Looking at the last page.

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 163435

Anders wrote:
>
> Always before I was waiting in line, in a hurry to get at the book
to quickly skim through it on a first read and grab the main details
before going back for a slow, detailed read to try to glean clues.
> 
> But this time will be different.  I mean, this is it.  No more clues
to guess.  No more postings of theories and predictions.  Finite.
Finality. The end.  Th-th-th-that's all folks.  
 
> I don't want to hurry through it because I have no idea if I'm ever
going to want to pick up the book again, depending on how it all turns
out.  I'm one who was really disappointed in HBP.  I keep thinking
what if it just gets worse in DH?  There won't be any more chances to
make it right.  Even if Jo does the most wonderful, surprising,
awe-inspiring, all-questions-answered ending, and all the threads are
tied up just as I'd like, it's still an end to something we'll likely
never see again in our lifetimes.  I want it to last.  I want to savor
it, page by page, as though it were rich dark chocolate melting across
my tongue like velvet.  When it's done I want to gently close the
book, with a smile on my face as I gently nod and say, "Yeah.  It's
finished.  Thanks, Jo."  

Carol responds:
Well, yes. I understand the urge to savor the experience, rather like
(for me) reading LOTR for the first time--a never-to-be recaptured
experience. But I also understand the hurry-up-and-get-to-the-end
impulse, the desire to find out how it all ends (without cheating and
peeking at the TOC, much less the last two chapters) and *then* coming
back to savor it in a reread, especially if it ends as I want it to,
with HRH and Neville and Snape alive and Snape revealed to be DDM.

But a good book is always worth rereading and reanalyzing, and I very
much doubt that all the questions will be answered. Those of us who
prefer analysis of existing canon to speculation about what hasn't yet
appeared, or who enjoy both equally, will still be here, at least till
the flame of interest burns out, say around 2017.

Carol, looking forward to the ChapDiscs for DH and subsequent
reinterpretation of all the books much more than to the celebration of
correct predictions and the bittersweet eating of crow by all and sundry