So I made the final push tonight and finished the latest - and last - Harry Potter book. I am not entirely sure why I forced my way through it. Possibly because I clicked on an MSNBC article that warned that there were spoilers in it, and I was fed up of avoiding them.
I enjoyed the entire series, and though I do not necessarily think they were the greatest books ever written, I think J.K. Rowling is an excellent story teller with a spectacular imagination. She also deserves every honour that can be bestowed upon her - Dame of the British Empire, Nobel Prize for Literature, whatever you have. She has nearly single-handedly gotten a generation of children who think that 4evR us a word to read a proper book - seven of them, actually.
To know me is to know of my love of books, forged as a child but really flourished when I moved overseas to a country where my only real tie to English was through books. Should you visit my humble apartment in Toronto the office has two bookshelves - one crammed with technical manuals and software, the other packed with some of the books that I have found worth owning; some such as my copy of Shogun (James Clavell) and Sum of All Fears (Tom Clancy) are my second or even third copies. With few exceptions I consider the books on that shelf to be among the best written, most interesting, or most important works of the last quarter of the twentieth century.
Over the years I have moved several times, often to smaller quarters, twice overseas, and once to an apartment shared with another. In each of these moves I have been forced to get rid of a number of these treasured objects. My most recent move from Montreal to Toronto found me living in smaller quarters, and I took that opportunity to examine my collection and choose carefully which to donate, give to friends, or keep. It is never an easy process but it is one that offers me the opportunity to reexamine my collection, and often to reread some of the old favorites, or at least portions of them. This time - possibly due to its recent release as a movie - I reread Casino Royale. I must have been a teenager when I last read it, and the opportunity to remember why I prefer the written word over the silver screen was again obvious.
If you are not a harry Potter fan then find something else that interests you, but if you are not in the habit of doing so then turn off the computer and television for a little while and fall in love with a book again. Trust me, it will be time well spent.