but we've only just got started

some days you feel like going out after work, maybe having a drink, dinner, taking in a movie, going to the gallery, even dancing perhaps, and some days you just feel like coming home and putting on that soft tee shirt and ratty shorts and plopping down in front of a good book.

i'm deep in the heart of harry potter for the third time, just finished year 5, the biggest book of the lot. that book's a monster, with a wide-ranging plot, rich in the scenery and props of the world rowling invented, bridging from the early years and setting the stage for the final chapters in books 6 and 7. the characters develop complexity, depth, good and bad, yin and yang. the whole book is tinged with a melancholy cast, and the ending is less definitive, less uplifting, less victorious than the previous stories. 870 pages, and all you want is to keep reading. when the books were first published, finishing that book and having to wait a year (or whatever it was) for book 6 to come out was just brutal.

so i've read the first 5, only two more to go, and i am already missing it before it's even gone. having read them before, i know how it all ends, sure, but most importantly, i know IT ends - the story itself ends. ms rowling wrote 7 books. that's it. full stop. end of transmission. it's almost hard to even start them knowing that they will be over.