Potterific

First- I would like to say that I found Dublin, California at number 84 on the list of the 100 fasted growing suburbs in the US. Our hometown is FAMOUS!!!!!

Next- This weekend my mother was here to help me find an apartment. I have applied at two different places and I will let you know how things go. Jennifer and Steven came down on Saturday and we had dinner and hung out and on Sunday we went to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the SD Natural History Museum. It was an amazing exhibit. It was actually very moving to see the actual documents that proved that the scripture we use today is almost identical to that written almost two thousand years ago. Anyways- they are here until December 31 if anyone wants to come visit and go see them I would gladly go again.

Finally- This weekend all three of my guests were reading HP7 and were at different parts of the book. Steve finished yesterday and he and I were having discussion all weekend in code in order to not spoil the book for my sister (who was only at chapter 9 while my mother was only two chapters behind steve). He emailed me today with his thoughts and I thought you all may find them interesting:

Kimberly,

As you have hopefully guessed by my subject line, I did finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on schedule. I found it a most satisfactory conclusion, and was glad that Ms. Rowling never copped out or cheated: she earned this ending, and like Dumbledore, had a plan the whole time to which she was able to stay true. I don't feel the need for further Harry Potter books, as the story reached its logical conclusion and then stopped. What follows are my lingering questions and thoughts, in order of import.

1) I was pleased to find myself correct in the notion that Snape indeed was the caster of the doe Patronus. It did seem a significant piece of information that we had not seen or heard of Snape casting one throughout the books thus far, and he was the most likely of the living characters to have been the mystery hider of the Gryffindor sword. I was glad but unsurprised that his redemption provided the near-climactic point of the book, and found his character arc both moving and ultimately redemptive. As far as I'm concerned, the complete picture we now have of Snape excuses all of his wrongdoing - I've been opining that in light if this new information, his home life was even less happy than Harry's with the Dursleys. And to see how he was ostracized and rejected by his popular classmates right from the start made me even more on his side. Really, in retrospect, what jerks James and Sirius were - Harry, even with his lack of parenting, was a vastly better person than his father. As I said, I think that we can now see Snape as nothing other than heroic and courageous. I absolve him.

2) Another Slytherin revelation: isn't Regulus a much more impressive wizard now that we've found out that he succeeded where every other Death Eater failed? Finding out about the Horcruxes is more than anyone other than Dumbledore ever managed - it's clear from Snape's recollections that Severus doesn't even know about them. So Regulus must have had a high degree of scholarly ambition to uncover this knowledge. He was just as much a hero as anyone else.

3) Biggest heroes, in order: Harry; Ron; Neville; Dobby; Hermione; Snape; Mrs. Weasley; Lupin; McGonagall; Flitwick; Kreacher. Most touching deaths: Dobby, Snape, Lupin. Biggest surprise: Grindelwald being a real character, with complexities and shading, and even some last-second heroism (telling off Voldemort, taunting him on the deathbed - that took guts).

4) Where does this book rank among the rest of the series? I still have a (possibly misguided) loyalty to Prisoner of Azkaban, which is still my personal favorite = I think she found the best balance between the brevity and economy of the earlier books and the labyrinthine plotting of the later books. I have always disqualified Goblet of Fire on the grounds that the big plot twist was something of a cop-out (oooh, it was an impostor all along!), although I grow fonder of it upon further reading. Order of the Phoenix was necessary but sometimes unpleasant, and Half-Blood Prince pales in comparison to Deathly Hallows. I'd still rank DH second in my personal pantheon, which I think now looks like this: PoA, DH, GoF, HBP, SS, OotP, CoS. It's nitpicking, and in some ways it's not even useful to rank the books individually - almost better to see them as one giant work, the way some Tolkien aficionados treat Lord of the Rings.

Well, this has been an immensely satisfying reading experience. I hope you were just as cheered by the conclusion as I was. Let me know what you think when you get a chance.

Take care,

Steven