Paperback swap
I just joined the group Paperback Swap to get rid of some of my crappy old books. One of the first on the list was Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix. That's the one with the blue cover. It was the only Harry Potter book I ever read so it's probably my fault that I read them out of order, but I just thought it was so boring! And I love that kind of stuff, like witches and magic and other dimensions we can't see. I think when authors are writing books they know are in a series, they get lazy in the middle of it.

oh, ginger! you know better than that. you fall in love with the characters in the first books of a series and then you care what happens in the others. plus, order of the phoenix is such a frustrating book. i may insist that you try starting over with number 1. you'll know by about page 10 that you totally missed out. In fact, you can read those tomorrow during a lull:)
as a shameless harry potter cult follower, my heart just died a little reading this.