Thursday, February 10, 2011

30 by 30, #14: Read all the Harry Potter books again.

In case you aren't familiar with the 30 by 30 Project, here is the original post, with the big fat list.

Um, spoiler alert? Is there anyone out there who hasn't read Harry Potter and is still planning to? If that is you, you should skip over this post. And if that is you, why on earth haven't you read it before now?!

Anyway. So I thought it would be great to go back and read HP from start to finish now that we have all the answers from the 7th book. See all the little references made in book 5 that we don't understand until book 7, that sort of thing. And I especially wanted to re-read it with Snape's motives in mind. And Dumbledore's, too.

Ohhh, it was good. I love Harry Potter. For the past couple of weeks I've been "Potterized" you might say. And it was so fun to catch all the little things, like I hoped I would. But the most surprising thing? I remembered practically nothing from book 7. Like, seriously, it was a whole new book. I only read it once, the day after it came out, and I read it fast so I could know what happened. Turns out that method is not optimal for retention of knowledge. But, on the upside, I got to read it again like it was a brand new book! All the excitement! The suspense! The feeling that every spare moment of your life must be dedicated to reading! that! book! There are Deathly Hallows! What are those again? And we're hunting horcruxes. . . what were they? The ring, the diary. . . what else? And how did they find them? I was surprised at every turn. They broke into Gringotts?! REALLY?! How did I not remember that? It was all terribly exciting.

Probably less exciting for my poor children, who got noticeably less Mom time. But we all survived. Even Harry. Though, I must say, I think I cried a whole lot more while reading book 7 than I did the first time around. I'm such a baby.

And now I can focus on the other 8 books I've got to read by August, which are somewhat weightier, and will definitely take more time. Ah well, they can't all be Harry Potter.

3 comments:

Judy said...

You've made some great goals! I loved reading all the HP books at once. I've read them all at least twice, and I think I'm ready to read them again - maybe in the summer. Happy reading.

Em said...

I FINALLY read the Harry Potter series right after Zach was born. I never liked the movies much and I thought I'd like them more after I'd read the books. I was wrong. Brian and I have slowly made our way through the first six movies and they're still not my favorite. But I did thoroughly enjoy the books. And I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who didn't retain much from book seven.

Brian was asking me to summarize how it all ends, and I did my best but I couldn't answer questions like "does Harry kill Voldemort?" Um....Voldemort definitely dies. Harry and Voldemort definitely circle each other and monologue. "How does he die?" I can't remember exactly. "How can you forget that part?! It's the most important part of the book!" Of course, it is a bit more pathetic on my part seeing as I finished it just over a month ago.

One of the side effects of reading a novel years after the rest of the world, it that it's harder to find people excited to talk about it. I had lots of Harry Potter talk built up. A side effect being that you get this ridiculously long comment on you blog because you happen to bring up Harry Potter.

Shanny said...

Emilie, anytime you want to talk Harry Potter I'm game. Has Brian not read the books? Tell him to get on it!