Harry Potter Hullaballoo - The Burrow

The Burrow

In which Harry is rescued from the Dursleys' house and taken to the Burrow.

A hierarchy of Harry's homes would look like this: Hogwarts, the Burrow, 4 Privet Drive. Even though, Harry would most definitely put 4 Privet Drive at the bottom of the list, it is important that he still considers it home. Every spring, he goes back to Privet Drive at first, not the Burrow or eventually 12 Grimmauld Place.

When we start the chapter, Harry is permanently locked in his room. Bars on his window, deadbolt locks in his door, the whole nine yards. Petunia even feeds him soup three times a day through a cat flap Uncle Vernon installed. It may seem like the Dursleys are doing this because they're angry at him for ruining their dinner party, and I have no doubt that they're furious, but even more than that, they're freaking terrified of Harry.

If I had a list of my favorite moments in the entire series, this would be one of them: the moment when Fred, George, and Ron all break Harry out of his room and take him via flying car to their home. It's the most exciting, huzzah moment.

There's something that Harry says: "'Watch out for the bottom stair—it creaks'" (26) that I found funny. Fred and George just broke bars off of your window, Harry. If the Dursleys slept through that, they probably won't notice the creaky stair. But it's neither the creaky stair nor the bar-breaking that wake Uncle Petunia and Aunt Vernon—hang on . . . scratch that; reverse it. It's Hedwig.

But they escape fine. And they ride off into the midnight sky, home free.

The description and Harry's first reaction of the Burrow is one of my favorite things. He notices everything, from the Burrow's whimsical architecture, to the greenish pond and weedy garden. The knitting needles that knit by themselves, and the Weasleys' clock. That clock is so cool. I think that Burrow is a brilliant contrast to the the spick- and span-ness of 4 Privet Drive.

Home free, not quite, actually. Mrs. Weasley catches them and is throughly peeved at Fred, Ron, and George. She makes many an exception for Harry, and continues to do so right up until the last book.

Harry catches a glimpse of Ginny, the youngest of all the Weasleys, whom we've only briefly seen on Platform 9¾ last year. She was starstruck then and she's very very shy now, which Ron tells us is unusual for her. A lot of people really hate Ginny, because she's fangirly at first. But think about yourself in sixth grade, then imagine yourself in pajamas, meeting your big fat seventh-grade crush who happens to be famous and also your older brother's best friend and also is staying at your house until school starts, which you will be attending together. How would you react?

Okay, how do you think Mr. Weasley developed his passion for muggles? I mean, he's one of two people who share this passion. I always imagined that he got busted for doing something at Hogwarts, and instead of getting a detention, he was forced to do community service with muggles. Dress up like the easter bunny, perhaps? (Holiday spirit.)

Über favorite moment:

"It's a bit small," said Ron quickly. "Not like that room you had with the Muggles. And I'm right underneath the ghoul in the attic; he's always banging on pipes and groaning. . . ."

But Harry, grinning widely, said, "This is the best house I've ever been in" (41).

On that note, I leave you. Goodbye.

Harry Potter Hullaballoo - Dobby's Warning

Dobby's Warning

In which Dobby ruins a dinner party and tells Harry not to go back to Hogwarts.

The thing that makes Dobby so admirable is that he has to do the right thing. It's embedded in his character to do what he thinks is right thing no matter what the cost, whether the right thing is to warn Harry of going back to Hogwarts, to hit himself with a lamp, or to not talk ill of his masters. It's pretty tragic to have a heart so golden that it leads to the detriment of others. He honestly means well when he hides letters and drops puddings on women's heads. Those things just tend to upset the people he's trying to help. He's also very smart. He knows exactly what he's doing all the time. He doesn't follow orders from the Malfoys for the sake of following them, and he—forgot what I was going to say—is just really cool.

The Malfoys' plan is hinted at even in this chapter, for why else would Dobby be warning Harry about going back to Hogwarts? Of course, at this point, we don't know that Dobby belongs to the Malfoys or that the Malfoys have a secret plan. I guess despite Voldemort thinking otherwise, Lucius does attempt to bring back Voldmemort. I don't know how he knows what that diary would do, though.

