A little over a week ago I realized that the last Harry Potter book was going to be released soon. It’s been a while since I read the sixth book, let alone the previous five, so I decided I would use my free time (of which I’ve got quite a bit at the moment because I’m on holiday but André istn’t) to re-read all the Harry Potter books. I started on Saturday last week but didn’t quite make it in time for the last book which was delivered on Saturday morning (8:45 am!), but finished the sixth book Saturday evening and read the final book yesterday.

I quite enjoyed reading the books back to back because whenever previous occurences were referenced they were still fresh in my memory. Every book starts during the summer holidays of one year and ends with the beginning of the next, so they cover a time-span of seven years and reading them one after the other was a different experience from reading them separately over the course of six years (I started reading them in 2000, not when the first one came out).

I won’t post any spoilers here because I know that some people prefer not to read any, but I think that the last book is a good conclusion of the series, tying up a lot of loose ends. I don’t quite agree with some reviews that there are Tolkien-esque monsters in it or that the author has created a fantasy world as complex as Tolkies (have you ever only seen the movies, but not read the books?), but it’s still a lot of fun to enter Rowlings’s world of wizards and muggles.