Harry Potter

Disclaimer: The following entry contains some spoilers from the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

In 2003, I travelled to Churchgate and bought the Order of the Phoenix, on its release date, early in the morning from Strand Book Stall. Read the book in less than 30 hours - despite my semester 4 exams being less than a week away :) [The exams went quite well, thankfully - the consequences of the inexorably declining interest in engineering did not show up on my mark sheets till semester 7]. I was completely into the series then, visiting news sites and discussion forums on a daily basis.

In 2005, I was in WIMWI, going through term 1 fairly comfortably (that was one of the most efficient periods in my life - after the middle of term 2, it was back to the usual ways of always being lazy and inefficient, and hence, short of time). I went to Crossword and picked up the Half Blood Prince on the day it came out. Was no longer quite that ardent a fan, but still very excited about the new book. Took 80 hours to finish.

On July 21, 2007, I was at Delhi airport airport in the evening. I glanced from afar at a bookstore in one corner. I saw a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. My first thoughts were, "That's strange...do bookstores in airports also keep pirated editions of unreleased HPs now?" Within seconds, I realised that the book had been officially released in the morning :) I bought the book immediately. Read a lot of it during the weekend, but only finished it on Thursday finally, about 105 hours after the purchase.

I think the book is fairly good, and the ending is satisfactory. The part about Harry's fate after the climax is rather cheesy though - I wish Rowling hadn't included that portion. Was really relieved about the partial redemption of Snape though. He's one character whom I liked from very early on, and whom I was really unhappy to see killing Dumbledore in HBP.