Through a Glass, Darkly

(Spoilers through book 6.)

I am finally ready to admit that Order of the Phoenix is my least favorite of all the Harry Potter books. Let the stoning begin.

Okay, so, let me explain myself. Remember how much I loved Goblet of Fire? I took it on my honeymoon! I read it as a happy newlywed! Well, we had to wait three years for Order of the Phoenix. Three years! Three years of analyzing Goblet of Fire, of talking it to death, and then, finally, we got our hands on Order of the Phoenix. Mike and I both took the weekend off, and we read it at the O. Henry over tea, on our front porch, on the couch, and, finally finished it Monday night. I had a very sore throat (that would later become mono), so Mike did most of the reading on this one. And maybe that’s part of why I don’t love it as much. But here are three other reasons:

1. Nothing happens in this book. I mean, lots of little things happen, like Umbridge and the DA and Sirius dying and Harry being completely miserable throughout, but . . . the book doesn’t build to anything. Remember how we had three years to discuss Goblet of Fire? Well, I had already pretty much guessed that Trelawney’s first prophecy had to do with Harry, that he was possibly some kind of messiah-figure who would take down Voldemort. And . . . that’s essentially what the prophecy said. The big reveal was a huge letdown. But, seriously, at the end . . . Dumbledore and Voldemort fight, and . . . nothing happens. Voldemort does not take a huge step forward, nor does he have a huge setback. It’s . . . very anticlimactic.

2. Speaking of anticlimactic, the publisher revealed some text to tantalize us before OotP came out, and one passage had Dumbledore saying, “Harry, sit down. I am going to tell you everything.” Mike and I thought this was hilarious, and, as we read it out loud, we kept having Dumbledore randomly enter the room and tell Harry to sit down, because he was going to tell Harry everything, but, of course, the reveal doesn’t come until the very end. AFTER Dumbledore fights Voldemort. So there wasn’t even any suspense for us in that scene, because of the stupid publisher.

3. Umbridge. Enough said, I suppose. Reading this book makes me aware that I will never be a really good writer, because I hate putting my characters in uncomfortable positions. I squirm every time Harry has a class with the Slytherins. I get so sick of Snape’s cruelty. And there aren’t really words for how much I loathe Umbridge.

Are you ready for my thoughts about this book? Oh, they are extensive. I made a lot of notes on this one.

-Molly Weasley is so going to die before the series is over. Mike thinks I’m wrong, but here is my reasoning: Harry has lost his parents, and then his godfather/father/brother figure, and then another father figure. In this book, Molly says Harry is as good as her son, thus sealing her own fate. She’s the only mother figure Harry has known, really. Plus, Arthur has been hurt, Bill has been attacked, no one would really care about Percy, I think Ron and Ginny will survive, and that leaves the twins and Molly and Charlie. Charlie’s kind of a non-entity, and I think Molly’s death would have more emotional resonance than if Fred and George (or even just one of them) died. And we all know at least one Weasley has to kick the bucket. My money’s on Molly. (And, oh, do I want to be wrong.) (This also takes into account that I think Hagrid is going to live, which Mike also disagrees with. Hagrid = alive. Molly = dead.)

-I don’t find angsty teenage Harry as annoying as some people do, given that he’s never had any parents, he grew up with people who hate him, he saw a friend die and Voldemort come back, and no one has given him any information. I love that he takes it out on Ron and Hermione – JKR said in an interview that she got a lot of letters from kids/teens saying, basically, “Why does Harry yell at Ron and Hermione? I yell at my parents, but I’d never yell at my friends like that.” Well, exactly. He’s got nobody else. They are his family. I like that he trusts them that much, and that they know when to let him yell and know when to stand up to him. The only time I get irritated with him is during the Occlumency, because he’s not really even trying. But I get MORE irritated with Snape, who is goading him and giving him no real instructions. Worse than useless.

-This is an ongoing irritation of mine, and could more accurately have been put in my discussion of Goblet of Fire, but why do wizard families seem to care so little about Christmas? Don’t Hermione’s (Muggle) parents miss her? They don’t care that she’s cutting her ski trip short to hang out with friends? Nobody in the whole school’s parents said, “I don’t care about a stupid Yule Ball, you’re coming home and that’s final?” Even without the spiritual aspects, I think of Christmas as a family time. It’s nice that Ron always gets to spend the holiday with Harry, but . . . it’s also fairly unbelievable. hehe.

-After reading the book, I am even more incensed about Grawp. I find Hagrid fairly tiresome under normal circumstances, but when he’s bringing his giant half-brother back and asking Hermione and Harry to take care of him, well, that irritates me beyond measure. The only thing that Grawp does in this story is save Harry and Hermione from the centaurs after Umbridge has caught them in her office. Surely we could give that up in the movie in favor of Christmas on the Closed Ward. Plus, Grawp interferes with Ron’s triumphant Quidditch scene. I get that she’s tired of writing about Quidditch. I am tired of reading it. But to give Ron, who has so little, the shaft so that we can go meet Hagrid’s stupid half-brother . . . well, that just seems like poor form to me. I, for one, would have loved to have seen Ron’s moment of victory.

-Speaking of the movie, this was the first time I have ever pictured a scene from the movie while reading the book. In the very beginning, when the owls were arriving at the Dursleys’, I could “see” Daniel Radcliffe yelling at Petunia and Vernon. I quickly banished those thoughts from my mind. My own imagination is quite good enough, thankyouverymuch. I don’t need the movie to tell me how they think it ought to look. Although, after reading this book, I must admit that, if this movie is done well, I could really enjoy it. I get so tired of the length of this one – if the movie condenses a lot of the more tiresome aspects of the story, I could actually find myself enjoying it.

-Except for that whole “cutting Christmas on the Closed Ward from the movie” thing. That is, by far, my favorite scene in this book. So let me talk about Neville for a second. He is my favorite secondary character (woe unto you, people who like Hagrid. WOE), and I love his journey in this book, watching him resolutely learn how to fight the people who tortured his parents, gaining confidence and ability throughout the book.

-I get fairly irritated with Sirius and his arrested development in this story. But one thing I noticed this time through is that in Goblet of Fire, Sirius says that the way that people treat those under them is important (re: Mr. Crouch and Winky). And yet, in this book, he’s fairly horrible to Kreacher (who is fairly horrible as well, but that is not the point). I found that interesting, and fairly accurate as far as human behavior goes, as much as it disappoints me.

Overall, this book just doesn’t do it for me. There are a lot of really nice touches with the DA and Harry’s first kiss and the setup for Regulus and the locket and Neville and, oh, all kinds of things, but . . . it’s a dark book, and hard to read. It’s full of questions that still seem unresolved at the end. Now, it’s on to Half-Blood Prince, for some answers (and some more very complicated questions).

Thank you for asking! I wooed Mike with a little bit of my banana bread. I have never told you about my banana bread, I think. So let me do that now. Back in September, I was sick of Mike cajoling me about making banana bread, so one Saturday morning I decided to make it. I was looking through a recipe book for something else (probably starting to think about Christmas cookies), and I thought, “Hey, I should add chocolate chips to my banana bread.” Because things with chocolate chips are infinitely greater than things without. But, to our very great sorrow, we found that we had no chocolate chips. We did, however, have peanut butter chips. I thought, “I like bananas with peanut butter.” And, lo, I created the greatest banana bread of all time. This is a fact. Mike will back me up here.

This weekend, he was cajoling me again, so I made my famous (it’s famous in our house, okay) banana bread for him. It is so delicious. If I do say so myself. And I do, because I don’t really care one way or another about banana bread, but if you add peanut butter chips, I am SO THERE. And, I invented it! All by myself! I never do stuff like that. It makes me very proud.

Mike’s big accomplishment is that we finally had outdoor movie night. This is something else he has been trying to get me to do, and on Saturday night, after a productive day of working and relaxing, he set up the screen and projector outside and we watched Pride and Prejudice under the stars. Very good times.

Other things we did this weekend: helped friends move, took good naps, lots of ironing, yardwork (including two new trees), cleaned the kitchen, bought shoes, helped someone stranded by the side of the road . . . all in all, it was a nice weekend.

And you should all just be thankful I didn’t use my original title for this post: “This weekend was bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.” hee hee hee.

I’ve missed a bunch of books in here somewhere. I have read a lot on the Tudors that I didn’t feel like writing about (how many times can I say, “I am glad I didn’t live back then”), and then I was out of the habit of writing about my books, so a few got read and went unrecorded. I finished this one last week. I’m not planning on going back and writing about any of the others I missed, though.

