I think the best part of this for me is that I never once heard people refer to it as 'Harry Potter and the Excruciatingly Long Camping Trip' until after the first time I read it, and it was far easier for me to not immediately feel negatively about it going in. I'm pretty sure if I'd heard it called that prior, I would've been a bit set against its structure at the outset. As it stands, the first time I read the book was after the eighth movie (or 7B) came out. In fact, I'd read the entire series after each of the movies because I wanted to see if I'd understand them at all without having read the text.

Unsurprisingly, only two movies held up and were actual functioning stories instead of being Pretty Scenes With Interesting Fights Set in Magic Land (3 to 7B had a rubbish narrative for anyone without prior knowledge of the books). I remember spending a ridiculous amount of time asking why something'd happened and not knowing why because the necessary plot was lost in favour of one of the visually superfluous scenes (that are only really necessary in writing).

Anyway, that aside, having had such a negative experience with the movie (which really was the camping trip that wouldn't stop), it made the book that much more enjoyable when you actually found out the purpose of all the time spent in the various forests, of all the events that took place while they were in hiding, of the Hunt for the Horcruxes (which just felt like it poofed out of nowhere into the movies, it seemed), and how there was the pull between the Horcruxes or Hallows.

The internal and external debates between going after something that would, on the surface, weaken himself and his opponent (the Horcruxes) while not ever really seeming to gain power or going after the powerful Hallows was something that really only could've been done in the constant camping, the constant moving, the constant information gathering, etc. The realisation that people still supported Harry (overhearing the people in the woods, the messages of support on his parents' home) and the confidence that it inspired was something that really could only be gained from going into hiding.

And finally, in this one book, we are rid of the major issue for me: The fact that we're not in Hogwarts for much of it, so you don't have to deal with much of the "This is definitely a dangerous place, and I don't understand why people send their kids here."

But there are two things I absolutely am bored by: 1. How certain characters die. (I don't mind that Remus and Tonks died, but it's the way they're exhibited in the narrative as being dead. It just felt like an after-thought to change the next bit.) 2. The inclusion of the '19 years later' chapter, which feels like it totally ruins what the story tried to do. It also makes some characters look ludicrously daft, like naming your child after Snape despite the fact he only swapped sides because the woman he 'loved' died, and he... didn't care if her husband and child died as long as he got her? No, gross. Honestly, the only characters I would've been interested in 19-years later would've been Neville and Luna (who should've had a lot more time devoted to them in the novels, but that's just my preference).