This is the SPOILERS discussion thread for the GWC Harry Potter Book Club installment #5: HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX.
For those who have NOT READ THE BOOK OR THE SERIES BEFORE: This thread may contain spoilers for later books. If you would like to discuss the book in a spoiler-free environment, PM me and I’ll set up the thread.
This is my favorite of the series. I’ve dug out the wife’s copy and started it already 
I thought I wasn’t going to get to this before I came back to the States, but I had forgotten that spouse has English copies of the last 3 books here… so comments to come!
This is my favorite of the series too. Though Prisoner of Azkaban comes a fairly close second in my opinion.
I think what I like most about it is that the action isn’t as sharply focused on Harry alone, but rather it’s more loosely centric around Harry as he leads the DA to rebel against Umbridge and fight Voldemort and his cronies. I also like a lot of the characters that get introduced in this book – especially Tonks and Luna and the additional quirkiness they add to the cast.
So I finished my reread in an idyllic frontier region where goat cheese was common and to get cow cheese you had to drive into another town half an hour away… but I digress.
OotP was always one of my least favorites of the series - Harry’s whining always bothered me, as I whine a lot but have little patience for the whining of others :p. However this time through it didn’t grate as much. I do absolutely love the DA and everything about it, though. Sirius’s dying this time around didn’t bother me as much as the other rereads, either.
Re-reading this with the knowledge of the whole series, though, doesn’t really help me illuminate things series-wise as much as with the earlier books. Thoughts on that?
The GF lost interest in the series with this one. She was put off by Harry as well.
Order of the Phoenix is my least favorite book. Harry’s mood swings bother me everytime I read it. My favorite part of the book is the DA meetings and Neville finally start coming into his own. His improving skills and he shows real courage and loyalty to Harry and the DA. A foreshadowing of what we see from him in Deathly Hallows.
sounds like we’re in the same camp - it goes along with what wavilyem said about this one fleshing out some of the other characters more - Neville’s great (I’d totally want to be Neville’s friend!), Luna’s awesome, Ginny speaks, etc etc.
I find it interesting how polarized we seem to be on OotP. Maybe it’s because I find Harry’s whining/standing up against the ministry justified given what he went through in the last book, but I guess we just have different tastes.