The Next Thing on My List is about June, a woman who offered a woman she’d just met a ride home from their Weight Watchers meeting. On that drive, June got into an accident, and her passenger, Marissa, was killed. Marissa had a list of things she wanted to do before she was 25, and June decides to complete them for her, with the help of her friends and Marissa’s brother.

While I was reading this book, I really enjoyed it . . . until about ¾ of the way through. It took a wrong turn or something. It didn’t live up to its potential. I liked June. I liked the setup. I understood why it had to take that particular turn. But it didn’t work for me. It lost steam. And while I liked the ending, I think that maybe we should have been directed that way a little bit sooner, rather than making such a sharp turn.

I am not panning it completely, though. This would definitely be a good beach read. It’s chick lit of the sort that I can get behind – June is genuinely wanting to do good in the face of the terrible thing that is happened. I enjoyed watching her try to change her corner of the world in order to honor the life that was lost. Despite its problems, it’s a fluffy book with a little more depth than expected, a good reminder that we should make the most of the time that we have.

A few years ago, I read Ordinary Losses: Naming the Graces that Shape Us by Elisa Stanford. The title of the book, the concept, really grabbed me (as well as the fact that the forward was by Lauren Winner). This is a book about the small losses in our lives, the kind we all experience – a friend moving away, a change in routine – and what those mean to us.

Lately I have been thinking about those ordinary kinds of losses myself – the end of a favorite TV show, a friend moving away, what our routine will look like when Mike is done with school . . . even the end of Harry Potter. Those aren’t good things or bad things, really. They’re just life marching on.

It’s the little things that fell me sometimes. I can get my mind around the questions, “What will I do on Tuesday nights now that Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars are gone?” and, “When will I see my friend again?” I can’t even begin to form questions about the big losses. And so I cry over the end of my show, I cry about my friend, but I still don’t know what to do to help myself grieve those big things.

After a farewell dinner for my friend last night, I sent out an email that probably sounded like I’d had too much wine. I hadn’t had anything to drink – if I was drunk on anything, it was the comfort and companionship that these friends have offered me over the past few years. In my email, I tried to say that when I met them, I didn’t have much of an idea of how to be myself. I didn’t feel very likeable, or that I knew how to be a good friend. These women (as well as many of my other friends) have accepted me as I am, have supported me over the past year, and I have finally started to be more comfortable in my own skin. I have had some conversations about that lately, about how confidence and forgiveness have worked their way into my heart and how it’s a visible change. So many friends have helped me take those steps, and it’s such a precious gift.

So, naming that loss, that friend moving away, is to affirm why it’s important – we’ll all still be here, of course, and we’ll be able to go on without her, but it’s only right to acknowledge what her friendship has meant to me. Hence the drunk-on-friendship (and possibly chocolate and cheese) email. I think, I hope, that learning how to say, “I am really going to miss you,” is practice for the bigger kinds of grieving. So I throw a party for the end of a television show, I make plans for Harry Potter, I talk and dream about what our lives will look like after Mike graduates, because I believe that those things teach me how to live in the abundant life that we have been blessed with here on earth, how to grieve things both big and small.

The first time I read The Kite Runner, I was kind of shell-shocked by the whole experience. I thought it was good, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever read it again. And then I picked it for my book club, so I had to. The second time I read it, I was terrified that all the women in my book club were going to hate it. They didn’t. We had a great discussion.

I knew people would ask me about A Thousand Splendid Suns, so I wanted to go ahead and read it so I would have an answer for them. The answer is: I thought it was good, not quite as good as The Kite Runner, but still very good. I plowed through it, and couldn’t put it down last night. I ended up finishing it about 11:30, and I’m a little tired today, but I think it was worth it.

The Kite Runner was about a boy and his relationships with his father and his best friend. A Thousand Splendid Suns, however, is a story of two women: Mariam and Laila. After completely different childhood experiences, both end up married to the same man, Rasheed. We follow their story through the Soviets and the Taliban up to 2003. Like The Kite Runner, the story deals honestly with the realities of life in Afghanistan without sentimentalizing them. These women are forced to marry against their will, wear burqas, and beaten, and we witness it . . . and yet the novel didn’t seem as unrelentingly grim as The Kite Runner. Maybe I was just more prepared for it.

My theory is that The Kite Runner was a more . . . personal story than A Thousand Splendid Suns, simply because Hosseini is a man. There was a little more emotional distance from this story, I think. This story also ends on a more hopeful note than The Kite Runner, and is . . . maybe slightly less believable because of that, though that didn’t take away from my enjoyment at all.

When I finished last night, I was glad that no one was there to see me tearing up. The biggest similarity between the two books is that the characters, though they were powerless in many ways, tried to help the people around them. Amir finds redemption when he returns to Afghanistan to help his friend’s son. And Mariam and Laila find hope in their relationship with each other. In the end, they are able to choose, each in her own way, to pass that hope on to other people, giving them the strength to survive.

(Spoilers through book 6.)

Goblet of Fire was the first Harry Potter I had to wait for. We only waited about six months, but we still had to wait. And after it, we had to wait three years for the next book. So Goblet of Fire is the one I’ve read and thought about the most, no question. Which means I don’t have as much to say about it this time through. (And, some of the things I wonder about, like Harry possibly being a horcrux, I talked about in the last book’s post.)

Goblet of Fire was, obviously, the first release party that we went to. It was the week before our wedding, and we told our friends Randy and Melissa that we were going to go to the party at Barnes and Noble, and my impression is that they thought we were a little crazy. Perhaps this is not true. But I think they thought we were doing our typical “Mike and Kari overdo things” bit, and that we were going to be the only ones at the party. I did, after all, have a party last week for Gilmore Girls. You can see why they might have thought I was the type to get overexcited about things.

We weren’t, in fact, the only ones at the party, and we were 122 in line to get our book. Mike took it to our apartment and promised, on penalty of death, not to crack it open, not even a little bit. And the week progressed, and we got married, and when I saw Theresa at our wedding, I only had a second to talk to her, and what I said was, “Did you finish it?” and she said she had, and I said, “Was it good” and she said it was. It’s true. I thought about Harry Potter on my wedding day.

The next morning on the plane, we started reading, and we read it off and on for the rest of the week. We read in our room. We read in the parlor downstairs. We read the second task while having a picnic at the beach, and I was sure that Ron wasn’t going to survive. I read while Mike drove us to see pottery and lighthouses. And I read the entire second half out loud while we drove the nine hours back to Maine, finishing up just as we pulled into the city where we were staying. I wanted to pick it up and start it over again, to watch it all come together. Since Mike did the driving and I did the reading, I feel like this one is really “mine” more than the others. I feel really invested in Cedric and Mad-Eye and Barty Crouch.

Because of that, I’m not sure I have a ton to say about it. This one was the first one that was about the experience as much as the actual story itself. There are, however, a couple of things that stand out to me.

1. I think the next book is probably Neville’s big coming out party (the old-fashioned kind, not the gay kind), but this is our first introduction to his backstory at all, our first introduction to the idea that there’s more to Neville than we’ve been told. He speaks up in class about the Cruciatus Curse. It KILLS me that the person who comforted him after that was one of the people who tortured his parents, it really does. Neville can’t catch a break. But this is the beginning of Neville’s importance to the story. (I mean, really, Neville’s importance to the story was foreshadowed in the very first book when he was the one who won them the House Cup. But this is more . . . direct.) I know that JKR has said that the prophecy is only important because Harry and Voldemort think it’s important, and that its only importance to Neville is that he wasn’t chosen. But . . . I know I’m not the only one who thinks there has to be a little more to it, right? The prophecy is one of those storylines I don’t feel like I completely have a grasp on, like there is something else that is important about it. At least the author of this essay understands me. Even if the author is wrong, it’s a good snapshot of how much we still feel like we don’t know, and how much we . . . distrust even things that have (possibly) been answered at this point. It’s the kind of thing that future generations will look at and think, “Those people were nuts.” Future generations, please keep in mind that we had a lot of time to wait and nothing to do but come up with new theories. You would have behaved exactly the same way. hehe. So, anyway. This is probably when Neville started becoming my favorite character. We’re only one book away from Christmas on the Closed Ward, people. Are you ready for me to wax melodramatic about it? I do have one question about Neville, based on this quote, set just after Harry opened the egg and it made the awful screaming sound:

“It was someone being tortured!” said Neville, who had gone very white and spilled sausage rolls all over the floor. “You’re going to have to fight the Cruciatus Curse!” -p. 366

Was Neville THERE when his parents were tortured? Or is that just that torture is close to his mind and therefore his first guess?

