J.K. Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"

(My normally busy life + the super bowl being hosted in my neck of the woods) /  the fact that I work in the service industry     =   Not much time to read

     I'm not exactly AWESOME at math, but I think it all adds up to give you a semi-accurate picture of my life as of late.  We did just experience an "arctic blast" (Texan for cold weather coupled with frozen precipitation that doesn't melt immediately) that did allow me a few days off to catch  up on reading.  You may think, "With all that time, you should have been able to finish a book or TWO?"  Yes, I should have, but this is a 734 page book.  Plus, I got beaucoup amounts of housework done, including, but not limited to: laundry, ironing said laundry, sweeping, cleaning the shower, vacuuming, hanging all of the wall art that we bought for the new place and haven't had time to hang prior to now, washing dishes by hand due to the line to the beloved dishwasher being frozen, AND giving myself a hard-earned pedicure.  Oh, yeah, and I read some...

     Now, on to the good stuff!  Of the four Harry Potter books that I've read, this one is so far, my favorite. 


Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4)

As I've said in previous Harry Potter posts, this series "grows with its readers," and this book really proves that point to me.  Harry is now 14 and entering angsty teenage-hood along with his cohorts, Ron and Hermione.  Also, as I said in the last Potter post, this book and it's most recent predecessor both have grown a little bit "darker" than the one before.  In the last book Harry was pursued by creepy beings called Dementors while Voldemort's power slowly grew.  ***spoiler alert***  In this book, Voldemort grows even stronger, and Harry actually comes "face to face" with Voldemort, and for the first time in a Harry Potter book, someone bites the dust! ***end of spoiler***

     Another thing I liked a lot about this book is that there were quite a few different story lines drifting in and out of the spotlight.  I know all good books have few different threads of story peeking out every now and again, but this one had at least five or six; a couple of those were not just interwoven tales, but were mysteries in themselves.  What I mean to say is that there was a lot of mysteries to be solved throughout the various stories.

     I really didn't have many gripes about this book at all.  It was a bit long, and I did have a harder time "getting into it" that it's predecessors.  Once I was about 200 pages in, I was hooked and had trouble putting it down (except to do all of that grizzly housework).  This book was also a little "scarier" that it's ancestors,
too, but I don't know if I'd call that a gripe, per se.

     I do have something to say about the movie though.  Yes, this IS a BOOK blog, but my movie-loving Hubby insisted that we watch the flick.  I believe the movie in itself is as entertaining as all of the others, and it was just plain fun to watch.  It did leave a LOT to be desired when compared to the book though.  There were so many parts left out, that it felt like it only covered half of the contents of the beloved book.  I know it would take six hours to watch a movie that had all of the book in it, but I was still sad to see so much missing.  This just proves that I was right to read the book first so as not to be disappointed in the book that takes much longer than 157 minutes to read.  On the flip side, if I had seen the movie before reading the book, I may have just been pleasantly surprised to see that there was more between the two covers than the movie had led me to believe.  Hmmmm, it'll always be a mystery...

     Well, looks like there's more snow headed my way, I'll try to avoid the housework and keep my nose in my literature.  ;)