There's enough excitement in the world these days....

Woody's reading the Potter now -- having a five-year old means not having time to go cover-to-cover -- and she's about a third through it. I'm reading spoiler posts because I just don't care that much about the book, though I'm curious about the story. I'll read the library copy when it's available, but knowing the spoilers actually saves me the trouble of reading it once for plot and once for details/tone.

In some ways, this book was the best of the bunch, but in order to feel that way, I have to consider it as a stand-alone volume, not the culmination of a 7-book series. (And it easily could have been a stand-alone volume. But I shouldn't criticize the creator of a fictional universe that has amused me for many hours by complaining about her actual writing skills, right?

I'm now in the low 400s: at this rate, I'll get the book around the end of August, I think.

It's interesting that you say it could be a stand-alone: I've said for years that better writers would have wrapped this up ages ago and moved on to something more interesting, or given us a lot more of a solid foundation, at least.

In a lot of ways her "one book/one year" structure ended up hurting her more than it helped her, I think.

Now that I've finished the series and looked back on all that happened and all that mattered, I can see that a better writer would have made, at most, a trilogy out of this entire story.

But that's not to say I didn't like the last book. There was a lot of stuff that I (as an adult reader) found fascinating to contemplate, even though the original "children's series" certainly didn't need any of it. (And traditional dramatic structures would have dictated a more--straightforward treatment of the resolution.

(It's hard to 'discuss' a book without committing spoilers :) you know.)