Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Reading Challenge Book 6: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Y'all:


Seven down, and near as I can fathom, I'm on pace to finish 52 books in 52 weeks.  I'll have to make this a yearly thing, because reading is AWESOME!


BOOK 6
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
J.K. Rowling

So when I watched the movies for the first time I remember thinking the first three were only ok.  They were fun, but they weren't great.  They didn't really capture my imagination.  Sure, they laid the groundwork for an amazing fantasy world, they set the stage for the big struggle of good vs. evil, they introduced us to the major players...but they were just, well, a prelude.


Then I watched Goblet of Fire and I was taken by the movie.  I remember liking the others, but this was the first one I really got excited about.  There were more layers to this one--the Triwizard Tournament, other schools, more information/involvement by the Ministry of Magic, the death of a major side character, hormones, jealousy...goodness, it really stinks that I didn't get to "grow" with Harry Potter and his pals, but I'm too old.  I read about a different group of adventurers when I was at that age (I'll write about them later this year), but watching Goblet of Fire was awesome.

READING it was even MORE awesome! I thoroughly enjoyed all the little subplots and was excited to see how they tied into the bigger picture.  Hagrid's blat-ended skrewts were important because one ended up in the maze of the final test; the carefully-placed beetles were none other than Rita Skeeter, an unregistered Animagus (like Sirius Black and his pals).  The polyjuice potion made its return, a wizard other than Harry had an invisibility cloak, and a more spells were used or referenced in this book than the other three combined.

Over the course of four books I've come to truly appreciate the mastery that J.K. Rowling writes this series with, and can even forgive her overuse of certain words (if Krum slouches instead of walks one more time I'm liable to punch a Muggle).  Reading these books, particularly Goblet of Fire, inspires me to go back and edit the everloving bejesus out of my own work.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.
_______________________________________________________
THE ONE AND ONLY,
MAC III






No comments:

Post a Comment