Hmmm. What's your favorite *now*?

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 183020

> SSSusan:
>
> Well, poor Mike thinks he may have killed the list with his last 
> post.  There's been a stunned silence around here for 24 hours
> now, anyway. ;)
> 
> So I thought I'd break that silence to ask a very mundane sort of 
> question of all y'all.

Mike:
Thank goodness we have your wisdom to rescue my foreboding sense of 
killing the list. :-) And, yeah PC, top this! Thread killing is 
nothing to an expert assassin like yours truly. ;-)



> SSSusan:
> 
> That question is:  Now that we're almost a year out from the 
> release of DH and the completion of the series, which of the
> books has become your favorite?
> 
> Tangential questions relating to that one might be:  Has your 
> favorite changed over time, or since the series has ended?  Can
> you explain WHY this book is your favorite?

Mike:
Hasn't changed, PoA still wins hands down. Though DH has replaced GoF 
as my second favorite. For me, the series didn't begin until PoA. 
Before that, PS/SS and CoS were cute stories that had a beginning and 
an end and didn't leave me wanting more because they didn't have lots 
of stuff hanging in the balance. Sure, Voldemort was still out there, 
and as Carol has rightly pointed out CoS took on different meanings 
by the end, but there wasn't enough to keep me interested. There 
wasn't that hook that made me keep on reading.

PoA, OTOH, had all those elements and more, despite the plotholes. 
First, I'm a sports nut and Quidditch came front and center, took on 
a whole new meaning for Harry and Gryffindor. I always liked Oliver 
Wood, loved his retelling of his talks with McGonagall over Harry's 
Firebolt. I was anxious about Lupin, intrigued by Snape's reactions 
towards him, and most obviously loved the Marauders, their map and 
their whole story. But the real hook was the Scabbers/Peter 
revelation, anybody with the ability to hang that in front of us for 
three books only to turn everything on it's ear,... I just had to 
read more of this story. 

And there was promise of more. You knew Pettigrew's escape was 
meaningful, because of Trelawney's prediction. You knew that 
Trelawney had already made one and that it was important. You knew 
Sirius wasn't going away and would play a bigger part in Harry's 
life. We understood so much better the enmity between Snape and Harry 
and wanted to know how that was going to play out. And though dense 
me didn't pick up on it, the brighter amongst us picked up on the 
Snape loved Lily theme, which looked to play some part in the story.



> SSSusan:
> *Which is/has become your least favorite book of the series?  
> Again, can you express why?

Mike:
OotP still tops this list. I cringed every time Umbridge came on 
stage. Was really hurting for Harry and that made it uncomfortable to 
read. Was likewise bored with the giants, especially since it turns 
out to be of no consequence. Mostly, it was that the whole 'getting 
the prophesy' seemed too contrived and *that* was the main storyline 
of the book. I did enjoy the whole MoM running fight and got goose 
bumps when Dumbledore showed up to battle "Tom". Of course, that was 
after my favorite character got himself killed, which meant I had two 
more books to go with no Sirius. :(


> *Is there a character you find yourself especially fond of now
> that it's all over?  Any pourquoi to add?

Mike:
I can't help but love Sirius, still. What he went through in his 
life, then to have it end just when it looked like he was about to be 
exonerated and become a free man again,... so sad. The promise of a 
brilliant youth turned into a bitter and desperate existance. The 
loss that was so devastating that Harry mentions him first, before 
even his parents, when thinking about who he wanted to see again with 
the Resurrection Stone.


> *Which character would you just love to follow from here on out
> if you could?  Por que?

Mike:
None of the characters that survived DH, really. I suppose George 
might be interesting, and I always wanted to hear more from Charlie. 
But I'd most like to read about the previous generation, I find all 
of them infinitely more interesting than Harry's generation.



> *Are there chapters or scenes (or whole books) that you skip when
> you (if you) re-read?  Warum?

Mike:
For the reasons above, I always found OotP hardest to read. I could 
also do without all the romances in HBP, which is almost half of that 
book. And after the first few pensieve memories, I found that whole 
motif was becoming tedious and of little value to either Harry or the 
story. And I'm sorry to say that I didn't find Dumbledore's temporary 
ouster in CoS to be credible from a story perspective, though I now 
understand why he went so easily (don't agree with it, but understand 
it).


> *Are there chapters or scenes (or whole books) that you find
> yourself turning to again and again?  Perche?

Mike:
An easy one. I loved to reread all of PoA, must have done it at least 
20 times. But my all-time favorite scene, and the best in the entire 
series imo, was Harry reaching out to his Stag Patronus after he just 
saved his own life and whispering "Prongs". It was magical, for me, 
on so many levels.



> *Are you surprised at any of your responses?  IOW, is there
> anything about how you feel about the series now that you never
> expected you'd feel?

Mike:
I was surprised by how much I sympathized with young Severus in "The 
Prince's Tale". That over-enamored, poor, young wizard actually made 
me feel sorry for him. 

OTOH, the choices he made while at Hogwarts, when he should have 
thrived, made me despise the adult Snape even more. He had proved 
that he was an exceptionally bright youth, he had a strong willed 
guiding friend in Lily, and he *still* chose Voldemort and the Death 
Eaters; that led eventually to his life of muted desperation.