ridicully | I'm so easy to amuse

Urgh!

*Crawls onto chair in front of screen*

The first day of the intensive work week is always bad but I had to volunteer to take the afternoon shift too.
It wouldn't have been so bad if I had eaten more than a slice of bread with cheese in the morning. I had no time to eat till I got home and while I can live with a stomach loudly complaining, I can't live with the rest of my body suddenly deciding to refuse to work properly when I'm trying to get a horse to run beside me.
And shaking hands are extremely irritating when you're trying to inject something into a vein!

Ok, I'm whining again.
Time to stop it.

But when I've got to concentrate on other things some ideas in my head finally settle down - so I identified my problem with OotP:

There's no story.

I was asked what happens in the book and all I could say was "Ummmh, Harry has these dreams and there's this prophecy and then somebody dies - that's it mostly."

My problem is not the characterization, or any scene if you take it on it's own, it's just that there's a lot happening but it has no real connection to the main story arc.
I like the characters - I want to hit Harry and strangle Dumbledore, but they're believable. (Harry's just 15 and angry and Dumbeldore only human)
I like what's happening - Fred and George and the rescue mission seem a little too over the top for me, but they work with the rest of goings on.
I like the darkness - the feeling that everybody makes mistakes, the humanization of idols, the helplessness.

It's just the first time that I really feel to understand this book I have to read the following two too. I get a WIP feeling that the others didn't have. While there was a connection between the first four books, I belive this to be the first one that could not stand on it's own.

I love it when I worked something like that out. Now I can read positive and negative comments without always going "Yes, that's right - Ah no, that is right."

One may call it pathetic that I'm so dependent on finding a proper formulation for my feelings and impressions before I can really discuss them, but I've always felt more at home when I've got facts to rely on.

Oh great, psychology for dummies, I don't even want to think about what a professional would make of this statement.