Book 66 of 2013: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

On Boxing Day I realised I was going to need some reading material that would keep me going until the end of the year. It's one of my (many) weird little quirks that I don't like to end a year on an unfinished book. There's something about getting up on the 1st of January and starting a fresh book, or maybe it's not wanting too much baggage from the year before. Whatever the reason, I needed to find a book that I could either read quick enough to move onto another quick read before the year was out, or that I could take my time over and so drag out until New Year's Eve.  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets it was.  

 I've lost track of the number of times that I've read this. I first read the first four when I moved to Scotland and I like to reread them fairly frequently. Earlier in the year I'd read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for my course so this seemed like a good excuse to start rereading all the others.  Of all the books Chamber of Secrets is my least favourite. I like it more now that I've read the later books - particularly Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows - because it obviously links closely to those books and so I can appreciate those more on these rereads. I'm not sure exactly what it was that made me dislike this one. Even on this reread I couldn't pick out what it was that annoys me about it. It just does.  That said, it's really clever the way that it links to the future book. I love to pick out the one line references to things that don't crop up again for another five books. It just shows how much thought and planning went into this series. It's not until going through them on later rereads that you actually pick up on them all.  I do like the way that this book is kind of a mystery, with the kids trying to solve the mystery of the Chamber. All the little clues are given to help follow along with them as they try to work it out. The problem is, there's not really a sense that they won't do it. You know that they're going to get everything worked out in the end because they survived Voldemort in the last book so this time it should be a breeze. I like that this is the final book to follow this pattern and after this one the characters really start to mature.  I think that two of the things that do bug me with this book is Professor Lockhart (who I like a lot more once he loses his memory) and Dobby's hamfisted attempts to get Harry to stay away from Hogwarts. Again, I like Dobby later in the series so I think it's just this actual book.
I did manage to get it finished before the end of the year, at about 10pm on New Year's Eve in fact, so I was able to start a new book at the start of the year. I was particularly impressed because I hadn't done much reading over the Christmas break so I had to read roughly half the book within the space of bout six hours. I did it with time to spare!