Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

It's 4.44am. I finished reading the book at 3.19am. I'll go to bed soon.

Unbelievably, despite the attempts by (amongst others) The New York Times (shame on you, NYT!), Alice and I managed to obtain our copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows completely un-spoilered - basically by switching off most access to the outside world for the past week - no TV news, no radio, very little internet (no surfing!). Oh - and iPods on from 11.01am onwards inside Dymocks... I never thought we'd do it, but we did!

The book is - awesome. I cried. Rather a lot. Rather a lot of times.

Some of my predictions were right, some were wrong. I won't tell you which, though.

I'm not going to spoiler anything for you. It's been a wild ride, and I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone else. I'll be re-reading it from tomorrow onwards. Once is simply not enough.

Thanks, Jo! You are a wonderful writer! Thank you SO MUCH for introducing a whole generation of children to the wonders of reading - and for reminding many adults of the absolute joy of disappearing into a beautifully-written story. As I read the final tale of Harry's journey I imagined millions of other people around the world doing exactly the same thing. In these dark times, a little bit of escapism, an opportunity to step into a fantastical world for a while, is never a bad thing.

Technorati tags: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter, JK Rowling, spoilers, book 7, New York Times, WebWeaver's World, webweaver.