Are we having fun?

[hickengruendler]

No: HPFGUIDX 80556

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Wanda Sherratt" 
<wsherratt3338 at r...> wrote:
>  For me, the fun died on June 
> 21, when OotP was released.  And so much of the discussion of that 
> book, and speculation of what it will lead to, make me think that 
> very few readers are having fun anymore.  Instead, I read worries 
> and foreboding about how much horror Harry is going to have to 
> endure until we finally make it to the end of book 7.  Nobody seems 
> to expect anything but anguish and pain, with maybe a happy ending, 
> but very possibly just a merciful release to look forward to. 

Rowling said in the interview with Stephen Fry, that was done shortly 
after the release of OOTP, that Harry's fifth year is probably his 
hardest, because in the following books, at least everybody knows, 
that he is speaking the truth. So maybe the remaining two books won't 
be to dark. I think it would also be logical, because Harry's growing 
up, and it is indeed the puberty, when the world looks particularly 
grim for an adolescent. At least it did in my case.
 
However, I have to say, that I personally prefer the darkness of book 
5 over the lightness of the first two books. While these books were 
indeed fun to read, it took me a long time before I started book 3, 
because after reading the first two books, I thought they were all 
basically the same. Only when a friend told me, that book 3 and 
especially 4 (that was of course before the release of OOTP) is 
darker than the first two, I continued reading the Potter series. And 
it was not before I finished book 4, that I called myself a Harry 
Potter fan. I reread the first two books only, when I needed to, for 
a Potter course in the university, and my opinion about them didn't 
change much. Book 4 remains my favorite, by far, because it has IMO 
the right mixture of dark and light moments, but I like book 5 with 
it's overall darkness better, than book 1 and 2, and maybe even 3.

Hickengruendler