the saddest death

I read HP 7 yesterday, and it was good. I still think the character who came back to life (no spoilers here!) was a cop-out. I wasn't moved by that death, or the deaths of major characters, as much as I was moved by one character's literal march toward death, and especially by the character who died while joking around, who had always been a favorite of mine (my other two favorites survived, thankfully). Yesterday I thought the epilogue wrapped things up a bit too neatly, but today I'm okay with it. My favorite part, by far, was the radio broadcast.
I re-read Harry Potter books up until the seventh one came out, so now it's strange to read anything else. It doesn't help that I'm reading Warrior Woman, a shockingly bad pulp novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It's more plot-driven than Survey Ship, which isn't a compliment here, not where MZB is concerned (my favorite MZB is Thendara House, after all, which is all about character development).

I have been assimiliated...

...am am willing to use Blogger again, because I am so cranky about the unappealing cover of the upcoming Ellen Emerson White book, Long May She Reign. It'll be hard enough to sell teens on this title, given that it's being published over a decade after Long Live the Queen. And it didn't help that Hawk Publishing created such egregiously bad cover art for the re-prints of the first three titles about Meg. This new cover art won't draw people in, and it's so obvious - or course Meg's got sunglasses, a Williams sweatshirt (though: pink?), and a hand brace. It's all reminiscent of the cover art for the original cover of Voigt's Izzy, Willy-Nilly - and, as my fellow librarian just pointed out, of the Mona Lisa. I didn't even notice that!