2. Snape, again. I know, I know. This time, what struck me the most is that, at the very end, Dumbledore sends Snape on his mission, Snape’s eyes glitter, and Dumbledore looks after him pensively. You guys, I just don’t KNOW about Snape. I just don’t. I mean, I can see that maybe the bad thing he did at the end of book 6 was part of Dumbledore’s plan, but at the same time, he killed Dumbledore! KILLED him, you guys. That is a big thing. Maybe Voldemort’s power seduced Snape back to the dark side. Maybe he was on the dark side all along and Dumbledore was wrong. Maybe Dumbledore was right and this was part of his master plan. I don’t know! I see evidence for both sides! And that’s how it should be. What bugs me, though is when people state categorically that Snape is good and that I am stupid for believing otherwise. Lovely having discourse with you, as always. At the end of this book, Dumbledore says that when we have to choose between what is right and what is easy, we should remember Cedric (*sniff*). I wish I knew what that meant for Snape. People online seem so convinced that Snape is good, that it was all part of the plan. And, for the first time since I sat on my front porch and listened as Mike read Snape killing Dumbledore, I can almost believe it. Almost. The truth is that we won’t know for a while. What it boils down to is this: Dumbledore said, in book 2, that our choices, more than our abilities, show who we really are. Has he chosen what was right? (I know the hero has to go on alone and all that, but how can killing Dumbledore be right? AUGH!) Or has he been taken in by evil? One thing I know is that I thought Snape was a great character until this book, when Hermione’s teeth were jinxed and he made fun of her. You guys, that is crossing the line. It’s hard for me to believe someone that unkind to a child is on the side of good. You see what I mean, right? Hermione is, and can be, an insufferable know-it-all, but he’s an adult and she’s a kid.

3. We don’t know the whole story behind Harry’s scar, right? For a long time, I accepted it at face value, I thought it was just that the curse rebounded and left a scar, but in this book, as his scar hurts more and more . . . there’s more to it, right? (I clearly think there is more to everything.) Are there other theories about his scar besides horcrux ones?

4. JKR says that one question she hasn’t been asked (and can’t answer) is why Dumbledore had James Potter’s invisibility cloak when he can make himself invisible using other means. Did James hide something in the invisibility cloak at their house, something that Dumbledore later retrieved (knowing that Dumbledore can see through Invisibility Cloaks)? Does this have to do with the horcruxes? What the heck happened in Godric’s Hollow that night!?! (That doesn’t really have to do with this book, but I thought I’d go ahead and say it.)

I don’t really have more to say than that about this one. As I get closer to the end of what we know, I feel like I have more questions than ever before. Boy, J.K. Rowling can tell a story. That’s for sure. Two months from today, all these questions should, finally, be answered.

Back in the winter, when I was considering which books I might like to reread this year, Possession by A. S. Byatt topped my list. I have read it two or three times, and each time I enjoy and understand it a little bit more. It’s a book that works on a lot of levels, the kind of book that makes me love being a reader and sure I could never write a book.

Possession is the story of two present-day scholars, Roland Mitchell and Maud Bailey. Roland is an expert on Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash, and Maud studies Ash’s contemporary Christabel LaMotte. As Roland and Maud jointly study Ash and LaMotte’s journals and letters, they begin to suspect that the two poets had a secret relationship, and they use literary detection (my favorite part of the story) to piece together the truth.

I know many of my friends haven’t read it, so I came up with the clever idea that perhaps we could all read it together. And so, I offer you the Through a Glass Darkly Summer Book Club. Possession has 28 chapters and a postscript, so the plan is to discuss five chapters a week for six weeks, starting June 18. I will try to do the posts on Mondays for the five chapters we are discussing that week. It will be a challenge for me to discuss the chapters without giving away the ending, but I think it will be fun for me to take the book piece by piece like this.

And now, a note about actually reading Possession. The best piece of advice I was given before reading it the first time was that it’s okay to skip the poetry. A few chapters of the story are told in Ash and LaMotte’s poetry, and I will confess that the first time I read Possession, I did no more than skim it. If you can’t do the long poetry, skip it. You’ll be able to understand what’s happening without it. If you like poetry and can stand to read a few epic poems, I will go ahead and let you know that it’s totally worth it. It adds an extra level to the story that is wonderful, and I was amazed at the depth when I read the book the second time and made it through the poems. Basically, don’t let the poetry stop you from reading this book, but read it if you can.

Additionally, I once saw an online discussion about Possession that included explanations of all the literary references. And there were a lot of references. It was fairly amazing. I am, unfortunately, not capable of recreating that, and that discussion, unfortunately, has been lost to time (I know the Internet Archive could possibly help me out, but I’m not sure I’ll have the time to dig it all up). I’ll do the best I can with the knowledge I have. Deal?

Possession won the Booker Prize in 1990, and should be available at your public library. I look forward to reading it again and hearing what you all think. See you here on June 18 for a discussion of chapters 1-5!

I was recently asked to join a book club that I had watched from afar. A whole lot of people I really like are in it, and they talk about books that I love so much already, and I secretly desperately wanted to be in it. And finally finally, they asked me to join! Hooray! I went on Monday and it was very fun, indeed. The best part is that my favorite English professor is in the group. What is better than being in a book club with your favorite English professor? I will go ahead and answer this question for you: NOTHING. Well, not much, anyway. If you are me.

Bye, Veronica. I’ll miss you (and Wallace and Mac and Keith and Piz and Dick and, yes, even Logan) and your snarky, cynical self.

So, who wants to recommend some shows I really ought to get into? Because my schedule’s pretty open. (What’s the Grey’s spinoff that Piz is in . . . should I watch that?)

(Whole series spoilers. Well, at least through book six. If I knew anything about book seven, I wouldn’t have to make these guesses.)

Reading Prisoner of Azkaban certainly got my brain moving. But more of that in a second. First I should talk about the first time we read Prisoner of Azkaban. It was also in a snowstorm, right on the heels of Chamber of Secrets. I was reading when we got to the Shrieking Shack, and I read that scene with a growing sense of dread. I knew it was too soon, that there was too much book left (though not quite 100 pages, as I said in the comments of the last Harry Potter post). That there was no way it was going to end quite that neatly.

And, in fact, our happy ending does go down the drain. I found it especially hard to read this time. I think each successive book makes the reality of what happened that night more and more grim.

Prisoner of Azkaban raised some serious questions in my mind. Ready?

1. Does Aunt Petunia really not know who Sirius Black is? She makes no indication that she knows who he is when Sirius shows up on TV. But is that really possible? In her correspondence with Dumbledore, the letter he left with Harry on the doorstep, was Sirius never mentioned? Or does Petunia, again, know more than she lets on? I am very interested to see what book seven has to reveal about her.

2. Snape is a big old question mark in this book. Earlier in the series, Voldemort, in some form, said, “There is no good and evil, there is only power and those who pursue it.” Or something like that. If ambition is Snape’s defining characteristic (and I’m not sure it is, but let’s run with this for a minute), he is a Slytherin through and through. And that’s fine. It’s good to be reminded that ambition isn’t bad, though I don’t know that you could argue that Snape’s behavior at the end of the book, practically going insane with bitterness, jealousy, anger, and, I think, ambition (loss of the Order of Merlin) is something to admire. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about in regards to Snape. For the record, I am still firmly in the camp that believes that Snape is evil, that he chose evil over good, that Dumbledore was deceived (more on that in a second). You should know that, so you understand where I’m coming from. What gets me, though, is how awful Snape is to Neville Longbottom. Why is he so mean to him? Does he feel that Neville isn’t worthy of his parents’ sacrifice? Is he just an unpleasant fellow? If Snape has genuinely forsaken the Dark Arts, how can he continue to favor Slytherin? Is it part of the overall plan? Arrested development? The more I think about it, the more I wonder if his repeated bullying (the book uses the word bullying several times) of students outside of Slytherin isn’t fairly significant. What kind of adult treats children like that? Can he possibly be a good guy? Unfortunately, we won’t know for sure until Deathly Hallows is over.

