Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince by JK Rowling, 652 pages.It is long car ride season again. This Thanksgiving and Christmas featured some family favorites for us.
My favorite in the series (or maybe the last one, Deathly Hallows, is better. Hard to say). The book in which Dumbledore first mentions, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione begin to understand the importance of, horcruxes. And the book in which the relationships between Ron and Hermione, and Harry and Ginny first become apparent to them. As the book progresses, and the things are building to a climax, Harry commits an act that would have been murder had things gone a little differently. His has some twinges of conscience about this near-killing, but still seems more concerned about the resulting detentions than about the act that caused him to miss a Quiddich match. He's not a perfect character. The end of the book lets the reader know that no matter what happens in the final book this won’t be a case of “everything is going to be alright”. The movie version, wherein Harry stands by and watches the killing of a person close to him, not intervening because he promised, always seemed much weaker than the original. In the book Harry is petrified by a spell that is only broken once the murder is committed, and that seems more true to character.
We listened to the beginning of the second in the Harry Potter series while driving around, and ended up listening to it at home over the weekends because we could not wait for the next long trip. We love the books and
Jim Dale is the best reader ever.
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