***Because I got hate in the comments for OMG swearing in a children's book review (which I get, I guess...), DON'T READ THIS IF YOU ARE UNDER 18. Happy now, everyone?***

Well, I did it. I FINALLY read my first Harry Potter book...and in the same year as its 20th anniversary no less.

But better late than never, no?

Annnnd I already ordered the illustrated hardback.
And asked for the full hardcover set for Christmas.
From my dad.
Because nothing says, “I’m a thirty-fucking-five-year-old adult” like asking Daddy for Harry Potter for Christmas.

#TeamDumbledore

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I have a confession to make.

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I have never read Harry Potter.



Yes, yes, I know...this is akin to reader sacrilege.

But I just had no interest in these books when they came out. I was too busy reading about men in kilts fucking the milkmaid.

Therefore, my only experience with "Hermione" is the SNL skit where Lindsey Lohan shows Harry and that other scarfed dude her ginormous tatas.

  

Well, what with everyone going ape shit over the newest installment, I figure I should probably find out what all this Hogwart's business is about.

And since my friend's 9 year old demanded that I read his copy, I now have the paperback in my possession.

Hoping to get starting this week...

The first HP novel is already a classic. I have read it in the original English and the (slightly disappointing IMHO) French translation because my kid, just a few months after starting reading, plunged head first into this book and only resurfaced after the last one. I never made it past the 3td book but admittedly really enjoyed this book. It is the most light-hearted and funny of the series despite the darkness of the One Who Cannot Be Named. The universe created by Rowling is one of the most complete and compelling ones ever for kids - that I will freely admit. I obviously would love to witness a quiddich match and go to a class dealing with mandrakes and eat in that fabulous dining hall. That being said, it seems to be quite a lonely life - the idealisation in a sense of pensions for kids of rich (or in this case) magical families is perhaps a tad disturbing when you want to be a more hands-on parent and these parents apparently have no issue with only seeing their kids on holidays and during the summer. I am not sure I could do that, but that is just me perhaps.

An extremely entertaining and memorable tale that my kids both adored in both book and movie form!

Just finished reading HP1 aloud to my son in English and found it to be very enjoyable. The plot does stick together, the characters are endearing (I love Ron's little side remarks about Hermione in the beginning), and the imagination Rowling deployed to create this magical universe is astounding. I cannot believe that this first book is already 20 years old! It has really aged well. I cannot really point to any weaknesses at all. It was entertaining and a pure joy to share with my son - his first time through in English! I believe I will set a 2017-2018 goal to finish all 7 books this time around! Finished #2 on audiobook so on to Azkaban now.

A re-read for me, this time with my son (who is very reluctant to read anything). This took such a long time, but we finally finished it after months and months, and he's rated it 5 stars! Good grief, if Harry Potter doesn't get him into reading, what hope have I got

This is where it all began, where we were introduced to Harry Potter, Rowling's magical world, a series of exciting adventures and the excellent characters and environments she has given to English literature. It set the standard for contemporary fantasy. Rowling make full use of classic literary and mythological references, freeing herself from the confines of the merely topical, while giving it all a daring sense of newness. This series will live forever.


=============================EXTRA STUFF

Just came across this opinion piece in the NYT re why it is cool for adults to be as smitten with HP as with books not written for a YA audience. - Why Grown-Up Muggles Should Read ‘Harry Potter’ - by David Busis - JUNE 26, 2017

May 6, 2020 - Came across this today. Celebs reading the series on video, beginning with Harry, himself, Daniel Radcliffe. What could be better? - Chapter One: 'The Boy Who Lived'

¡La de veces que yo he releído Harry Potter y me sigue gustando tanto como la primera vez! Ahora, el haber releído el libro en inglés, cosa que nunca había hecho, y en su versión ilustrada me tiene alucinando, de verdad. Cosas tan pequeñas como los acentos de los personajes y algunas palabras escritas en su versión británica y no americana me enamoraron <3.

