Eric and the Half-Read Prints Books

It took me roughly three weeks, but I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the other night. Yes, I realize that millions of children, one-third my age or younger, finished it in far less than three DAYS. They, however, had the advantages of a) fanatacism, and b) familiarity with the rest of the story. See, I've never read any of the other Harry Potter books. In fact, I made frequent visits to imdb.com to help put faces with the almost-familiar names I was reading.

Why in the world would I bother jumping in at Book Six? Blame it on my book club. I've been in the group for about a year, with varying degrees of success at both attendance and book completion. I skimmed the last half of the Benjamin Franklin biography, despite a nearly three-month period in which to read the book. I made it through Wicked pretty quickly — it was my second time reading it — but ended up missing the meeting where we discussed it. I was on time with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and with Secrets of the Tomb, and was nearly finished with Middlesex before we discussed it... but not quite. In fact, I decided I wanted to finish that one off — which meant I ran out of time to get much beyond the first few chapters of Everything Is Illuminated. I made up for it by reading The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time very quickly, but again, missed the meeting.

Given this spotty record, I knew there was no chance to squeeze in even Book One before next Tuesday's discusson of Six. Should be lively, given the number of Potterites in the group.

By the way: Never guessed who the Half-Blood Prince was; had the one-who-died narrowed down to two candidates within a few chapters, and down to the final candidate shortly after; and yes, I think the one-who-died is, indeed, dead.