Mercy from the media

Pssst, little girl. If you get in my car I can tell you the ending of Harry Potter--I bet I'm not the only one who has noticed that all of the major newspapers have put off major reviewing the last Harry Potter book, apparently to give everyone a reasonable chance to finish it before giving away the ending. Good on them. You can't review the book or the series without discussing how it ends. Elizabeth Hand at the Washington Post does have an interesting review on the book in which she gives away some of the plot but not the ending. Maybe it's a review; it's hard to tell on the web. She says she wept reading it. If you want to go into the book without foreknowledge you probably would want to avoid clicking there.

I would love to be the director of the final movie just for the Battle of Hogwarts scene, which if done right might be one of the greatest battle scenes in movie history. The attack of the house elves did me in. Presumably, the major thoughtful reviews ("what does it all mean?") will come next week when most people have finished. I thank the editors one and all.

The Baltimore Sun has a story preceded by a warning not to read further if you don't know the ending and right below the warning is a sentence that would seem to give it all away. In fact, it doesn't, but shame on them.

Isn't it cool? Eight million of us have a secret.

I shut off my computer Friday night and went off to the bookstore to get my copy at midnight and started reading when I got home. I finished at 7 p.m. Sunday. I did not see the internet and tried to minimize social contact as much as possible. And I'm supposed to be an adult. I understand attendance out my synagogue was down. I can guess what some of them were doing.

It is the best book in the series and J.K. Rowling clearly clearly had this all laid out in advance. My wife heard me cheering once (it was the elves, Carol). It's no children's book. It's great fantasy, up with Tolkien and Lewis and Donaldson (bet you never heard of him. Stephen by name--see Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever).

Back to the real world shortly.