I read a book!

The title of this entry comes, once again, from Jim Gaffigan.

Every now and then I'll read a book, I'll be so proud of myself, I'll try and squeeze it into conversation. People will be like, "Hey Jim, how ya do-" "I read a book! Two hundred and fifty pages!" "That's great, what was it about?" "No idea! Took me two years!"

Pictured here is Julia and Rob in the green room during Music Man last summer. That is pretty much how the whole theatre looked the first few days the book came out.

So I finally finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. One of two books I’ve read this year (I finished the bat book, too). You have to go back to my second entry ever to understand the importance of this.
I didn’t get a hold of a copy until a few months ago. And I actually finished it about a week or two ago. I have a busy schedule but figured out that I could read on the bus Mondays & Tuesdays (the rest of the week I have to have the car). I was waiting for the book-on-tape from the library so I could listen to it in the car. I was a third of the way through when the tapes finally arrived. So there are just a few chapters I heard on tape instead.
If you’ve read the book, you know how intense the last few chapters are. Up until then I had surprised myself on how much I could actually concentrate on reading. I thought my reading troubles were over, that I was through with that phase. Then came the last few chapters. I wanted to know everything, get every detail. But I couldn’t do it. I kept looking up from the book or my mind would wander and I would have to read the same paragraph three times. So I put it away for when I was in a better mind set.

(Some of what I might say in the next few sentences is not for the squeamish – by that I mean men). I didn’t understand why my mind had reverted back again. And then it hit me. You’ll note in a previous entry I mentioned hormones affecting the mind. I was in the middle of my moon time. This was Monday and I wasn’t in my moon time the Tuesday before, the last time I had picked up the book. Could this fluctuation in my hormones be making me more ADD than usual?
Ok, men, you can come back now. Wasn’t so bad.

I also want to discuss the book, so….
SPOILERS AHEAD

DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK YET



YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?



OK…

Let me state that there was a lengthy discussion going on at K-Lyn’s blog way back when. No need to really repeat anything you might have posted over there. However, what I have written isn’t a response to anything written over there.

1. 
   I wasn’t going to try and guess who The Half-Blood Prince was, but halfway through, my mind kept going there. I had a few theories. That it was someone we had never heard of. Someone’s last name was Prince. Or that it might be Snape.
2. 
   I think Snape was under Dumbledore’s orders to kill him. Snape is very important to the bigger picture that has yet to be revealed and that was why he could never be a Dark Arts teacher until now. The post was cursed and Dumbledore knew this and knew he needed Snape later. You’ll note that the unbreakable vow he made to Mrs. Malfoy was that he would watch Draco fulfill his duty. Anyone can watch.
3. 
   Is Dumbledore really dead? Look at who his familiar is. And did he know he was dying soon and set it up so Snape would kill him or look like he killed him?
4. 
   JKR seems to be carefully following the traditional mythologies. Esp. King Arthur. Which makes me question if Dumbledore is really gone. Also, the hero now (supposedly) has to go out on his own quest, without his usual posse to help him. She definitely knows her Joseph Campbell. Side note: isn’t Ginny a common nickname for Guinevere? Except Ron is the Lancelot in this story (I think) and that just comes out icky and wrong.
5. 
   Harry is somehow a horcrux himself. Although I don’t know why Voldemort would do such a thing, seems rather risky, but so does putting it in a snake.

And lastly, #6. This is the biggest thing for me. I don’t know why I am obsessed with it, but I am.

6. Tonks and Lupin! The first thing I have to confess is: until they started talking about getting Tonks and Bill together, I thought that Tonks was around Lupin’s age. Through the pink hair I somehow missed that she was younger than that.
I want to know more about their story.
Is it because Tonks is closer to my age than the school kids? Is it because on a stranger’s blog I found the theory that Remus Lupin is an INFP (same as me)? Or am I just a sucker for the old cliché of a metamorphmagus witch and a wizarding werewolf trying to make it work? I want to know the back story of these two. And will we see any more of their romance in the next book?
I’m so obsessed that I am listening to the book-on-tape concentrating mostly on whenever one of them or both is mentioned. Yes, I have used the fast-forward button a few times when I know they aren’t mentioned. What is wrong with me?
(and please ignore any unintentional references to Willow and Oz).