Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling

I found most of this book incredibly tedious. While I had trouble putting down the first four Harry Potter books, it was rare that I read more than fifty pages of The Order of the Phoenix at a time. The first half of the book was actually rather boring. An inordinate amount of time was spent on the Order of the Phoenix headquarters, the Black family house, where Sirius was hiding out. Harry et al did a lot of cleaning while at the headquarters. Please, Mrs. Rowling, tell me more.

Some important stuff happened in the first 500 pages of this book, but there is a lot of filler, as well. With the help of a good editor, a lot could have easily been cut from the first of the book. This would have been a welcome improvement considering that the book is nearly 900 pages long.

Further reason for my disliking this book is that Harry Potter is kind of a dick…to everyone. Even after the book starts to pick up. He is still such a pissy little bugger. The last 150 pages of the book are much better, but do little to make up for what came before them. Compared to the previous book, The Goblet of Fire, book five was a let down.