If you haven’t read Harry Potter yet, stop reading this entry, go to amazon.com, and buy book 1. How JK Rowling created the world of Harry Potter I will never understand, but I am grateful she did! The series is a must read, but I had a few thoughts on book 7. Overall, it was a good end to a fantastic series. I am almost hesitant to say anything negative about it, but one section of the book didn’t resonate well with me. Near the end, where Harry realizes his fate and walks to face his death, I was getting prepared to dig out the tissues, and almost did, until Harry wakes up in some strange form of purgatory, at which point my reaction was closer to “huh?”. That scene didn’t fit. It felt contrived and squeezed into the story. A more natural ending to me would have been for Harry to sacrifice himself, and the audience left to hope that the rest of the HP crew can finish Voldemort off without Harry. That would have been a more adult ending, frustrating and tough to swallow, but closer to being “right”. Harry ultimately living to finish off Voldemort and raise a nice neat little family with Ginny seemed to me the rated G ending, the version that would satiate Rowling’s young readers with a happily ever after ending. I have to admit, normally I am the first person to appreciate a Disney ending, but for some reason it just didn’t sit right this time. A tragic ending would have been deeply moving, and somehow more poetic than the ending we got. JKR – I don’t know if the editors got to the story, or if this was the ending you had intended all along, and ultimately I suppose it doesn’t matter. I still enjoyed every rich chapter of every sizable tome, and would and perhaps will read them all again some day.