[HPforGrownups] OOTP made me angry - WAS Re: I'm new here so sorry if thi...

[OctobersChild48 at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 157338

In a message dated 8/21/06 8:36:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
aida_costa at hotmail.com writes:


> As a matter of interest - reading book 5 really ticked me off. 
> Umbridge is such a cow!!!

Sandy:

First I would like to respond to Lynn's original post asking how many times 
we have all read the HP books. I bought the first three books in 1999 but they 
sat on the bookshelf, unread, until December 2004. Trying to raise my spirits 
at the holidays, which have been so depressing since my husband passed away 
around the holidays in 2001, I started reading Sorcerer's Stone. I loved it. 
Wow, what a good book! So I read COS and POA. Then I had to buy GoF and OOTP, 
which, fortunately, they sell where I work. It was all in the timing because I no 
more than finished the first five when I learned HBP was being released in a 
few months, so I reserved my copy and then read the first five books again.

As for OOTP --- I HATED it. I had a very difficult time reading it the first 
time and I had to force my way through it the second time. I will only read it 
again when I read the books in order preparatory to the release of book 7, 
and I will have to allow for the time it will take me to muddle through it. The 
book just bunches me up in a knot, literally. My muscles tighten, my teeth 
clench, my breathing becomes shallow and labored and I wind up with a rip-roaring 
headache. I can never find adequate words to describe how I feel about 
Delores Umbridge. It doesn't help matters any that I am related to someone who is 
very much like Umbridge. She isn't a nice person to begin with and when you put 
her in a position of power she abuses it to the nth degree. I had the 
misfortune of living in a house she owned for 4 1/2 years, and the longer I lived 
there the more rules she imposed and they got more and more bizarre. 

I snipped most of your post but you pointed out how good a writer JKR is to 
have made you feel that angry at fictional characters. I have always taken the 
stance that OOP is the worst writing she had done prior to HBP, but I am 
always willing to rethink things and I believe you are right. To make you 
physically and emotionally react to a book like that the writing has to be pretty 
brilliant. 

Back to the number of times reading the books. I have only read HBP once. I 
have to admit that I was very disappointed with it. I was expecting to learn so 
much and have many questions answered but it fell well short of what I 
expected. She wasted so much page space on the entire first chapter and all of the 
shipping that could have been so much better used. It was always my intention 
to reread it, but I decided to wait until it was released in paperback to do 
it. I bought the paperback as soon as it was released but had to wait to finish 
a book I was already reading to start it. Six chapters into it I have put it 
down in favor of a new book I just got from the book club about the World Trade 
Center. I am having a very difficult time getting into HBP again. I will 
finish it though, and hopefully I will appreciate it better when I do. Despite 
thinking the first chapter was wasted page space I did enjoy reading it more this 
time.

Sandy


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