Harry Potter and the Goblin of Fire

With 734 pages, it's filled with a story of magic, a fictional world, and so many other things that will make you never want to put this book down. READ HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLIN OF FIRE TODAY!

This review at Amazon.com says it all about J. K. Rowling's new Harry Potter book. Er...what do you mean it's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Oh, yeah, that book.

Anyhoo, I just stayed up late last night to finish it. It was an enjoyable read, although I feel that the ending was a little muddled, but I think I could say that of most of her books.

One thing I've noticed as a recurring theme through the books is people being wrongly accused of things they didn't do. There are lots of examples from earlier books -- Hagrid, Buckbeak, Harry, Snape, etc. -- so I won't spoil anything about this book by giving examples here. I don't even think this book does so more than the others -- it's just something I noticed more this time.

Maybe that's because it's something I've been thinking about myself recently. I'm a very judgemental person. I tend to try to form opinions rather quickly. A silly example follows.

After the TV show Friends came out, Martin called me up and asked me what I thought about it. I started going off on a rant about how it was clearly a slickly packaged attempt to market a certain image of Generation X. Martin said, "You know, with anyone else, I would have just asked, 'How about that great new show, Friends?'"

You know, I was right about the show. But it's also pretty funny (most of the time), a fact I had overlooked in my initial recoil to the way the show was "targeted". It's since become one of my favorite shows. So I do give things (and people) second chances. But I sort of wonder how much I may have overlooked due to unfavorable first impressions. So I'm trying to do better. So if somebody seems like a jerk at first, maybe I give them a chance to prove me wrong. Or prove that they really are a jerk. Which would have me hanging around with jerks more often. Hmm, is it worth it?