Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The Movie

Here's what I thought. (Also: Best movie so far, though granted I haven't seen 2 or 4. (And also: Luna~~~!))

I met a real-life Dolores Umbridge yesterday. ( Cut for RL )

Afterwards we went to Animania. I bought the last four raffle tickets and won...this. -_-; I swear, I can't escape this fandom, it follows me around.

Major news coming up in a bit, stay tuned.

EDIT: Meanwhile, over on v_voltaire:

Book 7 Death Pool
250 pages into Deathly Hallows - warning! spoilers!
Final reflections on Harry Potter

<333 Valerie. I haven't made it that far -- still on page 100-something, yes I know I read slow, SHUT UP -- but I couldn't resist checking out what other people were saying. So far I'm a little confused. Was that mysterious shadow the profile of certain person we all thought was dead, or wasn't it?! Maybe it's a doppleganger or a ghost? Is there a spell for that? I wished I'd re-read books 1-6 in preparation for this, like my housemates did. (Leaked text courtesy of this post.)

EDIT2: Yesterday was "pretend you've read Deathly Hallows and post fake spoilers day" -- NO, the book hasn't leaked. (If it has leaked, I haven't heard about it.)

Is it...yes, it is! The return of the bookblog!

Not the backblog meme, sadly, though I swear I will get to that before I die even if it kills me. These are all books I read since.

Robert Angell, Let Me Finish:
I got so caught up reading New York Times Book Reviews about literary dynasties that I forgot that I don't like reading memoirs by less-famous relatives about their more-famous relations. The first part of the first chapter, about a car trip the author took with his mother and E. B. White (who would later become his stepfather), made me sit up and take notice, but after that it's mostly downhill. ( Read more... )

Celestine Vaite, Taire in Bloom:
Sequel to Breadfruit and Frangipani. This series, about Tahiti's best listener -- who now has her own popular talk radio show, where she is a professional listener -- is still great. ^__^ The cast of characters is still great, the writing is still great, and there's still a lot of warmth -- though actually, the series has been getting more (explicitly) political. ( Read more... )

Diana Duanne, Wizards at War:
I don't know what it is, but I just can't read this series anymore. Maybe I outgrew it? So much of it is about growing up, maybe I don't want to read about the maturation experiences of 14-year-olds when I was fourteen eight years ago? This was going to be the awesome, focus-on-Dark-Matter book that brought back my love for the series, too. ( Read more... )

Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevemer, The Mislaid Magician:
Sequel to Sorcery and Cecilia and The Grand Tour, both Victorian-fantasy-themed improvised novels (this novel is one too). The biggest change between this book and the previous two was that this time, Kate and Cecy's husbands also contribute to the story. Kate's husband's POV was a more valuable addition to the novel, I thought -- Cecilia's (Wrede's) sounded too much like her. In fact I liked Stevemer's sections more in general, I thought they had more character. Then again Wrede does most of the heavy lifting, plot-wise, and it's probably much easier to write entertainingly in-character when you are less concerned with advancing the action. ( Read more... )

Still to come: Foreigner by C.J.Cherryh (seriously xenophobic -- I liked Cherryh better when she was describing sentient alien lizards), The Secret Books of Paradys Vols I and II by Tanith Lee (Vol I has highlights but is overall too dream-sequency, Vol II is amazing), The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh (...I can't sum this up in parenthesis, you'll have to wait for the post.)

Another thing this post isn't: the major news I promised in the last post. That's also still coming. (I need, like, a checklist something.)