Harry Potter in the House

Lily has been very into HP lately. She's reading the 5th book now and we've caught up with the films to the 4th. I am reminded again how lengthy and tryingly so of the beginning of Goblet of Fire: the repeated problems at the Dursleys, the "journey" to get to the World Cup, and the Quidditch game there.... almost 200 pages before seeing the gang back to Hogwarts. I remember the read a disappointing one for me, since there was high expectation after my favorite 3rd volume. This almost prevented me from reading book V. If not for my sense of "professional" duty, I might have taken one look at the 800+page of Order of Phoenix and gave up. Thinking back, there were quite a few cool moments in HP5 and I can't wait for Lily to discover them. (And I think she won't be annoyed as much by the poorly portrayed teen angst as I was.)

We talked about the length of books and how I am not against long stories. I just have no patience of rambling for rambling sake. One of my favorite books is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and the series of Song of Ice and Fire are both famed for being quite long. The length worked to enhance their charm -- I didn't want the stories to end -- didn't want to get out those worlds to be back to my ordinary universe.