I almost made it... (non-knitting-related)

I was so close! Close to finishing Harry Potter 7 without spoiling the ending, that is.

Since I was taking a big, important test last weekend, I decided not to start HP7 until this Monday. I've been so scrupulous about anything Harry Potter related; since it looks like I'll finish it tonight, I thought that I would finally be able to read one of the books without having the ending "spoiled". All I had to do was make it through this work day, and there's only 30 minutes left.

Except, I made the mistake of logging in to Facebook, where one of my friends had been so kind as to join a bunch of groups with names like "________ Memorial Society" and "My Life Is Meaningless now that __________ has been killed!" (names removed to protect people who are in the same position as me). If you're not familiar with Facebook, let me tell you that any changes to a friend's profile, such as joining a group, show up on a news feed that I see when I log in. That means that I could immediatly see the groups she had joined.

Now, I generally don't care too much when the ending of a movie or book is spoiled before I see it. A good movie movie shouldn't rely on a "hook" or a trick to get viewers - I tend to prefer interesting characters over interesting plot devices (although a good surprise ending can really kick a good book up to great book territory). However, when it comes to series like Harry Potter, most of the pay-off is going to come from the plot - many readers (including me, I'm sad to say) have been intellectually and emotionally invested in finding out "What Happens Next?"

And that's why I was a bit disappointed to read some of the titles of those groups. Since the end of Book 6, I've been imagining all these endings: Snape could be innocent or he could have been guilty all along. Harry Potter could die at the end, or his friends could die, or Neville could turn out to be the real hero, and so on. There's really not much to these books BESIDES that. And finding out the real ending before reading all the set-up which gets the characters there is unsatisfying.

This also raises questions about how long a book, movie, or TV show needs to be out there before it can be discussed in general society. This is complicated by Tivo, Netflix, and other subscription services. Will we ever be able to discuss the ending of Harry Potter without it being a spoiler? I don't know.