I said I wasn’t going to do this but… well you’ll see why I did.
I’m on page 512 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which has taken me a little over 12 hours in total. I’m averaging 41 pages/hour but it’s a big hardback so the pages are bigger. I estimate I have about 2 1/4 hours of reading left. Despite what you may (or I would’ve) guessed I actually have been up since about 10:30 and I’m where I was in the book when I went to bed. I got up, messed around on the computer for a while, went out to the shop, came back, made lunch/breakfast and then decided, despite what I’d originally intended, to write my blog.
In other words I’m putting off reading the final 95 pages. The question is: why?
I have a number of plausible reasons. I was getting tired at 3:30am so I went bed. But that’s not it because I was up the night before until 5.
I was starting to feel tired and I didn’t want to read the ending only being half-awake. True but that wouldn’t normally bother me.
I wanted to have a slightly earlier night so my body clock was slightly more back in line with having to get up for work on Monday. True but if that was the only reason I’d take the hit of being tired for a day.
This morning I woke up early because it as hot and I needed to be awake for a while before reading. So turn the AC on and go back to sleep!
I needed to go to the shop. Everything I bought today was non-essential.
I should blog about the book so far. Since I’m not doing it in smaller sections it’s actually better to do a single review rather than a 5/6ths review.
So why am I not reading?
I think there are two (real) reasons. One is that I’ve really enjoyed this book and I don’t want it to be over. I can always re-read it but I’ll never read it for the first time again. But that’s a fairly small reason.
The second and biggest reason is due to spoilers. JKR has said that there are a couple of significant deaths in this book. Actually she said this and people took it to mean there were only 2 deaths, a couple of weeks ago when the movie came out she said in an interview that it was 2 really significant deaths but that it was “a bloodbath”.
When I thought the photos version was a fake I read a story on Slashdot about the book being leaked. One of the comments claimed to list the deaths in the book. There were a couple of major ones and quite a lot of minor ones. That fits the “bloodbath” description. The major characters who die are ones that, quite frankly, I don’t want to die. More so since I’ve read this book.
I’m not sure if this was based on the same version of the book that I have i.e. was it a fanfic version, and at the time I thought there were no real copies online. Now I know that’s not true.
I’ve gotten up to this point in the book and there have been some nasty shocks but no really major deaths. 3 relatively minor characters have died. They were to varying degrees sad but I don’t believe they are the significant ones JKR spoke of. And there appears to have started what may be the final big battle…
In other words I’m scared. I’m scared Slashdot guy got it right. More than that… see there are ways to kill off major characters which are upsetting but which work in the context of the story so that overall you accept it. And then there are ways to kill characters that just leave you feeling upset, cheated and angry. I hoping JKR can pull off the former but I’m scared of the later.
Of course I am exaggerating a little. All of the above is true but set against the desire to put off starting to read, is a huge urge to find out how it all ends. Which I will in a couple of hours or so.
Wish me luck. I’m going in…