Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

Given my huge backlog of books that I read but haven’t written about yet, it’s seems weird to write about a book I haven’t even gotten a hold of. But, it’s not everyday that Book 7 of Harry Potter is about to be released.

Despite my usual complaints about the Harry Potter series, I’m excited about the book coming out this Friday. In case you forgot, my complaints about the books are:

• Repetitive Filler Subplots - Slytherins are rude. Snape picks on Harry. Harry feels bad for himself. Hermione knows all the answers. And so many more.
• Unchanging characters - Neville is clumsy. Malfoy is mean. Yeah, yeah, we get it.
• Simple themes - Good is good. Evil is bad. Love and friendship are good. Hey, let’s add some depth here.
• Boring, straight-forward prose and tone - I’d love to see some clever humor or some intellectual subtlety here.

With the media frenzy, there are high expectations for this book. Plus, since this book has to actually resolve the story, we can’t have a bunch of filler subplots. Also, the characters will presumably have to change since they are involved in some extraordinary circumstances. And the prose, tone, and simple themes? My guess is that this will stay the same.

I decided to set very low expectations so that I will be happy with the book. With that spirit in mind, here are my predictions for the 7th book:

• Book 7 will be in the “Choose your own adventure” format.
• Voldemort is discovered to be the Dumbledore in disguise.
• Hermione is really Ron (this is explained by the use of Time-Turners)
• Harry wakes up at the end and we learn that it was all a strange dream. Harry resolves to stop eating gas station taquitos before bed.

Hopefully a mob of Potter fans won’t come after me for writing this. :-)