hp hype (no spoilers, don't fret)

you know... there's so much of it (the hype that is), that i feel like even after two reads i can't truly say whether or not it was a "good book." i mean, i HAD to read it and find out what happened to the characters, there were parts that made me chuckle aloud and others where i teared up, etc... but it's like the plot and explanations were so important (because millions of people were waiting to find out how the story ends) that the storytelling itself seems almost marginalized... of course, i've said from book 4 on that her writing has improved and developed tremendously since book one - this is no LOTR, it's not meant to be, but it's the very best kind of child fantasy (who wouldn't like to wake up one day and find something utterly magical has transformed your miserable existence into something fraught with high adventure and uplifted by truest friendship?) AND it's what they call a rollicking good read... i felt the same way about the chronicles of narnia, despite its flaws - that scene with lucy walking into the wardrobe and coming out of the wardrobe, ha ha, into this magical, snow-covered, spellbound land - what kid doesn't want to discover a magical country with a secret entrance? (i dunno, maybe a kid who would rather have dinner to eat every day and shoes on their feet. i realize even as i write that i'm speaking from the midst of privilege and comfort, and the luxury to escape the mundane into imagination, although i would argue that frances hodgson burnett's sara crewe might beg to differ, but then, she was one of a kind, wasn't she?)...
my leg, on which rests my sleeping, nursing baby, is asleep too, though not nursing...