3. Okay, time to move on. In thinking about Dumbledore, one thing came to mind – a lot more gets past him that I used to think. He didn’t know that the Marauders became animagi, he didn’t know that the Potters switched their Secret-Keeper, and he didn’t know that Peter Pettigrew was still alive. I feel like this is all significant because I like to think of him as infallible even if book five goes to great lengths to show that he’s not. But the fact that he’s gotten so many things wrong is significant because I do genuinely think he was wrong about Snape, that he assumed there was good where there . . . maybe wasn’t so much. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think the books have made sure to prove to us that Dumbledore doesn’t know everything, and in the interview she did with MN and TLC, JKR made sure to point out that Dumbledore has been isolated by his intelligence, that he has no confidant. All of that is, to me, worth another look.

And, you know, this book got me thinking so much that I have some new horcrux theories I’d like to share with you. I could wait until we get to book six, but . . . I just don’t want to.

I have long shot down the theory that Harry himself (or maybe his scar) is a horcrux. But, as I have been reading through this time, I have actually started to entertain the possibility. Here are some thoughts on that topic.

If Harry is/was a horcrux, perhaps that’s what Dumbledore’s “gleam of triumph” has to do with in the fourth book. Perhaps Dumbledore was already assuming that Harry was a horcrux. But perhaps taking Harry’s blood was a serious miscalculation on Voldemort’s part, and by taking Harry’s blood into his own body, he caused Harry to no longer be a horcrux. And Dumbledore knows that because, even though he isn’t into the Dark Arts, he’s smarter than Voldemort. This could explain why Dumbledore never mentioned to Harry the possibility that he could be a horcrux (which, let’s face it, seems odd, given what we know). It’s a moot point now.

In that same MN/TLC chat, JKR says that Lily’s death is significant because she is given the chance to survive. Perhaps that’s because what Voldemort had in mind was a horcrux? It’s possible.

Additionally, keeping in mind that I believe Snape is evil, let’s talk about the fact that Snape didn’t kill Harry at the end of Half-Blood Prince. People who believe Snape is good often cite this as evidence of his true allegiance. But if Snape believes Harry is a horcrux, he knows better than to kill Voldemort’s horcrux. Yes, Voldemort himself might decide having pesky Harry as a horcrux is more trouble than it’s worth, which is why he has tried to kill Harry himself. But Snape is not going to try to kill his master’s horcrux.

I’m not completely sold on this idea, but I think it does work. Here’s a good essay on Harry possibly being a horcrux, if you are so inclined.

So, anyway, I started Goblet of Fire (my favorite!) this morning. I will continue to try and work out some of the clues and details.

Meanwhile, I think we can all agree that I think entirely too much about this series.

Spoilers for “Bon Voyage.”

We’re all Gilmore, all the time here, lately, eh? Well, thanks for bringing up such a painful subject, since that was the last episode ever, and I won’t have anything else to to say about the show. Ever. Thanks. No, that’s fine. I’m not crying over here. There was no crying tonight.

Fine. I cried. Four episodes in a row with the crying! It’s just embarrassing now!

So, I mean, I know that when it comes to this show I am a person who keeps on going, keeps on watching, keeps on trying to paint things in a positive light. I stood firm all season, promising you guys and myself that it was all going to be okay. I was sure it was going to be okay. And so maybe it’s just me, with the rose-colored glasses, but that episode was pretty great, right? I was prepared to feel like the Lorelai/Emily relationship was unresolved, but instead I felt like they’re going to keep on talking and arguing and pushing each other’s buttons . . . and sneaking in genuine moments of love. They are going to be fine. Plus, Richard! Bringing the sentiment! I liked that it was tied in to his heart attack, that he was trying and being genuine, especially last week and this week. That was fantastic. I was prepared to feel like Luke and Lorelai were going to be rushed, but instead it felt good, like they are going to be fine. Like they both, individually, worked their stuff out and they are finally on the same page, and they’ll finally get their “middle,” just like Lorelai wanted. I’ve written more in this blog about Luke and Lorelai than any of the other relationships, but . . . I was satisfied. I never really wanted a big emotional wedding episode, or a positive pregnancy test, or a very special birth episode. I just wanted to know that they’d be happy together, and I felt like this episode gave me that closure. Overall, I was satisfied with the way tonight went down, the whole thing. If they’d come back for next season, what more could have been said, really?

I don’t want to talk too much about Luke and his amazing party-throwing ways, though, because this was, more than anything, Rory and Lorelai’s episode. Lauren Graham KILLED me. And Rory, with her, “You’ve given me everything I need.” I don’t know what else to say about it, but it was great - Rory with her job and Lorelai learning to let go. Just as it should be.

And of course, everyone in Stars Hollow, from Lane to Gypsy, Babbette to Morey, Cesar, Lulu, Zach, the unofficial town meeting, Taylor’s sicko speech, Kirk’s sash, and Luke sewing that tent. I could write a paragraph about each of them, how fun it was to see them one last time, how the townies were such a huge part of the show, and how glad I am that tonight’s goodbye included them, too. It hit the right notes - sweet and funny but not too sentimental. It was everything last season’s finale was not, to be honest. Good job, DSR. Good job.

And good job on getting Christiane Amanpour, by the way. Awesome. That was one of my trivia questions (good job, Andrea!).

I don’t want to stop writing about it, just like at the end, when it was panning away, and I said, “I don’t want it to be over.” But I like that it ended without neatly wrapping up every detail. In my head, Luke can go on the rollercoaster trip with Lorelai, and she can go on his boat trip, too. In my head, the whole cast can go on bantering and drinking coffee and having festivals and being (and driving each other) slightly crazy. It ended just as it began, in the diner. Just like I wanted, with Luke and the girls (he opened the diner for them, I love him so much) in the diner. And not a dry eye in the house.

Thanks for seven (mostly) great seasons, Gilmore Girls. We sure will miss you. Thanks for having us in “your little corner of the world” for all this time.

PS: Someone please buy this for my birthday.

I’m not ready to talk about the episode yet (though there is a spoiler at the very end of this post), but to tide you over, here are the listings for the CDs I made as party favors for our series finale party.

I didn’t mean to end up with two discs. It just happened. When I realized I had two hours worth of songs, I decided to divide them up by the two girls. Our first disc is the Rory disc, with songs relating to her and her friends, and the second disc is the Lorelai disc. Because I am a sap, it mostly relates to Luke. Also, do YOU remember any good songs relating to Max, Christopher, or Jason? I certainly don’t.

For every song that was included, there was a Sonic Youth, a Modest Mouse, some Sparks, some Pixies, some Bowie, some Metallica, even U2 . . . that didn’t make the cut. It’s already two discs, people. I had to make some decisions.

My most controversial decision was not to include the theme song. After seven seasons, I must confess that I am tired of the theme song and fast-forward (thank you, TiVo) past it every week. I included another Carole King song instead. You are welcome to make your own CDs including the song, MELISSA. I just couldn’t do it.

Anyway. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip down memory lane as I researched songs to include, remembering scenes and songs that are so much of the reason I love that show.

Disc 1: Rory

1. “How to Dream” by Sam Phillips – Welcome to Stars Hollow. You know the strummy la-las, you love the strummy la-las. Does this one need a reason?

2. “I Try” by Macy Gray – This one plays during the pilot episode when Lorelai and Rory fight about Dean, then Rory puts it on in her room and Lorelai puts it on in the living room. I always love that scene. I thought about cutting this one, but, in the end, I’m glad I left it in.

3. “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star – Rory and Dean have their first dance. Remember what the show used to be like back then?

4. “Oh My Love” by John Lennon – This song plays when Dean shows Rory the car he built for her and tells her that he loves her.

5. “Satellite of Love” by Lou Reed – Some of the songs I had to look up, but this is one I can never forget. This is the song that plays when (ahem) Dean came over to . . . borrow something from Rory. I really like the song, though.

6. “Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer” by Nat King Cole – If you could get this song out of your head after the season 3 premiere, you are a better person than I am.

7. “Girl from Mars” by Ash – I’m trying to give all of Rory’s boyfriends air time. Remember that time Jess stole a book from Rory’s room and then wrote in it and then gave it back to her? Yeah, this is the song that played when they engaged in the cute book talk. It’s not going to make me forget that he wrote in her book, though.