Sigo pensando que nunca es tarde para leer Harry Potter, o incluso para releerlo. Esta historia me trajo muchísimos recuerdos de la época en la que me sabía el nombre de cada capítulo, de cada personaje y de cada punto y cada coma que aparecía en sus páginas... Recordé cómo esperábamos súper impacientes cada nuevo libro, cada película, porque queríamos saber más de las aventuras de Harry, queríamos volver a ese mundo mágico lejos de los Muggles, queríamos volver a Hogwarts.

Releyendo este libro entiendo por qué Harry logró crearse un espacio en mi corazón y por qué nunca se va a ir de allí tenga la edad que tenga.

Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home

I'm not going to comment on the literary shortcomings of this book, the cliches, the painfully long narrative, the fact that the characters will not think about an issue for months, but then suddenly it becomes important again. Smarter people than me have already said all this.

What bothers me about the Harry Potter universe is its characterization of magic. Why is magic so easy in the Harry Potter universe? It's only moderately a matter of skill to use magic. Magic is mostly saying the correct word with the correct intonation and the correct flourish of the wand and boom! you've done something magical. If it were only for small things I don't think this would bother me so much, but the same works for more serious things, like killing someone.

There is so much that is contrary to logic (and I don't mean science, I mean how reasonable people would behave) in the magic of Harry Potter that it drives me crazy. Why is the magical world so separated from the real world? What is their interaction? If magic works in the muggle world, what is preventing someone like Voldemort from completely taking over the muggle world? What is preventing any character from killing any other character by simpling saying the killing curse at any time? Human decency? Obviously there are a lot of characters in the books that don't have any. This never made any sense to me.

I would like to draw a comparison with (and I'm sure people on a site about reading books will crucify me for mentioning TV, which is obviously incapable of being an art form) Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In Buffy, every time you use magic, you pay for it. For little things, like floating a pencil, you pay for it in concentration, and maybe a little physical energy, but not more than going for a walk. However, the more you take, the more you have to give back in one form or another. The show is not always entirely consistent on this, but the idea makes sense. To bring someone back from the dead, you have to kill something else, or pay some other kind of price. If you want to kill someone, there is a physical price, a mental price. Nothing is free. In Harry Potter, it seems like everything is free.

It's always put me off, and every time a fan tries to explain to me why I'm wrong it sounds like a deus ex machina, or just a plain old stretch.

Also, quidditch is the most pointless sport ever created. Only in 1 game out of 1000 does anything 99% of the action matter to the outcome of the game. Only the seeker and the bludgers mean anything.

n  Second Read Review: n

This is my second time reading this book. I still remember how I enjoyed it very much years ago when I read it for the first time. Like it was so magical and adventurous and I fell in love with the series right away after I finished reading the first book. So I decided to reread it this year because I miss all of the characters, the humor and the adventure. Moreover, this series also changed me. I wouldn't be the woman I am today without this series ( and also along with other books ).

I still liked the book, but I just felt like it wasn't as fun as I read it for the first time. When I began rereading this book, I still remembered the story and the events clearly, so that's probably why I didn't enjoy it like I used to. BUT I still liked it. It was fun and great!

My favorite scene in this book is when Harry, Hermione and Ron wanted to reach the Philosopher's Stone and then Ron and Harry were some kind of tangled or strangled? By a plant and the thing to save them was something that emanated warmth and suddenly Hermione said that there were no woods and Ron was angry and shouted whether she's a witch or not because she could easily conjure a spell to help them and I guess she forgot that she could do that and I honestly laughed out loud because it's so funny hahaha. Maybe Hermione was still getting used of being a witch

So I read the newest editions of the books that I’m going to collect. I have so many different collections I’ll probably add later. In these new books I actually love the art on all the pages instead of the interactive stuff. I put together a collage of a couple pages






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Where in shit’s ass is my review with all of the pics of the illustrations from the book in it!! Rat bastards!!

