Harry Potter...

Finally finished the whole thing. I can say without a doubt these books get tedious; especially Rowlings complete addiction to adverbs (he said snottily). But the story telling was good enough and some of her creations (horcruxes, hallows, the sorcerer's stone, the mirror of Erised, etc) are interesting enough to make it worth slugging on through. The value of love isn't shoved down your throat even though it is a huge player in resolving the story - commendable for a woman who otherwise sidles off into so much minutiae of teenaged life that it makes you scream "enough already" many times before you get to the end of the books. And an ending that ends and ends properly...yeah that is refreshing and took more skill I think than anything else she did before the last 4-5 chapters of her 7 volume tree killing escapade.

I read this because so many people coming into their twenties read all these stories and I wanted to see if there were concepts I could use to communicate the gospel. I still think The Lord of the Rings trilogy is in a league of its own for gospel imagery and story telling, but there is a lot here in the Harry Potter books, and it is probably more accessible to younger people who only have the cut down (cheap) movie versions of LOTR.

Glad I read them. Glad I'm done.

Marine Sniper

Carlos Hathcock lived in Virginia Beach. That's one of the reasons I picked up this book after watching a History Channel show about snipers. One of my friends met him several years ago and told me a little bit about Hathcock. I wanted to know the human element of story and the book didn't disappoint me too much there. Its obvious in the reading that the author had an agenda. To his credit, he admits it up front. He is making the case for the Corps to maintain sniper units at a time when their future may have been in doubt. But Marines make better snipers than writers and the book is pretty choppy. His attempts at real descriptive prose some times hit the mark, but often feel forced and unnecessary. It does give a feel for what this type of combat was like for those men who practiced it in Vietnam and it doesn't spare the gory details. The Kindle version was less than $10 and it was worth that.