8. “Lily-A-Passion” by Grant Lee Phillips – Grant Lee Phillips is the Troubadour, and I love his music. This is my favorite of his songs, hands down. How can you not love a song that includes the line, “She’s a piratey soul full of vinegar and glitter?” (That is totally my goal in life, by the way.) This song could have gone either Rory or Lorelai, because it plays in the season 4 finale when Rory is walking to the diner and also in Sniffy’s Tavern when Luke and Lorelai have their first date. How it could be on the speakers/radio in Sniffy’s Tavern was never ultimately explained. Did the Troubadour get a record deal? Am I over thinking this? Anyway, I think of Rory walking past the Troubadour when I hear this, so it’s on her disc.

9. “Legal Man” by Belle & Sebastian – Rory has a Belle & Sebastian t-shirt that she mentions when she’s in college (it got thrown in the trash when she didn’t take it out of the dryer right away), so I knew I was going to include them. And then I did a little research and remembered that there was this whole story in one episode where Lane wanted the new B&S CD and Rory and Kirk and Michel coordinate to get it to her without Mrs. Kim finding out. While they are doing that, this song plays. Perfection

10. “Fell In Love With a Girl” by The White Stripes – Speaking of Lane, her band played this song in “Keg! Max!” That’s the episode in which Dean and Jess fought at the party. I wanted to be sure at least one Hep Alien cover made it on the CD. (The next episode is when Lorelai sang “Did You Ever Know That You’re My Hero” to Rory. But I left that song off this CD. Sorry.) Oh, also! The episode in which Lane and Zach got married was a painful one for me personally, as a Luke and Lorelai fan, but the wedding cake had a picture of them looking like the cover of The White Stripes’ last album. So of course The White Stripes had to be included.

11. “Science vs. Romance” by Rilo Kiley – Still speaking of Lane, when she’s considering dating Zach, she worries about how their relationship might affect their music, and plays Rory this Rilo Kiley song to compare the band before and after their breakup. I don’t love Rilo Kiley, but I do like some of their songs, and this one’s cute.

12. “Hollaback Girl” by Gil and Brian – I had to practically move heaven and earth to get a copy of this. Definitely my favorite moment from season 6 – a thing of beauty and a joy to behold, especially in a season that was desperately in need of some laughter. Special thanks to Brian for getting me a copy.

13. “So Says I” by The Shins – When Rory and Paris went on spring break, The Shins played at their nightclub. This is the song they played.

14. “The Laws Have Changed” by The New Pornographers – This band gets mentioned a lot. A lot. And this song also plays in the nightclub when Rory and Paris are on spring break.

15. “Starcrossed” by Ash – Well, here’s the deal. I was reading a site that had a lot of the music listed, and for this song, it said, “Rory and Marty sit on the bed and study.” I actually remember that scene, because I still love Marty, even if the last season made him kind of creepy. So I made a note to listen to this song, to see if I liked it. And I love it. And I love Marty. So I self-indulgently decided to include it.

16. “Don’t Sleep in the Subway” by Petula Clark – I started feeling guilty for not really having any Logan songs, especially after adding a Marty one. I have two theories on why I couldn’t come up with any. First, the sixth season had several episodes without anything but the regular Sam Phillips strummy la-las. Second, I don’t pay as much attention to the Logan scenes as maybe I should. This song is from Logan’s farewell party. British invasion! I tried to find something from the Quentin Tarantino party (these kids sure like theme parties!), but I have never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie, and I didn’t want to use that woo-hoo one.

17. “The Perfect Crime” by The Decemberists – I remember when this song played, because both Mike and I recognized it. This is a season 7 song, when Rory brought Lucy and Olivia over to Logan’s apartment.

18. “To Go Home” by M. Ward – This song plays in the bar when Rory and Paris are talking about their futures in “It’s Just Like Riding a Bike.”

19. “If I Could Write” by Sam Phillips – This may be my favorite Sam Phillips song, and it’s in a great scene – the end of the season 5 premiere (“Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller”), when Rory’s going to the airport and Lindsay is making the roast for Dean. Lindsay breaks my heart. I wanted Sam Phillips to end Rory’s CD, but this isn’t the end. Proceed!

—

Disc 2: Lorelai

1. “Now and Forever” by Carole King – I couldn’t do “Where You Lead” because I am so over that song. But Carole King did need to be included, both for the theme song as for owning the music store and letting Lane practice on the drums. I thought this one had a Gilmore-appropriate sentiment.

2. “There She Goes” by Sixpence None the Richer – I am a fan of this song, and it was in the pilot, very first thing. A great beginning. Not that I saw the pilot until later. But that is not the point.

3. “My Darling” by Wilco – This one plays in “The Deer Hunters” when Lorelai and Rory fall asleep while Rory studies for the test. I can take or leave Wilco, but this song is very sweet.

4. “Walk Like an Egyptian” by The Bangles – When the girls went to the concert, this was the first song that played. This is my nod to 80s music. I left out . . . pretty much everything else that Lorelai references. She can make her own CDs. This is my version of things.

5. “I Can’t Get Started” by Ella Fitzgerald – From Sookie’s wedding. The saddest wedding march of all time. And extremely disappointing, in retrospect . . . don’t you wish it was true that Lorelai couldn’t get started with Christopher? Would have saved us all a lot of time.

6. “Ballerina” by Leona Naess – This wasn’t actually on the show, but they used it in some season 4 promos, and I thought the lyrics were so appropriate for what the show was trying to do then – the girls were both kind of lost without each other, Lorelai was learning how much she depended on Luke . . . “I didn’t think I needed you, but I need you now.” Plus, the song is just pretty.

7. “Tell Her What She Wants to Know” by Sam Phillips – Speaking of Luke, this plays in the season 4 premiere when Luke tells Lorelai that he married Nicole.

8. “Mona Lisa” by Grant Lee Phillips – The Troubadour plays at the Firelight Festival in “Nag Hammadi is Where They Found the Gnostic Gospels,” otherwise known as “the episode in which Jess comes back and Luke gets drunk (and then gives Lorelai the earrings that Liz made, but only after getting a handful of Barbie).” Such a pretty song.

9. “Reflecting Light” by Sam Phillips – Luke and Lorelai dance under the stars. You know it, you love it, you didn’t need me to tell you why I included it.

10. “Shh” by Frou Frou – Oh, how I watched the season 5 promos, desperate to know what was going to happen with Luke and Lorelai. This was when I still watched promos, obviously. This wasn’t a Luke and Lorelai one, actually – it featured Lorelai looking sad in the airport and saying, “You’re 19, you know what you’re doing.” But it’s still a Gilmore song to me.

11. “Wedding Bell Blues” by 5th Dimension – It’s only right for Emily to get a song, too, right? Here’s what played at her vow renewal.

12. “Smile” by Grant Lee Phillips – Here’s another classic Troubadour song, played at the end of an episode near the beginning of season 3 as Lorelai and Rory walked around the town.

13. “Amazing Glow” by The Pernice Brothers – Remember the season 6 finale? I know, I tried to block it out, too. Besides the plotline that shall not be named, there was also the troubadour thing, which was a fun concept, but, honestly, kind of sucked in execution. One of the troubadours was Joe Pernice, and he played this song, which is gorgeous. Don’t hate him just because of the Palladinos. (In that same episode, Sonic Youth played a song called “What a Waste” and I thought about including it and saying, “Commentary on season 6 and the resulting relationship with Christopher?” but I didn’t like the song. And bitterness isn’t my most becoming feature.)

14. “Eye of the Tiger” by Paul Anka – How could I not include a Paul Anka song? This one was actually featured on the show, too, during the Thanksgiving episode in season 6 (after Luke unsuccessfully tried to call April). Yay, Paul Anka!

15. “On the Radio” by Regina Spektor – One more promo song. I love this song, and it played during some season 7 promos featuring Lorelai and Rory being adorable together. So it’s in!

16. “Taking Pictures” by Sam Phillips – This song played right after Lorelai gave Luke the ultimatum and walked away. I don’t have anything else to say about it, but I do love it.

17. “I Will Always Love You” by Lorelai Gilmore – How can such a recent scene be included in one of my all-time favorites? I guess Lauren Graham is just that awesome. I was going to include Dolly, but . . . this one fit a little better. And it is the awesome.

18. “My Little Corner of the World” by Yo Le Tenga – This version of the song was at the end of the first season, when Rory told Dean she loved him and Max had just proposed to Lorelai. So much of the appeal of the show was the town itself, with its meetings and eccentric characters, and I wanted to close the mix by acknowledging that. This song (though performed by someone else) also plays at the end of the pilot episode, and it has long been my hope that the finale will mirror the pilot, with Lorelai and Rory in the diner. [Which, it did. And Luke was there. Love.]

