My Favorite Books: Part 2. The Harry Potter Series

Greetings from Roma! This is my fifth full day in Rome, Italy, and I’m finally updating this blog, and more specifically, my long and laborious 7 part post on my absolute favorite books! In case you’re dying to know why I haven’t posted about Italy on this blog yet, since I have been here a full five days, I shall kindly direct your attention to my Fraternal-Twin-Blog (it’s not really a sister site, since I am the sole contributer to both of them…) at 

www.juliaromesitalia.blogspot.com

I know, I know. I misled you in the previous post. Well, if you’re my friend on Facebook, you’re aware that I mislead people about blog posts all the time. I keep promising specific updates and then I ignore my self-imposed deadlines and update at other, sporadic moments. For this, I apologize. In a perfect world, I would follow through on my promised updates in a timely fashion, but apparently I cannot blog in a perfect world and the world keeps getting in the way. I am sorry about this, though, since I don’t like breaking promises.

However, this is not exactly the reason I have kept my exciting Italian stories from you. The true reason is as follows: I realized that if I post about Italy and also post about my books, life, and additional things during these five weeks in Italy as often as I want to, I’ll end up posting blog entries every two or three days. Maybe even more often!

But Julia, I imagine you saying (if you are thoroughly engrossed in my admittedly not very interesting explanation), I would love for you to post every few days! My life is a miserable, empty wasteland interrupted solely by the shining beacon of your blog posts!

Well, devoted (and perhaps a bit obsessive) reader, I appreciate your dedication! But I realized that for the rest of you who feel a bit less obsessed, you might not check my blog every few hours, wishing desperately for a new post. You might, in fact, not check the blog very often at all! Thus, if I write three or four new posts a week, you might miss some of them, and then both you and I would be very, very sad.

My solution: post Italy posts on my Travel Blog (which I’m mainly writing for my Honors class. If I wasn’t required to keep a Travel Blog for this study abroad, I’d end up posting all of them here anyway, multiple updates a week be damned) and supply one or two posts mostly unrelated to Italy on this blog each week! And if you want to hear about Italy, you can check that blog! And if you don’t care about how glorious and magnificent Italy is, you can just read this blog! And if you love me a lot and hang on my every word to give your life meaning, you can read both of them! And comment! Fill me with your favorable (or less than favorable, if that is the case) opinions! I thrive on those in addition to pasta and gelato.

Anyway, enough about that. On to the true meat of this post, part 2 of 7 of My Favorite Books!

If you read my last book post, which can easily be found at this link, you already know that often I consider a series as a single book, at least for the sake of “favorites.” I am of the opinion that the value of a character, setting, story, or writer caries through an entire series. If a single book in a series is of a lesser quality, it diminishes the value of the group as a whole, much like a chipped diamond in an otherwise perfect engagement ring. This is not to say that there are series where I prefer some installments to others, but rather to explain how I get away with ranking a series as a single item on a list of preferred books.

You also know if you read my last blog post that I found it so difficult to narrow my favorite books into a workable but short list that I had to include an additional list of Runner Up books. I consider these the Honorable Mention All Star Cast of books (if you are familiar with the Texas UIL One Act competition, which I remember fondly enough to include a description of in a future post, you’ll understand my distinction). The next four books/series, in no particular order, make up my All Star Cast of books. Today’s post, of course, focuses on just one of the four. If I included them all in one post, as I did with my Honorable Mentions, the post would run approximately eight thousand pages and I would spend all five weeks working on it and you would all probably get very angry with my lack of updates. Also, I promised you seven posts in total, and seven is what you shall get.

Enough of my mindless chatter; on with the review. As I said, the next four posts do not rank these books in any particular order, because they all have wonderful redeeming qualities that constantly surpass each other.

If you read the title of this post, you’d already know that this post is about the wonderful series by J.K. Rowling: the Harry Potter series. I know this is a popular and rather cliche choice, but bear with me. If you made it this far into the post, you either don’t mind that I’m talking about Harry Potter, or you didn’t read the title and I’m about to lose a reader. If the latter happens to apply to you, please don’t turn away yet! Even if you hate the Harry Potter books with every fiber of your being, I urge you to at least listen to what I have to say about these books. If they hadn’t had an enormously positive influence on my life, I wouldn’t be talking about them here. And if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably my friend in reality (if not, hi! Thanks for visiting the blog! I hope you find it enjoyable!) and you happen to like me, so you’ve seen that these books haven’t turned me into a monster or a Wiccan (not that I have anything against Wiccans). So at least give this post a chance; maybe I’ll even convince you that these books are worth a chance as well.

