So I finished. At around 12:10am I finished Half-Blood Prince thereby completing my re-read challenge more or less on time. In total I spent 65.6 hours reading 7 books consisting of 4,031 pages. I read that in just 23 days which means an average of 2hours 51 minutes a day – which when you consider I didn’t read at all for of those days is going some. My pages per hour was pretty consistently around 60, though it started lower and ended at 61.45.
I definitely enjoyed the books. There were times when I didn’t so much enjoy the reading if you know what I mean. I wanted to take a break and watch a movie but had to keep reading to stay on track. If I did it over again I’d start 3 weeks earlier and/or not worry about the movie coming out.
So here’s the order I’d put the books in from my favourite to least favourite:
- Half-blood Prince
- Chamber of Secrets
- Prisoner of Azkaban
- Philosopher’s Stone
- Order of the Phoenix
- Goblet of Fire
I could maybe swap Azkaban and Philosopher’s Stone – there’s not that much between the bottom 4, I still really like Goblet of Fire – but Half-Blood Prince is favourite by a clear margin.
Favourite character? Really difficult actually but a clear one does not emerge. I like Harry but there’s times when he’s too gung-ho or too much of a teenager. Dumbledore’s a bit too perfect at times, except in Order of the Phoenix where he’s a bit of an ass (though at least he admits it). I enjoyed Ron and Hermione’s burgeoning relationship – which you really can see developing slowly from the first book – but individually they both wax and wane in my affections depending on their particular faults. I’m tempted to say Neville but he doesn’t do a whole lot til the 3rd or 4th book.
The books get longer as you go along and I do think they suffer a little for it. Surprisingly its not the weight of back-story which causes this so much as JKR being unable to resist introducing new sub-plots – she’s still doing it in book 7! You could throw out Quidditch altogether for my money.
Overall it was fun and I’m now primed to find out how it all ends. I have book 7 and I’ve read up to chapter 11. I haven’t been keeping count of pages/time spent so I’m not going to do that but I will review it when I complete it.
Until then…