Albert Ching and the Order of Harry Potter

Finally finished reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The going's a bit slow because I'm reading the whole 768-page book on my Palm. Never mind where I got the soft copy.

First thought after reading the book? This could well be the last Harry Potter book I'm going to read. I was rushing through the last few chapters not because the battery is running low or because the climax is so exciting. I just want to get it over with. It's a wonder Harry Potter managed to make it to Book 5 (with Book 6 almost done and already taking in pre-orders). I mean, with each iteration, Harry Potter is carrying more and more baggage on his scrawny shoulders:

• explaining what muggles are and why Harry lives in the room under the stairs of his Aunt's house
• what Hogwarts is and how students get aboard the Hogwarts Express using Platform Five and Three Quarters
• introduction of all characters that ever made it in a Harry Potter book (Harry's posse and their relatives, the professors of Hogwarts past and present, all the students in each of the Hogwarts houses and their relatives, all the ghosts and house elves and magical creatures, etc.)
• a walkthrough of Hogwarts and its environs, Hogsmead and its shops and pubs, Diagon Alley, the Forbidden Forest, Gringotts Wizard Bank, etc.
• the Hogwarts school system with its four houses, the Sorting Hat ceremony, OWLs and NEWTs, and don't forget the game of Quiddith, which is always the biggest subplot after the main one

If Rowling took all these out, the book volume will surely be halved - giving more space for better story/plot development. Everything's new, magical, and exciting the first time around, but when you read the same stuff for the fourth time, you'd wish Rowling would start off with a totally new series. If I am to write Harry Potter Book 5, it would go something like this: Voldemort is desperate to hear the prophecy about him and Harry Potter, which is captured inside a glass sphere. (Don't ask me why a glass sphere and not a vodka bottle, and how the prophecy got into the sphere in the first place.) Voldemort can't get to the sphere since only the owner can touch it. (Again, don't ask me why.) So he projects dreams into Harry's mind (How?), leading him through a long corridor inside the Ministry of Magic, to the room where the glass spheres are kept. And Harry, being the rash, naive, attention-grabbing brat that he is, falls right into Voldemort's trap. As usual, he involves most of his classmates and the Order of the Phoenix into the mess, and Dumbledore has to risk his neck and set everything straight. Too bad Sirius has to die to show how real and dangerous the fight between good and evil is. Voldemort escapes to live another day (and another book). The end.

And that's why Rowling is raking in millions and millions of pounds, while I'm here ranting in my blog.