In order to explain how these books impacted me, I have to explain a little bit about my past. (Yay! Flashbacks! Insert spooky flashback music here!) As an only child, I spent a fair amount of time sitting in my room with a book. There weren’t a whole lot of children in my neighborhood, and books soon became my best friends. This was my form of escapism — in the company of books, I was no longer stuck in At-Least-It-Ain’t-I’m-Not-Sure-What-The-Weather-Is-Right-Now-Because-I’m-In-Rome, alone in my bedroom while my real friends were busy. I was in the worlds of my fictive friends, slaying dragons and battling dark lords like a true champion.

The realm of Harry Potter was one of the best to explore. It had everything: a fascinating world, intelligent and interesting children my age, admirable adult figures (in addition to mysterious, untrustworthy ones), the everlasting battle between Good and Evil, and of course, a fantasy favorite — magic. A fan of fantasy novels already, I fell in love with the detailed universe Rowling created.

I will admit, at first I was reluctant to read these novels. When these books first came out, I was in the childhood stage where books about boys were gross and uninteresting. I didn’t start reading the books until right after the third book in the series was released, and it wasn’t entirely of my own volition that I was introduced to the wonderful magical world.

I need you all to take an oath right now, dear readers. I need you to promise not to mock me for what I am about to tell you, because I don’t consider what I am about to reveal embarrassing or mock-worthy. I am not ashamed by this truth, and if you attempt to mock me about this information, I will simply laugh in your face and continue on my way past your shocked and dispirited form. So this oath is for your protection, not mine. Do you swear? Good.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here is my big reveal: my father read books to me almost every night of my life up through high school. I can’t remember exactly the year when this became simply too problematic to continue because of my nights spent studying instead of relaxing, but I remember it lasted past my fifteenth birthday.

Often, looking forward to the next read-aloud chapter was the best part of my day. I’d spend my day trying to imagine what would come next, and in the evenings (if I wasn’t already in bed) would sometimes sit beside my dad and alternate reading character’s lines. Some of my favorite books became my favorites because my first exposure to them was the nightly reading with Dad. My mom would sometimes join us, and together we explored many books, ranging from classic novels to fun, silly contemporary ones. We explored high and low literature, and traversed the worlds together.

My father is the reason I started reading the Harry Potter books. One day, on his drive home from work, he stopped by the bookstore, looking for a new book to start for the night. We’d finished a book the previous night (what it was, I can’t remember, because Harry Potter eclipsed it) and saw the first three Harry Potter books on display. He’d recently read an article in Newsweek raving about the books, and so he bought hardbacks of the first two. He figured that we’d start with these, and if I liked them, he’d get the next one.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical. This was clearly a boy’s book. There was a boy on the cover, it mentioned sports (Quidditch was unfamiliar to me, but I had no interest in sports, since I was terrible at all of them, and it was definitely a sport), and it was based around a year at school. But Dad convinced me that it was worth trying, and that night, I fell in love. I think I was 8 or 9 years old when the magic first hit me.

I have distinct memories of sitting on our very old blue couch (long since replaced) in our Computer/Sewing Room, reading out loud the chapter featuring Harry’s first ride on the Hogwarts Express. I made Dad turn back a page after he’d finished a particularly long monologue in her voice, because the next page said she spoke very quickly, and Dad needed to try again. I have another memory of reading Hermione’s lines aloud, during the encounter with the troll.

We got through the first three books rather quickly, because I often demanded to hear several chapters a night. Mom was quite intrigued by the books as well, and we all gathered nightly to read about Harry and friends. The waits for the next four books were unbearable, but even though the seventh book came out when I was in high school, we read it the same way we read the others: a chapter at a time, and always out loud. No matter where we were, this was how the books were read. (Occasionally, Mom grew impatient and during the day would take the books and read ahead or finish them, but Dad and I never did, although sometimes I took a peak at the next few pages, unable to wait for the evening.) Soon after the fifth book came out, we took a flight to Minnesota, and my dad read chapters aloud on the plane; other people were clutching the book as well and listened along.

