Harry

Hey folks,

I don't know if any of you are checking this regularly still, or if my summer hiatus has been enough to have give up on it. I'm going to try to write again. It's late and I've been up too late a lot lately, so I'm gonna keep this short...

I just finished the seventh Harry Potter. It was fantastic. I really, really enjoyed it. I read the first maybe 50 pages a couple days ago. Then the next 150 last night. I woke this morning and read the final 400 nearly straight through. What to say? Even though I couldn't put it down, I feel a twinge of regret in that wish I had read it more slowly to enjoy it over a longer period of time. I have so much more to say that I can't continue, because I can't say it all in less than 2 hours, which I don't want to spend at midnight. But I don't really want to forget this feeling.

You should know that I am a hopeless romantic and that carries over to platonic situations of honor and valor, love and beauty (or perhaps it would be more true to say that it happens the other way around). I love emotive media and literature, and this was fantastic in the way it could evoke feelings, both high and low, from cover to cover.

I don't know what else to say. I know it is a fantasy book - more than just being about magic - I know that it perpetuates a whole bunch of myths that only make us dissatisfied with the way real life doesn't work out and gives us cause to seek escape rather than battling through things. But I also want to acknowledge that it does give us higher aspirations than settling when there are things worth striving for and it can make us appreciate the value in beauty when we've been resigned to a life of ugliness. I think both positions need to be held lightly in our hands.

I hope in the future to touch on the way that existential questions are addressed (as you may recall or have gathered, these types of questions have had a special place in my mind for the past year). I would also like to note the way that dealing with those issues gives the potential for the Harry Potter series to be a very important cultural text for a generation that has very little in the way of such texts specifically and tradition generally. But for now I must sign off. Peace to you.