Word: blissed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Rowling knows better than to fix what ain't broke, and Phoenix begins as the previous books have: the long, hot summer, the hopelessly unmagical, unforgivably bourgeois Dursleys, the longed-for magical summons, the hasty packing and finally--bliss--Platform 9 3/4 and on to another year at Hogwarts. But a lot has changed. Death, which was always part of the subtext of Rowling's story, burst out into the open in the previous novel, and the atmosphere in Phoenix has darkened accordingly. Voldemort is back, and Hogwarts' sage headmaster Aldus Dumbledore has organized some of the wizarding world...
...Whichever side of the river you're on, Goa is where visitors have always sought exotic bliss. It's a Macau or a New Orleans?a weird cultural cocktail of its own devising; and like Macau it was a Portuguese colony, until 1962 when the Indian government annexed...
...Bliss it is not to be young in Hong Kong. Unemployment is at a record high, there are deadly epidemics at your doorstep, and worst of all, there's the nagging sense that everything was better before. In another country, that could be a potent formula for some gritty, nihilistic youth culture. In Hong Kong you get the Twins...
...times like these, people get predictably touchy-feely. Whether evocative of bliss or misery, the word “Harvard” will probably carry a great deal of emotional baggage for you from this point on. Getting emotional is understandable. But people tend to get overly contemplative when they do so, and therein lies a danger. Anyone who has ever read a novel or watched a film—or at least those of us with even a shred of imagination—will spend at least a few moments casting himself as the protagonist...
...rest of one’s life away from the Ivy Tower. Instead of discussing the night terrors precipitated by these thoughts, I have an overwhelming, Billy Madison-esque, Ferris Bueller-ish urge to tell my younger readers (including any literate pre-frosh out there) to enjoy their ignorant bliss while they still can. The future comes far too quickly and the last thing you want is to be caught with your pants down. Unless, of course, exotic dancing is what you had planned all along...