Hello! This is my first blog at Candlemonk and I thought that it would be appropriate if I started with Harry Potter, although I don't know why. It just seemed the right thing to do.
I started watching Harry Potter movies when I was 7 or 8 I guess, the first time at my grandma's house with my cousin. I had already watched the first four parts before I could get hold of the books. I remember that once my friend and I had watched HP movies from the first to third part the whole day on Pogo channel. They had telecasted these movies, again and again, the whole week, and I had watched them every single time.
My brother bought me all the Harry Potter books. The first time, he bought 'Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix', the fifth part. I thought that I could follow as I had watched all the prequels, but no. Couldn't make the head and tail of it. There are two reasons for that. One, the films don't cover each and every part of the book, and two, I was 10 years old, and naturally, my English wasn't so good that I could understand J.K Rowling's writing.
Finally, after 2 years, he bought the first part, and from there started the epic journey into the wizarding world and of course, Hogwarts. Harry's friends became my friends and his enemies, mine. The movies started to feel incomplete to me. They couldn't arouse my excitement as they did before. It's not their fault, it's a Herculean task trying to fit a book of around 600 pages into a two-and-a-half-hour movie.
If you ask which one is my favorite out of all the Potter books, I'd say 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', part 7. It has everything a Potter fan needs, a beautiful plot, answers to all those 'why?'s in the previous books, so many moments that made me cry, and most of all, made me feel terribly guilty for what I thought about one particular person (Trying not to give out spoilers here, but the Potterheads will understand.)
For the least favorite, I'd go for 'Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix'. You'd think that I didn't like it because it's not good, but that's not the thing. I liked it, but not loved it because Harry suffers horribly in it from the first till the end. I felt so bad that I had stopped reading it in the middle and continued it after a long gap.
J.K.Rowling pulled a huge crowd towards her books and made them read. There is a complaint that children read only Harry Potter books and their reading habit ends there. In my defense, children, enthused by the Potter books, might start reading other fiction works and once you get the taste of happiness you get in reading, it's likely to stay with you forever. Also, even if your child's reading starts and ends at Harry Potter, just be happy that your kid has read some books at least!
I've read and reread all the books of the series three to four times (That's all? some Potterheads would say) and still read some chosen chapters which I love when I get bored. Maybe these books are the only things in the world that I will never get bored of. All credits go to J.K.Rowling, who created a whole new world which all fans like me crave to be a part of, in a literal sense. Her views on the world could be problematic, but we don't have to discredit the Harry Potter books for that.
How many of you have daydreamed of getting into Hogwarts?