There are about eight jillion wonderful articles about the end of Gilmore Girls tonight, but my favorite so far? Entertainment Weekly’s got Sean Gunn’s favorite Kirk scenes.

Enjoy!

Friday, when the very nice people at Barnes and Noble offered me a free cup of coffee, I took it. And drank it. And it certainly did give me energy for the rest of my adventure at Barnes and Noble. The problem started later, when I couldn’t stop, you know, shaking. Feeling like death. Barely being able to walk. The usual.

Did I mention it was a venti?

I don’t know if I’ve ever had a venti before. Not of straight-up coffee, I mean. I sent Alisa emails saying things like, “I THINK I MIGHT DIE, HELP ME,” and she, very sensibly, asked why I drank the whole thing. Would you believe that that truly never occurred to me? Did I mention it was free? Obviously I had to drink the whole thing.

And so, this weekend, I discovered a new motto for my life. “Not a venti.” I stood there, I heard the nice lady order the free coffee for me, and when she said “venti,” I did nothing to stop it. I did it to myself. But, from now on, no, I do not want the venti. Or the supersize. I might want the extra guacamole for an additional $.99, but that’s not exactly the same thing, is it?

Mike very kindly got some food in me once I got home, and Alisa later gave me a very gentle (grande) chai latte to bolster me up, and I managed to go and help a friend paint her guest room. This turned out to be the best thing I could have done, because if I had stayed home, the caffeine would have worn off and I would have crashed. Instead, I was forced to soldier on.

But, seriously, you guys. Who needs that much coffee? That is an insane amount of coffee.

Speaking of food and sweets and such, in the past week, I had crème brulee ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s (I hadn’t been to Ben and Jerry’s in almost a decade), Mike made crème brulee, and we had crème brulee cheesecake with my mom on Mother’s Day. How great is that? So great!

Now I really want some Ben and Jerry’s.

But I’d get a small.

This book was different than I expected, which meant that it took me a few days to actually get in the habit of picking it up. (I also blame Harry Potter – I am alternating books as I do my final reread, and it’s hard, sometimes, to jump out of something you know very well into something that wasn’t quite what you expected.) After I got going, though, I didn’t want to put it down, and I finished it on Saturday night as Mike was conked out on the couch.

A Swift Pure Cry is the story of Shell, a fifteen-year-old in Ireland who has lost her mother and now shoulders the responsibility of taking care of her younger sister and brother, as her father is struggling with alcoholism and is unable to hold down a job. Shell becomes involved with Declan, a boy at her school, and finds herself pregnant soon after he leaves for America. Meanwhile, she is also dealing with her loss of faith since the loss of her mother and her slight infatuation with the new young priest, Father Rose.

I hadn’t thought the story was going to be quite so heavy when I first read about it, which was why I was put off a bit by reading the jacket flap. What’s so interesting about this book, though, is that it does deal with weighty issues such as death and faith and teenage pregnancy, but handles them with a remarkably light touch. Shell’s story is believable, that of a young girl who is in over her head with nowhere to turn, but instead of being hopeless, it simply presents things in a factual way. I expected the story to be bogged down in misery, but it isn’t that way at all. Hope even manages to break through in the end.

As a person of faith, I appreciated the way that faith was approached in the story – in a fluid way, it ebbed and flowed in the different characters, even Father Rose as he struggles with the question of whether he’s actually doing any good. The book made no promises about where the characters might end up as they work through their questions, but it didn’t close the door on faith and religion either, which I liked. I also appreciated that the issues of teenage pregnancy and faith could be addressed in a book that features Catholic priests without it devolving into a story about abuse within the Catholic church. In fact, Father Rose is probably the character I liked best.

Because of how introspective it is, this book isn’t for everyone, but I am glad I didn’t let the topic put me off of reading it. It is aimed at young adults, but is appropriate for anyone interested in the themes or in 1980s Ireland. Here’s a passage from the very beginning I particularly liked.

Shell remembered standing by Mam’s bed as she floated off. Dr Fallon, Mrs Duggan and Mrs McGrath had been there, with Father Carroll leading a round of the rosary. Her dad had stood off to the side, like a minor character in a film, mouthing the words rather than saying them. Now and at the hour of our . . . On the word ‘death’ Shell had frozen. Death. The word was a bad breath. The closer you got the more you wanted it to go away. Shr’d realized then she didn’t believe in heaven anymore. Mam wasn’t going anywhere. She was going to nowhere, to nothing. Her face had fallen in, puckered and ash-white. Her thin fingers kneaded the sheets, working over them methodically. In Shell’s mind, Jesus got off the cross and walked off to the nearest bar. Mam’s face scrunched up, like a baby’s that’s about to cry. Then she died. Jesus drained off his glass of beer and went clean out of Shell’s life. Mrs McGrath put the mirror Mam had used for plucking her eyebrows up to her mouth and said, ‘She’s gone.’ It was quiet. Dad didn’t move. He just kept on mouthing the prayers, a fish out of water.

One last note – the book is based on some actual events, and I do wish there had been an author’s note or some discussion of what actually happened at the end, but I did find the information on the author’s site.

One of the local colleges has a radio station, and when the students are gone in the summer, they let members of the community run it. Mike has completed the training, and all he has to do is take the test and then sign up for a weekly spot. You know what this means, right? Mike is going to be my very own Piz!

I used to say Chamber of Secrets was my favorite Harry Potter book, because it was the last one that ended happily. I have gotten over that desire for a happy ending, for the most part, but it was interesting reading this one with horcruxes in mind. Very interesting indeed.

We first read this book in a snowstorm. It snowed a lot that year, so I can’t remember if this is the one where I had to go rescue Mike because he’d locked his keys in his car or the one where he got stuck at my aunt and uncle’s house because the roads were worse than he thought. Either way, we read it and ate snow cream . . . and I remember reading part of it in the kitchen as we cooked our dinner. I was definitely on the Harry Potter train at this point.

Two things stuck out at me this time through. The first was that RON LIKES HERMIONE. I didn’t realize it started so early, but every time Hermione needs defending in this book, Ron is the one who steps up (that is partly because Ron has a temper and partly because Harry didn’t yet know what “mudblood” meant, but it’s so consistent that it must also be because RON LIKES HERMIONE). Additionally, Ron is the one who consistently notices Hermione’s affection for Gilderoy Lockhart, and is much more irritated by it than Harry. This is because, sooner than I expected or realized, Ron likes Hermione. Hee. Hee hee.

The other thing is that, knowing that the diary is a horcrux makes for some interesting reading. Harry is really drawn to the diary. Is this because that was how this horcrux worked, getting people to use it, or is it because of Harry and Voldemort’s link? Most tellingly, at the end, Harry knew exactly how to destroy the diary, knew without thinking. How did he know? Is it further evidence that Voldemort deposited some of his powers in Harry? I think it might be. I have been fairly worried about how Harry could possibly be skilled enough to believably destroy the horcruxes, but his lnk to Voldemort makes that much more understandable. I like that. I like it a whole lot. I also think that Voldemort has seriously underestimated the effects of Lily’s sacrifice, STILL. It’s not just a simple charm, as he refers to it in this book. I don’t know what else it will mean, but I still think it’s key to the story.

I remember JKR saying that Chamber of Secrets was originally titled Half-Blood Prince, and I tried to keep that in mind as I read it. I actually think that the HBP story, Snape’s story, is one of the weaker A-plots the series has. I think it worked better to have it pushed back to the sixth book, because Snape was no longer the potions master and the story needed things like the Room of Requirement. I can’t yet decide how much it matters knowing that Snape is a half-blood who is the head of Slytherin. I will keep it in mind as I read the rest of the books.

I was going to quote an anvilicious sentence, but I mentioned it above, and I don’t have the book right in front of me. But the most anvilicious thing to me, at this point, is that Harry knew exactly how to destroy the diary, and he knew it without thinking. Verrrrry interesting.

Spoilers for “Unto the Breach” below.

Honestly, I thought this week’s was not as good as the past two weeks were. I liked Kirk-in-a-box, and Rory and Lorelai had some good scenes, and Sookie was fun. And Babbette and Miss Patty. And the town wanting to attend Rory’s graduation. And, of course, Paris and Rory graduating (it took us a few minutes to figure out that they graduate by dorm/housing). And Emily and Richard’s song! I couldn’t believe how sweet Richard was to Lorelai, calling her “sweetheart” and telling her that it was her day, too. Really nice moment for Lorelai and the grandparents. I cried, okay. Third week in a row. Clearly I have a problem.

