Harry Potter

Driving to work today, it was cold and the ground was misty, like a low fog was rolling through. I immediately knew what this meant.... DEMENTORS!
So that means I finally finished the Harry Potter series. Really good books, though I didn't read them, I listened to the entire series on my iPod.
My first experience with Harry Potter was from the first movie, and in hindsight, that was unfair to the series. After finishing each audiobook, I would watch it's associated movie, and they really don't do justice. Such is the case with most books converted to movie.
As good as the books are, there are lots of issues that I have with them. The first is with Harry. He's too emo. Although he's portrayed overall as being fiercely loyal, his faith in his friends and family falters too far and too often for my taste. James (his father) and Albus Dumbledore seem to bear the brunt of this more than most. There are points in the 6th book that Harry goes so far as to hate Dumbledore (even with all the failed occlumancy and other external influences aside). There were times I just wanted to slap the little punk. You can't have it both ways. You can't have a young man with amazing strength of character that later loses all faith in one of his dearest friends. I would have preferred if he dealt with his misgivings in a less "emo" way. This was just a way of trying to show that he's "human".
Rowling uses "incredulous" far too often, by the 5th book it was bugging me. She seems to have backed off the word a bit at the 7th book. I also didn't like how dreary most of the 7th book was. I know this was meant to be a dark time for the series, but it was too much. Maybe this was partly due to the change in narrator that I had for this last book. My greatest problem with the books was my own idiot fault. I kept reading Wikipedia articles to get more information about things that I had missed or misunderstood, and kept reading spoilers. So I highly recommend that nobody read anything until done with all the books.
My favorite characters were Luna, Ginny (3rd book and later), and most of all, Kreacher the house elf. I think to really appreciate this character, you would HAVE to listen the Jim Dale (the US audiobook) narration of the Order Of The Phoenix. There were times when I laughed out loud. His voice was PERFECT, and his mumblings were even better. If I had read the books, I would not have done Kreacher the justice that Jim Dale did him.
I can't say enough good things about Jim Dale's work on the audiobooks. He has a very good range, with few character voices "overlapping" in traits (the younger characters being the rare exception). For book 7, I listened to the British audiobook narrator, Stephen Fry, and was rather disappointed. Hermione sounded a bit like Ron, almost every adult female sounded the same, and Kreacher wasn't nearly as fun to listen to. I would go so far as to say that Jim Dale is probably responsible for 40% of my enjoyment of the series. Had I listened to the first audiobook narrated by Fry, I might not have gone on to the second audiobook.
So, if any of you are interested, I've got the first 6 books by Jim Dale, and book 7 by Stephen Fry, that I could get to you (all in digital formats). I'm going to try to get book 7 by Jim Dale as well. I really need to listen to Kreacher's part in that book done properly.