I have 23 days and 5 books to go … My 2011 Reading List!

I’ve got The Future of Us and Nora Roberts’ second Chesapeake Bay novel, Rising Tides coming in at the library. And I’m currently reading Lisa McMann’s The Unwanteds, but I’m open to suggestions of what else to read to hit my 100-book mark. Help!

Also, how are you doing with your 2011 reading challenges?

The following song is by my favorite band, The Clarks. I always associate it with September 11. I have this memory of Scott Blasey (lead singer) saying that the song was about 9/11 but I seem to be the only one with that memory. So if it is, great. If it isn’t — I still think of 9/11 when I listen to this song.

If you’re gonna jump
Hey you, hang on
If you feel like giving up
Hey you, hang on

I won’t forget today
The sun is bright the sky is blue
The pain will go away
In another year or two

If you got a phone
Hey you, call home
If you got a voice
Hey you, rejoice

I won’t forget today
The sun is bright the sky is blue
I won’t forget to pray
Day is night the world is new
The pain will go away
In another year or two
In a hundred years or two
(At end chorus) In a thousands years or two

If you’re gonna fly
Hey you, don’t cry
You gotta live to die
Hey you, goodbye

– The Clarks, “Hey You”

May God bless and protect America.

Note: This is posting at 1:00PM, the same time as the Moment of Remembrance here in NYC.

Well, I got to the end of the series and love love love it even more now. I had only read book seven once, the night it released, and since I’d read it so quickly, I had forgotten so much about it. You know what? I loved it even more this time around. It’s a brilliant book, and JKR is absolutely amazing.

So here are my favorite quotes!

p. 72 “The last words Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us?”
“‘Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him,’” said Lupin calmly.

p. 113 Harry seized the wand lying beside his camp bed, pointed it at the cluttered desk where he had left his glasses, and said, “Accio Glasses!”. Although they were only around a foot away, there was something immensely satisfying about seeing them zoom toward him, at least until they poked him in the eye.

p. 116 “So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.”
“I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.”
“There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,” she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than firewhiskey …

p.150 Krum grunted.
“Vot,” he said, draining his goblet and getting to his feet again, “is the point of being an international Quidditch player if all the good-looking girls are taken?”

p. 376 “Who could look at you, who would ever look at you, beside Harry Potter? What have you ever done, compared with the Chosen ONe? What are you, compared with the Boy Who Lived?”

p. 625 “Is this the moment?” Harry asked weakly, and when nothing happened except that Ron and Hermione gripped each other still more firmly and swayed on the spot, he raised his voice. “Oi! There’s a war going on here!”

And honestly, there are more, but then I’d be giving away the end of the book …

Half-Blood Prince time! Loved this book a lot more the second time. Still hate hate hate the movie adaptation.

Just a note — I own and read and am using for these quotes the British paperback edition of Half-Blood Prince.

p. 58 “And now, Harry, let us step into the night and pursue that flughty temptress, adventure.”

p. 93 “I suppose you like the way Phlegm says ‘ ‘Arry’, do you” asked Ginny scornfully.

p. 171 “Do you remember me telling you we are practising non-verbal spells, Potter?”
“Yes,” said Harry stiffly.
“Yes sir.”
“There’s no need to call me ‘sir’, Professor.”

p. 187 “From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork.”

p. 241 “It wasn’t very well-thought-out at all.”
“But since when has Malfoy been one of the world’s great thinkers?” asked Harry.
Neither Ron nor Hermione answered him.

p. 268 …they found themselves looking at Dean and Ginny, who were locked in a close embrace and kissing fiercely as if glued together.
It was as though something large and scaly erupted into life in Harry’s stomach, clawing at his insides: hot blood seemed to flood his brain, so that all thought was extinguished, replaced by a savage urge to jinx Dean into a jelly.

p. 314 “But you are normal!” said Harry fiercely. “You’ve just got a — a problem –”
Lupin burst out laughing.
“Sometimes you remind me a lot of James. He called it my ‘furry little problem’ in company. Many people were under the impression that I owned a badly behaved rabbit.”

