a whole nuther set of quest objects? But my disbelief has been resuspended in time for the last day's read.
- Periodically I pause and let my eyes unfocus and think, "Snape is headmaster and we can't see what's happening in that office!" Not unlike my reaction to HBP, when we were denied any real chance to see how Snape taught DADA. Lots of room for ficcage, there, though. I can't wait to see what the Snapecasters have to say about all this.
- This isn't a Ch. 10-25-specific point, but in all the prognosticating about whether H'warts would reopen, did anybody guess that it would, but would be under the control of dark forces? I sure never did. What do you suppose the Sorting Hat did this year?
- It's felt liberating, mostly, to be freed from the school year as the governing organizational scheme for the story. But whenever Jo mentions weeks passing, I get a little panicky - probably an intended audience reaction - and also think, "Oh, she's just stretching out time to make the plot conform to the school year" - which is ok, and kind of narratologically interesting, but it does seem to be one place where the paradigm of the other books works against the tautness of plotting in this one.
- Manically-happy!Remus is almost as scary as Depressed!Remus. I'm still worried.
- I'm glad we got to rescue Ollivander.
- I was sort of hoping that the loss of Harry's wand would propel him into spending some of those fruitless weeks in the woods practicing wandless magic.
- Horcruxes and mirrors with eyes are really creepy.
[If any of these musings raise questions that are answered in the remainder of the book, please don't spoil me in comments.]