Part of my frustration was probably with the Luke and Lorelai storyline. I mean, it’s fine, I know things will be fine next week. But I feel like . . . let me see how to explain this. At the end of season 4, Luke and Lorelai kissed, and then Luke had to run after Kirk and all summer I was kind of worried that the show would come back and do something lame like have both of them downplay it and be all, “If you want to forget about it we can.” Try and make drama out of a simple misunderstanding. And that’s what happened last night, and I hate that. I think the show can be better than that, and not have to resort to sitcom-y tricks like that.

[Here is where I should mention that I did enjoy the "arguing in the street parallel" to last year's unspeakable finale.]

But, such is life. It was still miles better than most of the season. Speaking of which, even Christopher didn’t bug me too much last night. It would be nice to have the show exit with the idea that Christopher really wants to be part of Rory’s life . . . that’s what I wish they had done with him this year (or at some point, you know EVER) is have him and Rory deal honestly with his absence during her childhood. Last night was at least a little bit of closure in that department. I don’t hate him so much when he’s not trying to be with Lorelai, which is why I would have liked to have seen more Christopher/Rory over the course of the show. Oh, well.

But, of course, the big question is whether Logan is a self-centered jerk or just misunderstood and heartbroken. Now, I’m no fan of Logan, though I wouldn’t call myself a Logan-hater. There have been some scenes that I’ve enjoyed. I just like it better when he’s not around. I don’t know if I’m prepared to say Logan is a self-centered jerk, but there were certainly things last night that did not make him look very considerate. Here are my thoughts on The Logan Proposal Debacle.

1. A public proposal? Without making sure that she was okay with public proposals? Without making sure you were on the same page about getting married? I don’t think that makes it seem as if he considered her point of view. Also, I could not even watch the scene. That’s how awkward it was. Poor form.

2. And that whole “making sure they were on the same page” thing, let’s talk about that some more. Apparently a few weeks ago when they said they’d factor each other in, Logan meant, “We will be in the same place,” while Rory wasn’t ready for that level of commitment. I am not blaming anyone for that, but if they clearly weren’t on the same page, that’s not a good sign. The thing that looks bad for Logan, though, is that he didn’t consider that they weren’t in the same place.

3. It’s clear that Paris-and-Doyle were in direct contrast to Rory-and-Logan. How did Doyle handle it differently? He was willing to go wherever Paris went, because he wanted to be with her that much. Now, I’m not saying that Logan should have just waited around for Rory to get a job. By no means! But Doyle, in contrast, was willing to do whatever it took to be with Paris. Logan only wanted to be with Rory on his terms.

4. The whole all-or-nothing thing really seals the deal for me. If Logan really loved Rory, really loved her, he wouldn’t pressure her like that. This is probably the key thing for me. Is this how love would act?

5. And so, do I think it was really love? His actions at the end certainly didn’t make me think so. If he really loved her, wouldn’t he want her to be ready? Wouldn’t he be willing to wait? Wouldn’t he do what he needed to do for them to be together (which, at this point, is probably long-distance)?

6. And, on that note, to be fair, I want to turn that around and ask Rory the same questions . . . I do think that she fares well when we do that. She did seem to want to make him a priority and do what it took for them to be together, even if that meant long distance for now while they both started on their careers and got their feet under them. Not being ready to get married doesn’t make her a bad person, LOGAN.

For me, this isn’t about career vs. relationships. If Rory was ready to get married and wanted to get married to Logan, then, great, I guess. (It’s like when your friend dates/marries someone you don’t care for, I suppose.) If she’s happy at the end of the series, I’m happy. But if she’s not ready and Logan is pressuring her, if he’s not willing to even give waiting for her a chance . . . I don’t think he’s right for her.

Favorite scene? Kirk saying, “The rules are gray on that area.” Hee. Hee hee. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how you have Kirk in an episode without irritating me. So cute.

And, in an act of nostalgia, I convinced Mike that, for this one last time, we should watch the promo. I wanted to see how they were promoting the series finale. And, let me tell you, Evil Promo Guy has totally given up on manipulating my emotions. He knows he has no power over me anymore so he tried to retaliate by giving everything away. I don’t even care, EPG! Bite me! But, dang, I hope next week still has some surprises in store! Hee hee.

Hello Internet People.

I can’t think of anything interesting to say. But I have been working on my iPod a lot lately, finally making a playlist that I think is awesome. Here is what I am listening to lately, with, of course, the reasons why I am certainly loving each song.

“Heavenly Day” by Patty Griffin - Do I need to explain my affection for this? It’s beautiful and happy and sounds like spring. Every time I hear it, I secretly want to run through a field. Did I just say that out loud?

“Long Lost Brother” by Over the Rhine - They played this at the concert that Andrea and I went to, and I have been listening to it ever since. Favorite lyric? “Trouble is, I’m so exhausted / The plot, you see, I think I’ve lost it / I need the grace to find what can’t be found”

“Magic Trick” by M. Ward - Do you see this, internet? This is me caving on the issue of M. Ward. Mike . . . has won.

“Revolution” by The Beatles - I don’t ever need an excuse to put The Beatles on a playlist. I guess spring makes me want to revolt.

“Used To” by Daughtry - I like Chris Daughtry. His album is all kind of same-sounding, but a couple of the songs stand out. This is one.

“The Story” by Brandi Carlile - THIS SONG IS AMAZING. LISTEN TO IT. Mike downloaded it right away, but it took me a few weeks to really pay attention to it. I was wrong. I admit my mistake. This song is awesome.

“Only Up or Down” by Patty Griffin - We have obtained the Barnes and Noble exclusive songs from the new album, and I thought I’d try them out in my playlist. They are, of course, great.

“Hallelujah” by Over the Rhine - I found a version of OtR singing this, and it is as heavenly as you might expect. I have really come to love this song over the past few years, and I am always happy to find another great version of it.

“Up to the Mountain” by Kelly Clarkson - Kelly Clarkson? Singing Patty Griffin? I’m in. Plus, when we purchased it, the money went to charity! I can feel good about listening to it!

“O Valencia!” by The Decemberists - Did I mention, internet, that Mike has won? I give up.

“To Go Home” by M. Ward - Well, this is just embarrassing. I am a defeated woman.

“One Line” by PJ Harvey - Remember when Tristan offered Rory tickets to the PJ Harvey concert? And then Dean showed up at Chilton and she kissed him? Yeah, me too.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something - Because this song is awesomely awesome. I miss 1996.

“On the Radio” by Regina Spektor - Here is a good chance for me to plug Regina Spektor. I have really been enjoying her album. Favorite Lyric: “We were on our knees / Praying that disease / Would leave the ones we love / And never come again” (Sorry my favorite lyric is kind of morbid.)

“Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan - Yep, still loving it.

“Chinese Translation” by M. Ward - I can’t even look you in the eye anymore, internet.

“Way Back Into Love” by Hugh Grant and some chick - The song is catchy. I am already embarrassed about the M. Ward and Decemberists. Please let me be.

“Fidelity” by Regina Spektor - This is the one I like the best of Regina Spektor’s songs. I first heard it, I think, on Veronica Mars.

“Never Again” by Kelly Clarkson - Not as good as “Since U Been Gone,” but still a solid bitter breakup song. I love the bitter breakup songs.

“Over You” by Daughtry - The other Chris Daughtry song I really like.

“Pop! Goes My Heart” by Pop - This song is a perfect fake 80s song. The video is even better. It makes me laugh every single time.

“Land of My Sojourn” by Rich Mullins - I have decided that this may be my favorite Rich Mullins song. I am not a hugely patriotic person, but this song connects with the people and things that I love about where I live. “Nobody tells you / When you get born here / How much you’ll come to love it and how you’ll never belong here”

“Kingdom Come” by Coldplay - I don’t really know why this is on here. It was on my old playlist, and I decided to leave it. I love how it opens.

“Sad, Sad Song” by M. Ward - I do have a reason for including this one. This is the song that M. Ward played at the concert where I looked around and saw people clearly having a deeply spiritual experience. I put it on my playlist in an attempt to understand. I still don’t get it.

“We Both Go Down Together” by The Decemberists - I haven’t been listening to this one much lately, but I thought if I was going to include “O Valencia!” I should include this one, too.

“Livin’ On a Prayer” by Bon Jovi - I can’t tell you that I’m listening to this because of American Idol. I have to come up with a better reason. SHOOT.