Anyhoo, reread on Audible

If you don’t know what a Muggle is by now, you’re either Rip van Winkle or enormously stubborn.

enormously stubborn...

yup, that shoe fits!

How can more than half of my Goodreads friends be wrong with this?

I have to get this right. As of this writing, I have 98 Goodreads friends. 61 (62%) of them have read J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Out of those who read this, 39 (64%) rated this with 5 stars. 11 of them with 4 stars. All the others gave 3 or 2. Only 2 rated this with 1 star. One of them admitted not being able to finish it. She should not have rated it really since she did not read its entirety. (But she is my friend and it is her right, so why question?)

When the book came out in 1998, I was not yet a bookworm so I brushed this aside. I read only those books that my brother told me to read. He was the bookworm but he would not be caught reading any book being pushed by media hype. However, when Warner Bros. released the film adaptation in 2001, my daughter was 6 years old and I thought that, since there was too much hype, the movie must be good and we would have a memorable time with our first ever father-daughter movie date. I was wrong. She not only got scared because of the darkness inside the movie house but she trembled with fear during the life-size human chess game, in that scene when Ron was sacrificed. We left the movie in that scene with my daughter crying and me cursing it: n  I will never read Harry Pottern.

My daughter is now 15 going 16. She is not fond of movies and she still does not show interest on reading Harry Potter. However, I am now a bookworm and the other week, I was with my 4 Goodreads friends and 3 of them raved (two of them, again) about Harry Potter books. Oh well, first-time fathers can make mistakes about first movie date with their daughters, Book 1 is included in 500 Must Read Books and the book must be a quick read. So the following day, I bought my copy.

After 13 years of the book's existence and me ignoring it, did I finally make a good decision of reading it? Are all of those 39 friends of mine in Goodreads wrong in giving this 5 stars? Most of them did not bother writing a review. Maybe those would be too long or maybe they read this when they were not in Goodreads yet. But I am in Goodreads already so I can make this review long.

These are what some of them say:

it was a great book
i enjoyed reading it

For an eloquent reviewer, she must have been too happy to express herself.

Such a great story and creative way of writing. I love Harry Potter.

Yes, I agree about the story being great and J. K. Rowling being creative.

I was secretly wishing I was studying in Hogwarts too! It was silly, but I was simply enraptured by Harry Potter. Honestly, I still am :) It was a great book. I enjoyed reading it

Coming from one of my favorite reviewers in Goodreads. I do not share her wanting to be a sorcerer though.

Honestly, I don't know anybody who'd refuse to even entertain the thought of attending a school for wizards.

Another one of my favorite reviewers. That seems to have nailed this. Young people wanting to be in Hogwarts and study sorcery. That should be it! The world seems to be a dreadful place that we would all like to have powers to turn our enemies into frogs, pigs, ride on a broomstick and get the Snitch and earn points (money) for our family!

Oh well, the Bible says that sorcery is Satan's work. The book even used the word Transfiguration as a subject in the sorcery school. Blasphemy.

Just kidding. This is a work of fiction and I am not too old to appreciate it. I was just kidding. To be frank, I tried hard not to like this. I thought that giving this a 1 or 2 will freak out my friends and somehow get votes from those who are, up to now, ignoring this book. I told you so! Why waste your time? . However, unless you are a grumpy old man/woman, there is nothing not to like about this book. I maybe too old for it but hey, talent is talent and J. K. Rowling has it!

My 39 friends are indeed right!

Auch nach über zwanzig Jahren hat Harry Potter nichts von seiner Faszination verloren. Es ist immer wieder schön, sich in diese ganz besondere Welt zu begeben und spannende Abenteuer zu erleben. Harry Potter ist auch eine der wenigen Reihen, die ich immer wieder lesen, hören und auch sehen kann, ohne dass es langweilig wird.