Question About Pacing

[Albus]

Even if my favourite remains Prisoner of Azkaban, which I think will be hard to overcome, I have to say that maybe Order of Phoenix is the best-written, I mean, so full of descriptions (The Ministry, The Hearing, The DoM, Girmmauld Place, ...), of details, of really great inventions, such as the portraits walking through their pictures and so on... Really great...
Yes, I think it's the best prose but not the best plot, even if at a great level, almost at Goblet of Fire.

[Eol]

Most of my friends thought that it was slow paced as well, saying "nothing happened for the first 600 pages" I disagree whole heartedley with them as they are only interested in the main plot of the story. I, on the other hand absolutely love the immersion into the Potterverse and all the little sub-plots and character interactions. Now that i've learned that JK Rowling has so cleverly woven clues about the future stories in to the already published ones, I will be going back and reading them all again.

I often find myself daydreaming about aspect of the Potterverse, like don't they do regular subjects like english and Maths???
What about TV??
Wouldn't telephones and the internet be much faster than the Owl system?
Are there any other sports played at hogwarts other than Quidditch??? P.E doesn't seem to be an issue!
I then go off on a tangent about the type of curriculum Dumbledore should set, what kind of programs would they have on tv - Bewitched??? Gameshows?? Soaps???
Is this a sign i'm going crazy??

[Meg Boyd]

i always wondered that too. Do wizardlings (he he) go to primary school? Do they learn how to do maths, english, foreign languages, social sciences???? I mean they just can't be oblivious to all of the norm???? I am sure they have some sort of wizarding TV cuz they have wizarding radio...powered by magic of course...as for telephones and e-mail, I think since wizards are very old fashioned and set in their ways, it is not a matter of what's easy, its a matter of how things used to be...

[Dink Meeker]

There has to be some kind of primary wizarding school. All the students know how to read and write when they arrive at Hogwarts. I can't picture them going to a muggle school. It would be impossible to have a young child live with magic day in and day out then suddenly pretend it doesn't exist when they start school.

[Meg Boyd]

there must be some sort of schooling that they go to before Hogwarts, but I always wondered how they learned advanced grammar and algebra and physics, because all that stuff portains to real life...and wizards never learn it, it seems. Are they just ignorant to normal education??? That just seems like a waste of a good mind!