Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling

I've finally gotten around to reading the most recent installment of the Harry Potter series. A good 600 and so pages long, it didn't actually take too long to read, considering it was a book that I would pick up every so often, or read for short stints on the subway and such. Also, much like the last Harry Potter book, I wasn't too impressed.
As usual, the book takes you through a whole year of Harry's life at Hogwarts (sixth book = sixth year at school) and his daily academic life, his raging hormones for a girl, the game of quidditch and last but not least, all that stuff about trying to kill Voldemort.
From the third book onwards, I've been thinking that the main storyline gets stuck in the very last little section of the book. There's a lot of lead up to it, but for how important all the hard-core stuff is, I'm surprised that Rowling always leaves it until the very very end. I do have to admit though, when I finally got to that point in this book I, couldn't put it down, and I did my best attempt to become a speed reader.
I found the bulk of the book which is a series of discoveries of the past to be a little boring. I guess Rowling's trying to get you the reader to piece along the puzzle at the same time as Dumbledore and Harry are, but I found them to be very dull, and not actually very pertinent to the interesting bits at the end.
I was not expecting the ending to go as it did, although I forget who, but someone spoiled a major event of the book for me beforehand. I was also totally off base with my guess as to who the Half-Blood Prince was the whole time. It was nice to be wrong and surprised when it finally came out.
I'm excited for the last book to come out, because for the first time, while I don't have any predications, there's something in this book which makes you think about the next one. Builds the excitement, you know.
All in all, a good book. They're really backlogged on the movie making, which is a little annoying, so I hope I don't forget everything that happened in the series before the next movie/book comes out.

-picture courtesy of www.chapters.indigo.ca