I've finished reading the Harry Potter series. I've known about them for years, but it was one of those things that was so ubiquitous that I hated it on general principle. Everyone and their mom read those books, and I didn't get in on the ground floor, so I set my mind against it and refused to read the books or see the movies. That was all good until I fell in love with a girl who was a total Harry Potter nerd. I gave in willingly, saw the first few movies and liked them enough to read the books.
We meet Harry at 11 years old, orphaned, living with his aunt, uncle, and cousin, boorish, insensitive people who make Harry sleep in a closet under the stairs. He has no idea that he is a wizard, or that his name is famous among wizards as the Boy Who Lived. He doesn't know that his parents died for him, that he survived and even got the better of an attack by a Dark Wizard so powerful that none dared speak his name. Like Luke Skywalker, he finds that he is part of a larger and far more exciting world than he'd ever known, and that his destiny is to take up arms in the epic battle between good and evil.
By the beginning of the last book, Harry is nearly grown up, a powerful wizard with 2 close friends, also wizards, who would lay down their lives for him in a heartbeat. He sets off on a quest for several magical objects whose destruction is the only way to finally kill Lord Voldemort. Does he do it? I'm sure you know, but I won't tell you, because if there's a chance you have not read these books, you must go out now and read them immediately.
It's always sort of annoyed me that in bookstores the 'fantasy' is grouped in with the 'sci-fi.' I know there are a lot of similarities in the genres, but they feel different to me. Spaceships, aliens, faster-than-light travel, all these are so much more interesting to me that wizards, dragons, and magic spells. This is still true, but there's something different about Harry and his world. It's a world where the good guys are good, and you can always count on your friends to stick up for you, or to stand up to you when it's necessary. It's a world where the bad guys are bad, but their underestimation of the power of love and mistaking it for weakness is their downfall.
Politically, it's relevant. We see the British penchant for bureaucracy and how its self-serving incompetence keeps in the dark and in danger the people it is supposed to protect. We see the media in bed with the government, not running news stories as much as smear jobs on the current enemy of the people.
Getting lost in Harry's world is like nothing else. For the last month and a half, I rushed outside on all my breaks at work, looking forward to reading another 3 pages before I had to go back to my crappy job. Harry kept me company at work, at play, late nights when I would sit outside and just read until the sun came up. Now I can't say whether I'd feel the same if I had found them on my own, whether it's Jodi's love for this story that magnifies my own, but I suspect that I would have fallen in love with the Boy Who Lived years ago if I'd given him a chance.
We meet Harry at 11 years old, orphaned, living with his aunt, uncle, and cousin, boorish, insensitive people who make Harry sleep in a closet under the stairs. He has no idea that he is a wizard, or that his name is famous among wizards as the Boy Who Lived. He doesn't know that his parents died for him, that he survived and even got the better of an attack by a Dark Wizard so powerful that none dared speak his name. Like Luke Skywalker, he finds that he is part of a larger and far more exciting world than he'd ever known, and that his destiny is to take up arms in the epic battle between good and evil.
By the beginning of the last book, Harry is nearly grown up, a powerful wizard with 2 close friends, also wizards, who would lay down their lives for him in a heartbeat. He sets off on a quest for several magical objects whose destruction is the only way to finally kill Lord Voldemort. Does he do it? I'm sure you know, but I won't tell you, because if there's a chance you have not read these books, you must go out now and read them immediately.
It's always sort of annoyed me that in bookstores the 'fantasy' is grouped in with the 'sci-fi.' I know there are a lot of similarities in the genres, but they feel different to me. Spaceships, aliens, faster-than-light travel, all these are so much more interesting to me that wizards, dragons, and magic spells. This is still true, but there's something different about Harry and his world. It's a world where the good guys are good, and you can always count on your friends to stick up for you, or to stand up to you when it's necessary. It's a world where the bad guys are bad, but their underestimation of the power of love and mistaking it for weakness is their downfall.
Politically, it's relevant. We see the British penchant for bureaucracy and how its self-serving incompetence keeps in the dark and in danger the people it is supposed to protect. We see the media in bed with the government, not running news stories as much as smear jobs on the current enemy of the people.
Getting lost in Harry's world is like nothing else. For the last month and a half, I rushed outside on all my breaks at work, looking forward to reading another 3 pages before I had to go back to my crappy job. Harry kept me company at work, at play, late nights when I would sit outside and just read until the sun came up. Now I can't say whether I'd feel the same if I had found them on my own, whether it's Jodi's love for this story that magnifies my own, but I suspect that I would have fallen in love with the Boy Who Lived years ago if I'd given him a chance.
1 comment:
i have yet to read any other book that takes me so far away from reality, to somewhere enjoyable, comforting, and entertaining to be. but it's more than an escape. it's an involvement with the characters, the mystery..the creativity of jkrowlings ever expanding universe. and who can say, that as a child, they didn't wish for an invisibility cloak.
ah habibee :)
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