Harry is starting his 4th year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and already the mischief has started before he's even arrived at the school. It starts with Harry having strange dreams—or are they visions?—of Lord Voldemort, which leave him with a scorching pain in his forehead scar. And at the Quidditch World Cup, someone conjures the Dark Mark, Voldemort's sign, right in front of Harry and his friends. Do all these signs point to the imminent return and rise to power of Voldemort? Or are they just coincidence?
Well, it just so happens that Hogwarts will be hosting a very special event this year, a competition which hasn't taken place for several hundred years—the Triwizard Tournament. Perhaps that'll take Harry's mind off his problems. Or maybe it'll just make them worse since someone has decided to enter him as a Hogwarts Champion, an honour normally reserved only for older students with more experience. But since the Goblet of Fire has given his name, he is obliged to compete, whether he wants to or not. And perhaps someone is hoping that Harry just may die for it!
After finishing Goblet of Fire, I immediately wanted to see the movie again because I felt I understood so much more than when I saw it initially. Many of the new characters and some of the things that happened in this one seemed rather random to me when I saw the movie, but after reading the book, I see how everything (and everyone) all fits together. Since Goblet of Fire was a hefty 734 pages, whereas the previous three books were quite a bit shorter, I can see how a two-hour movie might not quite do this book proper justice. I'm glad to hear that the movie deal made for book seven is going to be done in two parts instead of trying to squish it all into one.
So though I was initially thinking this was the weakest one so far, after having only seen the movie, I now have to retract that thought after reading the book. There is some additional depth given to many of the characters here, and we learn a few new secrets about some of them. A lot of it is very mysterious and dark. We also start to see hints of a burgeoning romance between Ron and Hermione....
I really enjoyed this one a lot, so much so that I immediately wanted to start reading Order of the Phoenix right away. (And I'm holding off on seeing that movie until I read the book first.) Unfortunately, I have a number of other books I really need to get read before the end of the month; this was my short, quick detour to read one of my personal collection books that has been sorely neglected because it doesn't have an agenda after, or I don't owe a review for it, or something like that. ;-)
BookCrossing journal page for this book
Saturday, April 05, 2008
#12 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
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7 comments:
You poor thing! Only on book 4??? How did you cope everytime the new book came out and how did you manage to cope last year when the last one got released???
Heh, it was difficult, esp since the weekend Deathly Hallows was released, I was going for a meetup with a bunch of other Obsessors in Ohio. And by the time Sunday rolled around, a couple of the girls (Noumena, karendawn, and SandDanz) had already finished book 7.
Fortunately they knew a lot of us weren't in the same boat so they made sure to keep their talk private, or else we'd walk by them with our hands over our ears going "lalalalalala". LOL
I've gotten a few hints about what's going on, and I know Dumbledore dies. And my Dad told me that book 7 answers the lifelong question, "Is Snape really a good guy or a bad guy?" But fortunately, no one has really told me the whole thing. :) And I purposely stay away from threads about it on the net of course....
I haven't read 7 yet either, so you're not alone! ;)
Yeah! You finished 4. It does help with the movie. I think 4 was a bit of a weak movie, and it strayed quite a bit from the book.. but the changes and such I can see to make it all fit.. but the book answers so many questions. I find that with a lot of Harry movies. I didn't really get how people could understand too much of the Potter world only watching the movie, when lots of things don't get into the movie.
I do have to warn you tho... the books.. they get LONGER. I think each book of hers gets bigger. Well worth it tho.
I did hear the last book will be made into two movies, because its too hard to skip stuff in the movie as they could with the other books. So, we'll get 7 books, and 8 movies.
I hope you carry on enjoying the series even though you know a few things about the plots that are coming!
Oh and how did you do that 'search' function on your sidebar?
I'm sure I will. I already can't wait to pick up the 5th book and keep wishing I didn't have all these other books here that I owe so that I can just read what I like for a change. Grrrr! It's why I seriously hate playing swaps and such with Owed TBRs, and I haven't been joining any additional rings and such because besides the fact that they come all at the same time of course, and usually when your life is like super busy and you're trying to get things read to bring to the convention or a meetup with you...
When it takes you a week or two to read a single book, you can see how it easily piles up!
Anyhoo, I'll have to email you on the search box thing. I came across something similar when I was surfing around the web looking at blogger themes and hacks. I didn't find exactly what I wanted, but I took an image of my own, the magnifying glass and used that to function as the submit button. So since that's linked to my own file share, I'd rather not post the code publicly. It probably wouldn't even come out write posting to an HTML page anyway.
I'll also need to verify that I didn't need to add anything in the blogger's XML code itself to make it work. So I'll pull it together and email you with the details later, k? (If you haven't heard from me on it in a week, give me a gentle nudge reminder, but I'll try to get to it today after I log in the books I received.) :)
FYI, it's also partially based off the Search box already available in the Blogger navbar at the top, so it's possible nothing additional needed to be added anyway...
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