Jody Amable

I'm 30 years old and stuck in San Jose, the hometown I always wanted to leave. What happened?

I was waiting to finally not like a Harry Potter book, and folks, I found it. Half-Blood Prince was boring.

Forget a cute story of wizard wonderment — the real moral of Harry Potter is that life is an endless parade of pain and turmoil where you have to watch everyone you’ve ever loved die.

The further I get into this series, the harder time I am having remembering what the eff has happened so far. You see, I am an Old Lady.

Harnessing the courage within myself—courage I didn’t even know I had—to coolly, calmly call this guy out has made me a better human being.

If I let everyone off the hook for extenuating circumstances like, “He’s over 50, so he probably just doesn’t know any better,” no one’s ever going to stop calling me “sweetie.”

There are a lot of things to hate about the Olympics.

So far, Deathly Hallows is, to me, about the divide between the living, the dead, and the living who have seen death. Harry and I are part of an exclusive club: Those under 30 who have experienced death. And when I say “experienced,” I don’t mean “witnessed.” I mean really, really felt it, all the way through.

The neighbors turned their lights off. My dog fell sound asleep. I kept reading. And at 1:03 am, I finished. All was well.

Jon Stewart, step aside. Your heir apparent has arrived.