“Thirteen” by Big Star - This is another Gilmore-inspired song. In doing some research on songs that were played on the show (more on that later), I saw that Rory and Dean had a moment during this one, listened to it, and really like it. I know, I know, I am very late on this train. But it’s a great song.

“Free” by Patty Griffin - The other Barnes and Noble exclusive song. I can’t decide which one I like better, but I can tell you that I like both of them better than “Stay on the Ride.”

“Rollercoaster” by M. Ward - And so we come to the end. I closed the playlist with this song because this was how the concert ended. It’s pretty hard to top Brian on the piano, though, I must admit.

You would think I would remember the circumstances in which we purchased our first Harry Potter book, but you would be wrong. Here is what we can agree on: It was definitely late in 1999, around Christmas, and it was definitely at Mike’s insistence. I thought we got it at Barnes and Noble, but Mike feels certain we got it at Sam’s. We bought it and started reading it (together, out loud) that day, and then read in the car as we drove to High Point to see some family.

While the exact details are kind of hazy, what I do remember is that I didn’t like it all that much to start with. I thought it was too Roald Dahl-y, with the orphan and the cruel relatives. I even said so. But we kept reading, and later that week I remember reading the last few chapters out loud at Mike’s apartment. He fell asleep and I got tired of trying to keep him awake, so I just finished it myself. Out loud, of course – that way he couldn’t blame me that he fell asleep. It wasn’t until years later that he actually ever read the end of Sorcerer’s Stone. When he saw the first movie, he realized that . . . he didn’t actually know exactly what was going to happen.

But something about the ending really captured my imagination – Harry finding the courage to face Voldemort because of his parents’ death, Harry’s mother dying to save him, the questions that Dumbledore refuses to answer. We bought the next two books that very same week.

And now I’m doing my final reread before the last book, my final reread without knowing how it all ends. I thought I might go book-by-book with my thoughts and predictions. So, here goes.

What I think book 1 teaches us:

1. The first chapter is called “The Boy Who Lived.” I think maybe that’s a “contract with the audience” kind of moment, and that Harry is going to live. I have never believed that Harry is going to die, because I don’t think that’s the kind of story she’s telling. But it’s nice to have a more substantial reason on which to base that prediction.

2. The end of Sorcerer’s Stone probably mirrors what will happen in the last book – Harry won’t be able to do the tasks without the help of the people around him (specifically Ron and Hermione), but, in the end, he’ll have to go it alone. I know this isn’t a mind-blowing prediction, but I do like the idea of the first book being a mirror in that way.

3. Without Neville, they wouldn’t have won the cup. I continue to believe that Neville is going to be a key player in the battle against Voldemort. Neville is, by far, my favorite secondary character, and I love how he has grown into a much more brave, capable wizard over the series. I think it’s possible that Neville might not survive book 7, but he’s not going down without taking Bellatrix with him, that’s all I’m saying.

4. For a long time, I have believed that Hagrid is going to die before the series is over. But rereading this book, I’m not so sure. I know the kiddies love him, but I get so sick of him with his stupid creatures and his boneheadedness. I think that J.K. Rowling loves him, too – why else would she waste so much time on Grawp in the fifth book? [I’ll just go ahead and say this now – I read an article, I think it was in Entertainment Weekly, in which someone involved with the fifth movie was talking about how they had to cut Neville’s “Christmas in the Closed Ward” scene out of the script, based on time. And yet, I look on IMDB and I see that there’s a listing for Grawp?! We have time for GRAWP but not THE BEST SCENE IN THAT BOOK? *deep breath*] Because he was Harry’s first companion as he learned to navigate the wizarding world, and because of her great affection for him (and Harry’s great affection, for that matter), I’m going to make a bold guess and say that I think Hagrid is going to survive the series. Mike thinks I am completely wrong. But life’s not worth living if you don’t take a few risks.

5. And, finally, I know we haven’t gotten to Goblet of Fire, with the gleam in Dumbledore’s eye, but reading about how Harry’s mother’s love protected him, and knowing that Voldemort can’t understand love at all (in this book, he says that there is no good and evil, only power and those who seek it), I have to believe that love’s protection that flows in Harry’s veins (and later, in Voldemort’s), even though it can’t protect Harry from Voldemort anymore, there has to be something about it that Voldemort has missed. He underestimates love again and again. We know that what Harry has that Voldemort doesn’t is the ability to love, and I believe that, ultimately, Lily’s sacrifice still has a part to play in bringing about Voldemort’s defeat.

Sentence that seems most anvil-icious in retrospect:

“Could Snape possibly know they’d found out about the Sorcerer’s Stone? Harry didn’t see how he could – yet he sometimes had the horrible feeling that Snape could read minds.” p. 221

Oh, Harry. You don’t even KNOW. But you will.

Well, The CW and The Girls apparently couldn’t work out a deal, so there won’t be a season 8 of Gilmore Girls. Two more episodes, and that’s it. From the beginning of the season, I wanted this to be the end, but . . . we wasted so much of this last season on Christopher. It would have been nice to have a few more episodes without him.

So . . . who wants to have a series finale party on May 15 at my place, complete with games (oh, yes, I am willing to come up with some trivia) and Gilmoresque food and fast talking? Anyone?

Spoilers for “Lorelai? Lorelai?” below.

Holy Moses, I just wrote a nice long post and Firefox ate it! I’m so sad! And mad! I’m smad! My own fault, I know, but I’m still smad about it. (And why did hitting backspace make me lose the entire post? I don’t think it’s ALL my fault, okay?)

*sigh*

Well, I can’t muster up quite the same amount of excitement the second time around, but I am maybe in a good mood or something, because, honestly, I feel that Mr. Rosenthal, who wrote this one, knocked it out of the park. As did Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson. The “cheesy song leads to revelation” motif has been a theme this season, if you recall, and . . . I think it’s not a classic Palladino thing to do, but I also think that they were better at the conflict than the resolution. Seems like we are finally getting some resolution. DSR is, admittedly, not as quick with the dialogue, but he gives us a little bit more genuine sentiment. I’ve said all season that I’ll take that trade, and I still believe it, especially after tonight. I loved that Lorelai was singing as a big fat joke, and then the scene turned so quickly (not that it wasn’t obvious that was going to happen, because it totally was). And it could have been cheesy, but I think that, instead, it was really nice.

I cried, okay? Stop judging me.

I also laughed, because Mike put “I Will Always Love You” on a playlist with romantic songs and Andrea (and Susan and Alisa, too, right?) and I were like, “WHAT IS ROMANTIC ABOUT THIS SONG? THEY ARE GOING TO BE APART. FOREVER.” But now I will totally think of it as a Luke and Lorelai song. Along with “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson and “Out of My League” by Stephen Speaks. Please do not ask me why these songs make me think of Luke and Lorelai. Just don’t ask, okay? At least “I Will Always Love You” and “Reflecting Light” are legitimate.

And Rory. Oh, Rory. Calling the Providence Journal. Oh, honey. When Lorelai was talking to Rory and said that things had worked out for her and having a setback might give her perspective, I felt like maybe the show was acknowledging that they haven’t always balanced her character all that well as far as that “golden child” perception goes. The past two episodes have gone a long way in making her more likeable to me again. I want good things for her, I do. I just want to see her face a little adversity, you know? It was fun to see her around town, and I really liked the Rory/Lorelai scenes in this episode. Oh, and the Chilton throwback stuff was very fun.

Anyway. Paris’s one scene was great. Babbette and Miss Patty were fun. I loved Brian the nanny. Lane and Zach’s scenes were cute. And Kirk! And Lulu! And Gypsy! And Morey! In acceptable amounts! That all made me very happy. But none of that compares, really, with the return of the hat. I was so happy about that, because I knew that Theresa really wanted the old hat back. I know in my heart he stuffed it back there on purpose so he could wear the old one. “Lost” my foot. And, actually, I loved that Lorelai noticed the hat was back. I wasn’t sure if she would or not.

It’s a shame . . . the show is finally DOING SOMETHING with both the girls, we’ve dug out of the pile of crap that was last year’s season finale . . . and we’ve got two episodes left. I, for one, am excited to see what happens next.

(I probably forgot something this time through. Sorry about that. I reserve the right to edit. Or add stuff in the comments.)

(And can I just say, I LOVE HOW VERONICA MARS ENDED? Thanks. Just needed to get that out of my system.)