Book #30: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

I had never realized how crazy LONG this book is. It's almost 900 pages! And that seems excessive, because even the sixth book is like 650. I haven't started the seventh yet, so I can't compare, but even while I was reading this book I felt like it was a little too long. It took me a few days to get through (what with General Conference going on this weekend) and there was so much teenage angst and terrible things happening to Harry that some of it felt like a drag. I absolutely HATED Harry in this book when I first read it. Why was he being so mean to Ron and Hermione all the time? Why was he whining so much and acting like such a baby? He'd never done stuff like this before; I hated how much yelling and whining he was doing. But now, I actually kind of like the angst--because it makes him seem so much more of a realistic teenager. (When I first read the book, as a teenager myself, I didn't realize or notice how much angst I had myself as a teenager so it didn't seem realistic then.) I read in some review that Harry had an "abnormal maturity" in the first few books, and that is TOTALLY true. But in this book he at least acts like a pretty normal teenage boy, being super awkward around girls and feeling like everything is against him. And it kind of is, in this book! That's the other thing that makes this book hard to read--there is seriously NOTHING that goes right for Harry in this book. Umbridge makes Hogwarts terrible, Hagrid brings his giant brother home, Harry gets banned from playing Quidditch ever again, no one in the magical world believes his story that Voldemort is back and everyone thinks he's crazy, he and Cho go on a few dates but end up fighting and breaking up, he has to have Occlumency lessons with Snape, he keeps having Voldemort's thoughts and feelings, Sirius dies at the end. Seriously--how could anyone have a worse year? It's almost too depressing, with not enough happy stuff to balance out the heavy, depressing stuff that Harry is going through.

My favorite parts of this book, hands down, are the D.A. meetings--which I wish we learned more about, because it seems so awesome--and Fred and George's havoc and chaos they create for Umbridge. I LOVE Fred and George and it makes me grin to have Umbridge get what she has coming for her.

My least favorite parts of this book are Umbridge (of course), Grawp, and Sirius dying. Umbridge is just such a hate-able character--she is so terrible and evil and power-hungry it drives me insane. How does she go free, basically, after she escapes Hogwarts? (And are there really people like that? How could someone be that terrible and still be in normal society?) The whole storyline with Hagrid and his giant brother, Grawp, is actually kind of ridiculous to me. I don't really see the point of it all--why did J.K. Rowling include that side plot? It doesn't add anything to the story and Grawp plays the tiniest of roles in the end, which could easily have been taken out, and in a book this size, it probably should have been. (I guess she just wanted Hagrid to play a larger role in the story somehow?) And of course, Sirius dying stinks--Harry just keeps losing any adults he cares about in his life. However, I was thinking about it, and Sirius is really a pretty complicated character. We like him because Harry clearly likes him, and he likes him mostly because of his connection to his parents and Sirius's love for him. But really, Sirius is not exactly the most clear-cut good guy. He tries to get Snape killed while they are at Hogwarts (and how was he never punished for this? Did Dumbledore never know about it?), and the look at Snape's memory in the Pensieve shows him being kind of a jerk. You can see why Snape hated them. Sure, you can't judge someone for how they were when they were 15, but in a lot of ways Sirius never moved past that age and stage, in the way he treated Snape. So, I guess I kind of have mixed feelings about Sirius, really, but you feel terrible when he dies because of how it affects Harry (who obviously doesn't have mixed feelings about him).

Overall, I think this book is not my favorite of the Harry Potter series. It's really a little too long (some stuff should have been taken out, for sure) and it's too depressing with too much negative stuff happening for Harry all over the place the entire book. But of course, still always worth a read.