"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by J. K. Rowling

It took me a couple of months to read this book.  Not because it is hard to read, or because it's 870 pages long, but because I knew what was coming at the end and I just kept dragging my feet about getting there.  Also, I was loving how much Sirius Black gets to be in this one!  He gets more page-time in it than in the previous two books combined, and I adore that.  So much Sirius.

(Spoilers in this paragraph if you haven't read this book or seen this movie.)  Of course, Sirius is also why I didn't want to get to the end of this.  Because he dies, and it's such a sudden, gut-punch kind of death that I did not want to reach it.  Interestingly, I didn't cry when he died this time.  I cried a little later, when Harry unwrapped the mirror he could have been using all this time to communicate safely and easily with Sirius, but never got around to opening.  The thought of Sirius checking that mirror over and over for months, always hoping Harry would be there, and always being disappointed really got to me.

I will admit, though, that this was a hard read because it felt horribly relevant right now.  A proliferation of little rules to try to control every aspect of someone's lives?  Rules about who can go where and with whom, demands for compliance with things individuals don't agree with, firing people for not toeing every new line drawn arbitrarily in the sand, and a general attack on personal freedoms... no, that doesn't sound familiar at all, does it?  I'm sick of it in real life, and so reading a fictional version of that was not enjoyable.  I like my reading to be a time to experience new things, not be reminded of what I'm currently going through, and that's never been truer than this past 18 months or so.  

But I did finish it.  I did enjoy it, on a whole.  I'm very much looking forward to the next book, though I have some October reading commitments that mean I might have to put off book 6 until next month.  We'll see.

Mine from my instagram

Particularly Good Bits:

"No, like all young people, you are quite sure that you alone feel and think, you alone recognize danger, you alone are the only one clever enough to realize what the Dark Lord may be planning..." (p. 496).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for a lot of danger and peril, some child abuse and torture, and more bad language than in the previous books, though still nothing strongly offensive to me.