p. 499 Harry looked around: there was Ginny running towards him; she had a hard, blazing look in her face as she threw her arms around him. And without thinking, without planning it, without worrying about the fact that fifty people were watching, Harry kissed her.
After several long moments — or it might have been half an hour — or possibly several sunlit days — they broke apart. The room had gone very quiet. THen several people wold-whistled and there was an outbreak of nervous giggling. Harry looked over the top of Ginny’s head to see Dean Thomas holding a shattered glass in his hand and Romilda Vane looking as though she might throw something. Hermione was beaming, but Harry’s eyes sought Ron. At last he found him, still clutching the Cup and wearing an expression appropriate to having been clubbed over the head, For a fraction of a second they looked at each other, then Ron gave a tiny jerk of the head that Harry understood to mean, “Well — if you must.”
The creature in his chest roaring in triumph, Harry grinned down at Ginny and gestured wordlessly out of the portrait hole. A long walk in the grounds seemed indicated, during which — if they had time — they might discuss the match.

p. 540 “I am not worried, Harry,” said Dumbledore, his voice a little stronger despite the freezing water. “I am with you.”

Order of the Phoenix is tied for favorite with Prisoner of Azkaban. Also, of course, because of Sirius Black. Oh, and the fact that I don’t know if I’ve ever sobbed as hard as I did in chapter 35. You know what I’m talking about.

p. 58 The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London.

p. 78 “Shut up, you horrible old hag, shut UP!” he roared, seizing the curtain Mrs. Weasley had abandoned.
The old woman’s face blanched.
“Yoooou!” she howled, her eyes popping at the sight of the man. “Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!”
“I said — shut — UP!” roared the man, and with a stupendous effort he and Lupin managed to force the curtains closed again.
The old woman’s screeches died and an echoing silence fell.
Panting slightly and sweeping his long dark hair our of his eyes, Harry’s godfather, Sirius, turned to face him.
“Hello, Harry,” he said grimly. “I see you’ve met my mother.”

p. 94 “Well, as everyone thinks, I’m a mass murdered and the Ministry’s put a ten-thousand-Galleon price on my head, I can hardly stroll up the street and start handing out leaflets, can I?” said Sirius restlessly.

p. 109 “Kreacher is cleaning,” the elf repeated. “Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black–”
“–and it’s getting blacker every day, it’s filthy,” said Sirius.
“Master always liked his little joke,” said Kreacher, bowing again, and continuing in an undertone, “Master was a nasty ungrateful swine who broke his mother’s heart–”
“My mother didn’t have a heart, Kreacher,” Sirius snapped. “She kept herself alive out of pure spite.”

p. 117 “Kreacher wasn’t quite as devoted to him as to my mother, but I still caught him snogging a pair of my father’s old trousers last week.”

p. 187 He would have liked Cho to discover him sitting with a group of very cool people laughing their head off at a joke he just told; he would not have chosen to be sitting with Neville and Loony Lovegood, clutching a toad and dripping in Stinksap.

p. 391 “Can we be the Anti-Umbridge League?” said Angelina hopefully.
“Or the Ministry of Magic Are Morons Group?” suggested Fred.

p. 459 A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of this speech, then Ron said, “One person can’t feel all that at once, they’d explode.”
“Just because you’ve got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn’t mean we all have,” said Hermione nastily, picking up her quill again.”

p. 495 “We Slytherins are brave, yes, but not stupid. For instance, given the choice, we will always choose to save our own necks.”

p. 555 Dumbledore trusts him,” Hermione repeated. “And if we can’t trust Dumbledore, we can’t trust anyone.”

p. 642 With another shock of excitement, Harry saw Sirius give James the thumbs-up. Sirius was lounging in his chair at his ease, tilting it back on two legs. He was very good-looking; his dark hair fell into his eyes with a sort of casual elegance neither James’s nor Harry’s could ever have achieved, and a girl sitting behind him was eyeing him hopefully, though he didn’t seem to have noticed.

p. 645 “Put that away, will you?” said Sirius finally, as James made a fine catch and Wormtail let out a cheer. “Before Wormtail wets himself from excitement.”
Wormtail turned slightly pink but James grinned.
“If it bothers you,” he said, stuffing the Snitch back into his pocket. Harry had the distinct impression that Sirius was the only one for whom James would have stopped showing off.

p. 647 “What’s he done to you?”
“Well,” said James, appearing to deliberate the point. “it’s more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean. …”

p. 647 “I wouldn’t go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid,” said Lily.

AND, REALLY, THE ENTIRE “Snape’s Worst Memory” CHAPTER.