Deathly Hallows

My son and I had to spend 10 hours in airports and airplanes yesterday, so I bought us two copies of the new Harry Potter book. Most of the afternoon and evening we were within about 5 pages of each other, and he finished the 750 pages about five minutes before I did, an hour out of Albuquerque. Reading speed much be genetic. We were not the only persons on the plane reading the book, which caused me to wonder. On the outgoing trip we'd been told our plane was overweight and that one of us would have to get off. I had no idea that they calculated weight so closely, and I wondered if the excess weight of so many persons with 750 page hard backs rather than 200 page paperbacks would throw off the calculations.


I thought it was a better all around book than earlier ones, which could go off on boring tangents. This one held my rapt attention until the second to last chapter.

I'll wait a few days to give my review, as I realize that not everyone has been able to free up the day of reading required to get through this book. All I can say at the moment is that the book ended without saying anything about the damage done to the survivors of being on either the good or evil side of this epic battle. Only grief was mentioned. So in the end, it was a kids book, rather than a new mythology. It sure was a great way to spend a travel day, though!

I'll be preaching on the book in a few weeks; one of my preaching traditions is to give a kid-friendly and kid-topiced sermon the week after school starts. I think we'll tell the kids they can come in HP costume that morning.