Harry has another dream at the end of this chapter, where he's in a snake cage (or just a regular cage, I'm assuming it's the same cage of the snake he let loose at the zoo last year). A lot of Harry's dreams have to do with snakes and Harry's scar.

I never understood why Harry was reprimanded for Dobby's magic. He receives a letter and everything, but Dobby doesn't have the trace on him, so the wizards shouldn't have even been able to tell there was any magic going on at 4 Privet Drive. My only guess would be that 4 Privet Drive is under very strict surveillance, because Harry's a very important wizard, but I haven't a clue.

Incredibly short chapter. Incredibly short response. Learn how to spell incredibly, Sam.

Harry Potter Hullaballoo - The Worst Birthday

The Worst Birthday

In which Harry finds himself back at the Dursleys for the summer and turns twelve, the Dursleys host a dinner party to which Harry is not invited, and someone watches Harry from the bushes—but only in a minutely creepy way.

I hadn't realized how long it had been since I last read the Chamber of Secrets until I opened the book to find Vernon saying, "do I look stupid?" (1) and my own fourth-grade handwriting writing yes next to it, luckily in pencil.

It's July 31st when our story begins, Harry's birthday. This goes either unnoticed or ignored by the Dursleys who are much too concerned with their fancy dinner party to pay attention to Harry. It seems ridiculous, but I find the wizarding world to be much more believable than the "real" muggle world at this point. Characters in the wizarding world are real, extremely realistic people, and the Dursleys are not. Aunt Petunia is the ugly stepmother when she gives Harry only two slices of bread and cheese for dinner but prepares a feast for her dinner party. Uncle Vernon is just cruel for locking Harry in his room for no good reason. The most realistic person of the bunch is Dudley, and that remains true throughout the whole series. I almost feel bad for him, because his parents are so awful. Something of note: in this chapter, Dudley is the only one to acknowledge Harry's birthday.

No matter how cruel the Dursleys are, there is one thing restraining them and that is their fear of magic. It's not so coincidental that the Dursleys won't say "magic" and wizards won't say "Voldemort." It's especially apparent in this chapter. Vernon won't let Harry even write to his friends. Dudley is petrified of Harry. I think it was Aunt Petunia, who has been exposed to and knows most about magic, who instilled this fear in the other two Dursleys. That and Dudley with a pig's tail couldn't have helped. Aunt Petunia is an extremely interesting character that many people overlook and write off, and I think she has one of the most unique perspectives in the whole book, being a muggle who was exposed to magic and being so against it.

There's something very very sad about Harry not receiving letters from his friends. Hedwig is one of Harry's best friends. Even though he might take her for granted sometimes, she's his only link to the wizarding world during the summer months and the only friend he has at 4 Privet Drive. She's also the only friend who can honestly say she's been by his side from the beginning to the end.

Review // Cinder

Cinder

by Marissa Meyer

When I was a little girl not even in kindergarten yet, I watched Cinderella 10,000 times. I dressed up like her at least three Halloweens in a row, and as a four-year-old my first choice in career when I grew up was Cinderella, even though I would probably die doing all of those chores and definitely die if I saw a mouse, even if that mouse claimed to be my best friend Jaq. And now that we've established that I love me some Cinderella, let's talk about this fractured fairytale where Cinderella is a cyborg in the future.

So yeah, um, a girl named Cinder is a cyborg and a mechanic in a post-WWIV future. She lives in New Beijing, which I'm guessing is somewhere in Asia, probably close to where Beijing is currently (just a random guess though). New Beijing is the capital of the Eastern Commonwealth, a country that's a conglomeration of all of the east-y part of the world. Yes, so, Eastern Commonwealth is hit with a huge plague with a huge medical name, and this plague kills everyone who is infected with it, and there are some doctors who are trying to find a cure, but they aren't having any success. This plague comes from the moon, because there is a population of people on the moon, ruled by the evil Queen Levana, who are immune to the plague and are known as Lunars. There's also this Prince Kai guy who is looking for a wife, so he holds an annual ball, and he also kind of has a wee crush on Cinder after he takes his droid to her shop to get fixed. There's tension between the Lunars and the Earthlings. More concisely: Cinder, plague, Prince Kai (oh la la), Moon people, Evil Queen.

