Author: latepaul

So, that ending. The final episode of Heroes. I finished watching it early hours of Monday morning and last couple of nights I’ve been too tired to report back.

(Oh and NEW BLOG! but that’s probably another post)

Well, there are two questions to answer about the final episode, does it avoid my so-called “Lost trap”? and is it any good?

However, before I get to those, since the main place I advertise my blog is SoF, and since many there are still watching Heroes (it just started on the BBC), I’ll do the decent thing. Only click on the ‘more’ link if you either already know, or don’t mind finding out what happened.

So I’ve been watching Heroes. Having no life and an internet connection, I’ve watched nearly all of Heroes.

I just wanted to pause here (3 episodes to go) to post a couple of thoughts. Heroes is good, very good. It reminds me of first season Lost – lots of characters, plot-heavy, high production values. However much as I love Lost it is a shaggy dog story. Almost every time you get new information you get more questions than answers. Heroes appears to be going somewhere. I’ll know in a couple of hours or so, but I hope that Heroes resists the temptation to spin out the story.

So I finished it. At around 7pm last night. No I didn’t put it off that long, I started reading almost straight away after the last entry but M. rang me when I was nearly done. So we discussed where she was up to and favourite bits, possible theories about the end, though since I was nearly there that part of the ‘discussion’ consisted of M. asking me questions I wasn’t allowed to answer. After we’d talked I finished the book.

First thing to say is that the ‘slashdot guy’ was lying.

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 said a few days ago that I’d read a lot less because of a ‘distraction’ and that I’d tell you what it was later. So later is now.

You may be surprised to learn that I was never a particularly big Harry Potter fan. I gave up a couple of times on the early books. I started reading them again earlier this year because M. is a huge fan and it gave us something to discuss. So back in May I decided to pre-order Deathly Hallows from Amazon because I could save money that way. I imagined at the time that I’d be quite happy to read it a few days or weeks after it came out – not being such a huge fan.

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:

Page: 559
Which is: Hagrid has sent word Aragog has died
Lag: -28
Time Spent: 62.65 hours
Pages Remaining: 209 (95% Complete)
Favourite Character: Ron
Cool Moment: Harry day-dreaming about Ginny
Random Quote: “I love you Hermione,” said Ron, sinking back in his chair, rubbing his eyes wearily. Hermione turned faintly pink, but merely said, “Don’t let Lavender hear you say that.”

Page: 486
Which is: Lavender asking Harry about Ron (‘he’s always asleep when I go and see him’)
Lead: 74
Time Spent: 61.6 hours
Pages Remaining: 282 (93% complete)
Favourite Character: Hermione
Cool Moment: When Ron is poisoned.
Touching Quote: Er-my-nee
Emblematic Quote: You’re Dumbledore’s man through and through aren’t you, Potter?

Page: 346
Which is: breakfast before the first Quidditch match
Lead: 109
Time Spent: 59.55 hours
Pages Remaining: 422 (90% complete)
Estimated Completion: Fri 20th July
Favourite Character: Ron
Cool Moment: anything with Ron and Hermione’s mutual jealousy-fest
Funny Quote: ‘You’ve never been more interesting and, frankly, you’ve never been more fanciable.’ Ron gagged on a large piece of kipper.
Fascinating Quote: the Prince had proved a much more effective teacher than Snape so far.

Page: 213
Which is: in Snape’s first Dark Arts lesson
Lead: 151
Time Spent: 57.6 hours
Pages Remaining: 555 (86% complete)
Estimated Completion: Fri 20th July
Favourite Character: Ginny
Cool Moment: Draco stamping on Harry’s nose

So I chose a ‘cool moment’ that is Harry’s enemy triumphing over him. Why?