This was an incredibly slow way to read the books, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. While some fans and friends raced through the latest book in a single, sleepless night, I got to enjoy being immersed in Harry’s world for months longer. Sure, it meant that I didn’t know who won the ultimate battle in the last book until two months later than everybody else, but it was totally worth it. These books were of such quality and interest that they were worth savoring. I will admit to taking the books and devouring them a second and third time immediately upon finishing the final chapter out loud of each, though. And the books Dad and I read right after Harry Potter never seemed quite as good.

I would recommend these books to anyone who has a pulse. I never understood the religious negativity toward the books, as the main plot points were as archetypal as the stories in the Bible. Yes, there was evil magic, but there was also incredibly kind and good magic, and the distinction between them was not only clear, but a main point of the book itself! The book can clearly be summarized as the infinite struggle for good to triumph over the spreading evil, and I’m not sure why the incredibly antagonistic critics find such fault with this, unless they are generally in favor of evil winning in all life experiences that echo this struggle.

I fell in love with these books for multiple reasons, because Rowling crafted an incredible world. Her prose was compelling, and although she is admittedly not the number one writer who ever lived ever, she knows how to use words to tell a compelling story. Her story was complex but clear enough to last over seven books and thousands of pages; the average author cannot even begin to compete with that. Rowling’s first “adult” novel (while the Harry Potter Series was targeted at children, obviously it’s found an audience with every age group) comes out close to my next birthday, and I am already planning on pre-ordering and hiding from the world the weekend it comes out, so I can devour it without interruption. It may not live up to Harry Potter, but I enjoy her writing and so I already know I am likely to enjoy her next work.

In addition to the writing, I fell for every single one of Rowling’s characters. Hermione, in particular, resonated rather well with me. If you took away the music, I would essentially be Hermione (with a slightly less photographic memory). Bushy brown hair, more concerned with studies than appearances, a close-knit small group of friends since her dedication to knowledge apparently alienates the lesser but popular peers; I am Hermione and always have been. Hermione taught me that it is more than acceptable to be really smart and to be friends with boys and to fall in love with said boys and be better at things despite certain disadvantages like a non-magic upbringing (or a disability). I’m convinced that it is due to Hermione and the lovable Ron, who happens to be my second favorite character in this series (Hermione is my third, despite my reluctance to give my fictional twin a ranking, because that’s like ranking how much I love myself), that I have such a bizarre affinity toward red-headed men. Hermione taught me to accept and love who I am as much as I love her.

While Hermione is my fictional twin and Ron is my second favorite character in the Harry Potter series and on my list of top 5 characters of all time, my favorite character and one of the top reasons why I adore this series so much, is Professor Severus Snape.

Severus Snape is one of the best written characters in any book I’ve ever read. Rowling presents this mysterious man and all of his actions in perfect ambiguity unlike any I’ve encountered before or since. It takes six and a half books before the reader is finally certain of Snape’s true loyalties and motivations. In the meantime, his actions are so convoluted and confusing that the reader is left guessing and re-evaluating at every turn. Even if the final books had been complete crap (which they weren’t) I would have stuck through them merely to decipher Snape’s true nature. The movie producers also happened to cast him perfectly in the movies; Alan Rickman turns this sarcastic, judgmental character into a walking figure of charm, charisma, and appeal even as you want to despise him for how he treats Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Of course Rickman’s portrayal influenced my love of this character! But it merely served to enhance the love that was already there. Severus Snape holds and always will hold a special place in my heart, and his character alone makes this series worth reading.

If I haven’t yet convinced you to give these books a try (if you haven’t already devoured them), I have little else to impart. Some books aren’t for everyone, even those with awesome magic, true and powerful friendships, epic battles between the forces of good and evil, and well-developed characters and settings. But your opinion of the books can’t change their place on my list of My Favorite Books (The All Star Cast).

Well, I’d better get back to writing for my Creative Writing class. 500 words a day don’t exactly write themselves (although this post easily exceeded that sixfold).

Until next time, which should be fairly soon,

Julia