So I did it, I admit: I caved. I borrowed the sixth installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’d like to take a second to let you all know that this came as the result of a long and tortured mental battle.
You see, I wanted very much to hold out on reading the end of the series, and watch the movies first, as has been my trend. But there were many thoughts and factors coming into play, the main being the single argument that chances are that I could simply not go three more years without finding out some or all of what happens to Harry and his friends and allies.
Not only are there innumerable people in my life reading (and discussing) the book, but there is also little chance that I could wait out the end of the series without seeing some sort of spoof or homage in film or on television. For example, I don’t even need to see The Sixth Sense now, cos I can’t even count how many books and sitcoms have blown the surprise ending. All I’d need is for the next Scary Movie to blow the ending for me to brighten my day. Even in books there could be references in the form of spoilers.
So I weighed it out, as carefully and reproachfully as possible. I attempted to assign numeric values to the situation, as I’ll attempt to illustrate below. All values are figures out of a possible ten (10).
Desire to read the remaining books in the series (r) : 9.
Desire to wait to view the movies first, preserving my practise (w) : 7.
Actual will power in situations like these (p) : 4.
Likelihood of storylines being spoiled before 2010 (l) : 10.
Where (r) + (l) > (w) + (p), the answer becomes very clear.
Answer = read.
Read = very yes.
And so here I am. You can’t argue with mathematics, and neither can I. And the book is great. And I don’t care what you think.
