#8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J.K.
Rowling
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
784 pages
$34.99
There's no point
in trying to finesse the importance of Harry Potter. In seven books
Rowling proved that books can still be a true global mass medium, and
that significant chunks of the known world can still embrace a single
story. Deathly Hallows finds Rowling is in fine form, pulling all the
stops she'd been saving up. She gives us wartime gloom, the crackling
three-sided chemistry of Harry and Ron and Hermione, and an epic,
cataclysmic finale, among many other minor treats. This isn't the most
elegant of the Potter volumes, but it feels like an ending, the final
iteration of Rowling's abiding thematic concern: the overwhelming
importance of continuing to love in the face of death.
A yearbook of all the top events you've been talking about