I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night. It's a great book, full of adventure, mystery, and humor, but Goblet of Fire is still my favorite in the series. I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I won't post any sort of review here. But for those interested in parallels between Harry Potter and another great sci-fi universe, please see this detailed list over at TheForce.net. I'm ashamed to say that I didn't notice most of them.

For my next book, I'm continuing to broaden my literary horizons and read classics that my wife has always loved. So I've started Dickens' Great Expectations. I saw the 1997 movie with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Robert DeNiro, but I'm trying not to imagine those people in the key roles. Besides, Liz tells me that the movie is not an accurate representation of the book. My last experience with Dickens was A Tale of Two Cities in high school, of which I read little. Instead, I'm not proud to say that I used the Cliffs Notes and got an A on the exam anyway. I couldn't get into that book, and I was extremely busy with other work at the time. But so far, GE is more approachable that I would have expected, and I'm already absorbed in the story.

After this book, if I can stand another tough one, I'm hoping to tackle Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I've read some great reviews of that novel, so despite warnings of its difficulty, I've got to see what all the fuss is about.