I'm sitting here catching up on the tabs open from yesterday and procrastinating on finishing my flist catch-up. Because I know it's going to be nearly all-HBP, all the time, for the rest of it. And I'm not terribly interested in reading that, I've realized. Well, I am interested in reading what you all have to say, because despite being pathologically asocial, I do care about the travails of everyone whose life I've been reading about, so I won't be able to just skip over all the HBP entries. But I'm not at all interested in HBP discussion just for the sake of discussing it. Because ... well, because that book was darn near perfect; it was what I've wanted HP to grow into ever since I read the first book; and unlike the last GoF and OotP, I have no need or desire to fanwank it.

(I don't think my preferences are biased enough that me liking the book can be construed as a spoiler. And I realize not everybody felt the same-- I came out of my reading saying "Woohoo, it reads like she finally had an editor again!" and my sister came out saying "Eew, it reads like her editor made her cut out all the fun bits!")

There was a lot of discussion about spoilers on the flist in the days leading up to HPB. And you know what I've realized? The reason I don't want to get into post-HBP discussion is that I don't want to be spoiled for it. Which is, granted, rather backwards-- I was energetically indifferent about spoilers *before* I read the book, and my disinclination to read them has more to do with a distaste for the marketing strategy that trickles them out than it has to do with any objection to knowing what's going to happen in the story. It's impossible to come to a story completely unspoiled anyway (unless possibly you're like Harry and pig-headedly ignorant of *everything* that has no immediate bearing on your life)-- I was "spoiled" for HP:PS because not only did I know immediately who Flamel was, I knew that he and his wife Perenelle were very fond of the opera, and had in fact been seen attending by Muggles in Paris in the nineteenth century. This is because I like reading about magic. (And I'm beginning to suspect that I've read all the same background reading JKR has-- I was similarly spoiled for a major plot element in this book, and when I get sufficiently jaded to start whining about it, that's what I'll whine about.) But you know what? None of that is ever going to ruin the experience of sitting down with hundreds of pages of unexplored territory, and getting lost in it. It's not what's in the story that counts, it's what the writer does with it.

But what *can* spoil a perfectly crafted story for me is hearing a bunch of other people's opinions on it, opinions that will inevitably clash with mine. I *know* what happened in that book, and not just what was on the pages-- it *clicked* with me, settled into my bones in a way that the first three did but the next two didn't-- I know everything that was going on behind the scenes, know all the characters' motivations, why things happened as they did-- and even if I don't consciously know all the details, the shape of the story and the feeling it left me with is clear and pellucid in my mind, and I know it's all there.

But eventually I'll have to start reading other people's reactions. And inevitably you'll hate parts I like and like parts I didn't like, and miss things I considered important and pick up on things I missed, and not be completely gleeful about the obvious identity of a certain set of initials, and think the ships were wrong or this character would never have done that, and I'll start having to mangle my pure platonic joy into a form that fits with other people-- even if I never leave a comment on any HPB discussion ever, ya'll's reactions will inevitably come to inform my own, and I'll be bitter or disappointed or defensive at times. That pristine feeling of coming to a book with nothing but the words on the page and infinite possibility, the one spoiler-phobes rhapsodize about? For me, it can survive hearing "Cedric Diggory definitely doesn't die in book six" but not "Why didn't she have Cedric die? It would have made that scene with Harry in it so much more poignant" or "Worship me, I predicted that Cedric wouldn't die!"

There's a quote I found in a book of quotations for readers, years ago, by John Braine:"Being a writer in a library is rather like being a eunuch in a harem." It's unsettlingly true for me; the more I think, and talk, and discuss, the way a book is put together, compare it to my own feelings as a writer, the more I have trouble just laying down in bed with it and going at it for the pure pleasure of falling into somebody else. That's kind of sad, that one day I'll lose the ability, and my literal isolation from fandom the past few weeks (I read most of HBP on the balcony of a tiny motel overlooking the Oconaluftee River in a Cherokee Indian reservation) has given it back to me, that bit of me that died a little inside the first time I picked up Dragonflight and found myself losing the beloved story because the bad writing was too distracting.

On the other hand, if there's one thing I've learned from fandom, it's that a eunuch can have plenty of fun in a harem, he just has to be a little more .. creative ... and energetic ... about it. And I will catch up with everybody's first-glance HPB comments. Eventually. I just want to stay a spoiler virgin a *little* bit longer... I think I'll go catch up on all my non-HP communities first. And maybe go through my pictures. And clean my room ... and comb my hair...