Jes' Keep Rowling Along

Few things in life are as much fun as holding a new Harry Potter book in your hands, and knowing that you've got the time to read it through. Few things are more urgent than reading the thing quickly when you've only bought one copy, and you share your life with a fellow devotee of JK Rowling's creation.

Half-Blood Prince is a pretty fun read (note: I do not intend to give any spoilers in this post, but I might let a plot device or two slip through; proceed at your own risk): Rowling did a great job of developing her characters and situations while throwing in a bunch of cultural references and chuckle-inducing images. Even as I predicted several major plot turns and noticed some apparent inconsistencies (how do house-elves disapparate at Hogwarts?), I was quite happy to leave my Muggle existence for a little while.

It's also nice to see that Scholastic has stopped cutting out Rowling's Britishisms. While I think that "snogging" is just a goofy-looking slang term for "kissing," it's still fun to see. There's something very British about Rowling's sense of humor in the first place (someone's gonna do a doctoral thesis on her wonderful use of wordplay and cultural reference in her character names someday), and it dilutes the overall effect to "translate" her works to American.