Elizabeth Peters - Seeing a Large Cat (1997)

This is the ninth book in the Amelia Peabody series. It is 1903/4 excavation season and the Emerson clan are back in Egypt and living in their house outside Luxor, close to the Valley of the Kings. There are a few years between this book and the last, with a lot of changes inbetween. Emerson is making a survery of all the forgotten tombs, something everyone is finding very boring after locating a Royal Tomb in 1900. Ramses is suddenly all grown up and has spent the last six months with the Bedouins, away from his parents and learning many things that seem to have changed his personality almost completely. Nefret is now a young lady studying medicine and David is a young man who is English in every way except that he is Egyptian. Saddest of all is the death of the cat Bastet, Ramses childhood friend and companion.

This book was a bit of a shock. I didn't expect Peters to jump forward through so many years and to downplay Amelia and Emerson in the mystery like they were a couple of old crones. They're around 48, if Amelia gave her correct age in the first book, and that's not quite putting them in their dotage.

The Emersons do find a mummy in this book, but it's of a recently murdered woman and the family are once more plunged into a mystery. They tend to bumble around each other because they're all so secretive and sure they're right, so they refuse to share anything with each other. There was a lot of overlap and some silly dangers that could have been avoided. The whole secrecy aspect is going too far. After it almost got Amelia killed in the last book they should know better.

The story was okay, but I disliked a lot of the characters. Ramses is no longer my favourite. It's a good continuation of the series, but that was pretty much it for me.

J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

This is on my Best 100 list of children's books to read.

I read the first three books in the Harry Potter series at least once a year. They're part of my comfort-books collection - the books I read when I am ill or unhappy or just suffering from an overload of world misery. I keep it to the first three because nothing really bad happens in them. My favourite characters aren't culled from the plot and the stories are more about fun than saving the world.

I love the imagination that went into creating the wizard world - pumpkin juice, butter beer, every flavour beans, pictures that move and owl's delivering mail. I know there are similarities between this series and Jill Murphy's The Worst Witch, but it doesn't make their world's any less enjoyable. I love them both.

In this book Harry Potter learns he's a wizard, gets sent off to Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, makes friends, eats lots of good food, makes enemies, flies on a broom and encounters a misunderstood villian who really just wants to be loved - Voldemort. Fun.