HP (Not Hewlett-Packard)
I read the new Harry Potter book (Order of the Phoenix) this weekend. These certainly aren’t the best books I’ve read (by a fairly significant margin), but there is something frusturating while also engaging about the story, and Harry’s character, that keeps me coming back. I’m a sucker for series with a bunch of long books in them and will tend to read the newest book in the series, even if the last one wasn’t particularly good (case in point: Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series which I read 9 books of, at about 1000 pages per book, before the repetitive nature of the narration and the HORRIBLE story-line got the better of me and I gave up). Anyway, this is probably the best of the Potter books yet. There are a few moments of reasonably good writing from Rowlings (such as “the newly minted look of the sunlight” that let’s Harry know it’s early morning), but she’s not straying far from the formula. Can’t say I blame her. She’s probably the Tolkein of our generation… we’re doomed.