It was a fun read, for sure, and I mostly liked it. In terms of the actual plot of the book it was predictable but still very interesting and fresh. There was just something about reading it that I found a little jarring, a little less-than-absolutely-satisfying. I think it was the development of everything. It was a very full story, and pretty quick-paced, but I felt empty reading parts of it. Like, sort of emotionless at parts where I was supposed feel things. I certainly liked everything about the futuristic Earth, I just felt like certain aspects of the political situation between Earth and the Moon were breezed over too much to really be convinced by them. I think that's sometimes to downfall of science fiction or fantasy writing. There just aren't enough pages for it all to feel complete: something has to be compromised, whether it's the setting or the characters. Some authors do a great job of playing that balancing game, but I just wasn't convinced with Cinder.

I thought some parts were missing, but the things that were there were all good. The twist at the end was really excellent, although I did kind of guess it a third of the way through. Apparently Cinder is a part of a four-part series in which each book is based on a different fairytale. I'll definitely be picking up the other books when they come out.

❃ ❃ ❃ - 3/5

Review // Why We Broke Up

Why We Broke Up

by Daniel Handler

If you know Daniel Handler better as Lemony Snicket you will automatically know that this story is not going to be your run-of-the-mill break up story. And if you know neither Daniel Handler nor Lemony Snicket, then you're in for some quirky twists and turns along the way.

The premise of the book is a very simple something that we've all heard before: a girl returns some mementos to her ex-boyfriend and writes him a letter about why they broke up. The letter includes everything they did when they were together until they broke up. It's a story everyone's heard a million times over, but everyone's break up story is different.

Min and Ed are the two main characters. I really liked that their names, and all of the names in the story really, were very generic, short names, which kind of pounded in the notion that this breakup thing has or will happen to everyone at some point. This same story. I also thought it was clever that the story really could have happened at any point in time. Except for some midnight phone calls, there really wasn't anything that suggested that it had to be about 2012. Because again, this story could have been about anyone at any time. I personally imagined a mid-90s letter-jacket wearing Ed.

Min. She's awesome. In terms of uniqueness, she's very. She's the kind of person that people call arty, different—watches old films, drinks coffee, throws bittersweet sixteen parties. She's normal though. She's not artsy fartsy and she strives for many of the same goals as everyone else in the book. I kind of like the theme that if everyone is trying really hard to be different then they're all acting the same (hipsters). I liked her point of view and that, though she was new to dating and love and though she was writing an angry letter to her ex, she didn't seem desperate or whiny or any of the annoying post-breakup things a person could be.

I didn't like Ed. I know he's the ex-boyfriend, and if we're reading Min's side of things we're supposed to think he's a douchebagidiotassholesonofabitch, but he was very blurry and not very developed. I think there should have been some more colorful language used to express him as expressed above. Instead he was just kind of there to play the role of the not-so-observentcaringkind basketball boyfriend. I didn't really see the connection the two had to begin with . Min said over and over that she loved him, but I didn't see why. I couldn't find why they got together in the first place.

But if everything in this story is generic what makes this story different? It's the almost satirical way the story is laid out that I liked best—there was the generic break up story, the times when I thought oh, Min, don't do that, and the ending that you could do nothing but expect. It was the kind of story where you could see everything coming (I mean, it's called Why We Broke Up, you can't say you didn't see it coming), yet nothing seemed clichéd at all. It was like Min was having the last laugh. Like she's sitting with a beer at a barbecue ten years later with her hotter-than-hot husband and laughing with her awesomer-than-awesome friends and they're all telling the stories of the idiots they used to date in high school that ended up working behind the register at the Chicken Lickin' Diner.

Yes, liked. Yes, will reread at some point in the future. Yes, book did weigh more than my tiny guppy fish muscles could muster.

☕ ☕ ☕ ☕ - 4/5