h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

i read 'harry potter & the order of the phoenix' over the weekend. twice. and a third time at breakfast this morning. (it's bloody 766 pages long, and is thicker than even my webster's college edition dictionary and lotr omnibus, and it's possible to kill someone with it) it's answered a lot of questions i've had from previous books; unfortunately now i have a lot more, which i have the sinking feeling are not going to be answered until the very last book. such as:

what *is* that arch at the department of mysteries? is it a portal connecting the world of the living and the afterlife? if so, why on earth is it located in a *forum* (hey, it *is* a hall with row upon row of benches)? does this mean that there are people with the ability to summon the dead? what did luna mean when she said the dead were just on the other side, and when she hinted that they would get to see their dearly departed again one day? does this imply that sirius might be making another active appearance in the last two books? (oops, i've let the cat out of the bag, haven't i)

along with a lot of other trivial ones like, whether the prophecy has anything to do with the fact that *neville* seems to be rising in power (we all know the marked one is the one who'll conquer the dark lord, and who'll have powers 'the dark lord knows not'; but what about the unmarked one?). and whatever became of professor umbridge, not that i particularly care.

of course, this will mean absolutely nothing to you if you haven't read any of the books. my advice to you (whoever you are reading this), then, is this - go get the book and read it! my friends and i are into hardcore sf and fantasy, but it didn't stop us from enjoying the harry potter books...

oh, and i forgot... choir audition's this coming wimpy (tuesday), right smack dab in between orchestra practice and wind orchestra practice. oh joy. three hours of sitting behind the piano and smiling serenely and saying, 'thank you very much' when all you want to do is groan and keel over on the floor and die because you've gone through half a hundred applicants who not only do not have an ear for music but obviously also think that the entire music scale is made up of one single note, which incidentally cannot be produced on any other instrument besides the trombone on a bad day.

i finished the book yesterday!! was a bad idea to buy it really, coz i couldn't do any revision until i'd got thru it!

i know! i didn't get home til about half past 5 on saturday, and didn't start reading til about 6 something. and of course we all know that once you start you can't just stop to go to bed because there's no way you're going to be able to sleep... and i was reading the book as *slowly* as i could so that i wouldn't miss any important bits... i went to bed at 4 in the morning!!! (didn't help that i read the last five chapters twice - i was in *shock* over a certain person's death. although, of course, i'd expected it)

umbridge is *dreadful*, isn't she?

tell me about it-i kept yelling at her! my family were getting really annoyed-'don't you dare tell us whats going to happen or we'll kill you' was the general gist!!

it's too bad the book didn't come out before your exams! you could have used it as a weapon - 'don't disturb me or i'll tell you what happens to harry!'

well, it came out 3 days before my last exam, and i couldn't do any revision until i'd finished it! didn't think about using it as a weapon tho, will have to remember that for next time...

Our version is longer, I think 890-something pages. I'm not sure, 'cause my sister has it, and she's in vermont. (I, obviously, am not in vermont right now) I finished it within 12 hours of getting it, and then had to pass it on to her so she could read it at camp. (we had 24 hours from the time we got the book to the time we had to drop her off, and I read faster, so I got it first, being that it's more likely that I'd finish in time than she would. Although she's not a _slow_ reader by any means.)

890 pages! i haven't seen the inside of the us version of hp5 yet, but i know it's jolly fat, and a great deal bigger than the uk one...

my current reading speed is about 2-3s/pg (it's slowed down considerably... blame it on age...); i couldn't very well read harry potter at that speed though - it would be nothing short of sacrilege!(plus one always has to re-read the good bits...)

there's a discussion forum at F38423, maybe you'd like to come have a look? we're discussing death and thestrals at the moment.

I found that when I was reading it carefully I could do 100 pages in under 45 minutes. So that works out to about six hours for the book. I would have finished it earlier, but I took 3 hours for babysitting. But I was still finished within 12 hours of getting the book. (oh yeah, I did other stuff in that time too, like dinner, which is why 12-3=6)

890 pages?! thats huge!! seems odd tho, why do you need more pages than us?

don't really know. Just a different edition probly
But thank god somebody's finally online to talk to. I've been here for almost 2 hours, doing housekeeping type stuff and generally wasting time, but no one's been on!
Did you have Glastonbury this weekend? HOw did that go?