Book: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Page: 273
Which is: Someone’s stolen Tom Riddle’s diary from Harry
Lead: 73
Time Spent: 17.5 hours
Pages remaining: 3083 (24% complete)
Estimated Completion: Thu 19th Jul
Favourite Character: Moaning Myrtle
Cool Moment: Harry discovering he’s a Parselmouth
Random Quote: This wasn’t the first time Snape had given Harry the impression of being able to read minds.
Definitely the hardest part of this whole thing is finding what to write in my blog every day.
Maybe I need to pick an incident to focus on.
For today though I think I’ll explain why I’ve put Moaning Myrtle down as my favourite character. On SoF there was some discussion of the likeability (or not) of Snape. Some said that this has less to do with the character on the page and a lot to do with the casting of Alan Rickman in the movies. In the same way I think the memory of Shirley Henderson in the movies helps me like Myrtle. I do think the character is funny and I do feel somewhat for her. Whilst she’s clearly irritating to Harry, Ron and Hermione, she’s also got reason to feel aggrieved.
Back to my vague generalisations – I am enjoying this. For the same reasons as previously mentioned – the brisk pace and the way mystery unfolds. When she doesn’t take too many diversions Rowling is good at plotting. I also think that there’s more of a sense of brooding menace about this book. People are being attacked and ‘frozen’, whispers of blood and killing. The books do get darker and more adult as Harry grows up and you can see the progress from book 1 already.
On the challenge itself, I am of course happy that I’m building up a lead. On the one hand I don’t want to get so far ahead that I finish too early, on the other, it would be nice to finish Phoenix before the film. But if I do that it means I’ll have a week to idle through Half-Blood Prince. It’s a dilemma.