Finished HALF-BLOOD PRINCE!!!

I actually finished the 6th Harry Potter book Tuesday night, but I never got around to blogging about it.

DUDE! The series is so great! I wish I had these when I was growing up!

The series starts getting surprisingly dark in GOBLET OF FIRE (in theaters this month!), leaving you to wonder if these are still meant to be children's books. (The Brits don't feel it's necessary to hide the darkness of real life from kids like Americans -- inexplicably -- do.) Then ORDER OF THE PHOENIX almost wallows in the darkness, and then HALF-BLOOD PRINCE...

It's a good book!

The scary thing for me is how the movies are going to turn out.

SORCER'S STONE and CHAMBER OF SECRETS are the shortest -- meaning most-easily-adaptable -- of the series, and they had to leave out tons of stuff.

PRISONER OF AZKABAN turned out to be a great movie, but it's kind of like reading a Crichton novel,.then seeing the movie: No matter how great the movie is, you just don't get the full, overwhelming emotional response.

GOBLET OF FIRE looks like it's going to RULE, but I really wonder how much they're going to have to trim. ORDER OF THE PHOENIX should probably make a better movie than a book -- in my opinion, AND comparing it to the other books of the series -- and then I really wonder how they're going to do HALF-BLOOD PRINCE!

Anyway, blah. I'm all excited. I'm seeing how much GOBLET OF FIRE I can re-read before I see the movie.

OH!!! And I think I've just about got Kelly talked into scheduling some time for all of us to see CHICKEN LITTLE IN 3-D at El Capitan while we're in LA!!! (It doesn't look like it's going to be playing in 3-D here in Austin...)