Becoming a Harry Potter fan

Wow! My first ever blog! I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. This blog will be about being new to Harry Potter and the experiences that come with that.

I am just past the one year mark of when I first picked up “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” I would like to start this by telling you how I came to be introduced and obsessed with Harry Potter. I have always worked around children, and my cousin was about 11 when the first book came out, so I was exposed to Harry Potter a little from that. I love to read and always have a book in my hand but I thought that is was just a children’s book and movies for children. (By the way, it upsets me when people say that now!) So, I knew a little about Harry Potter and had watched the first movie and bits and pieces of the second and third. In spring of 2007 a friend, who is my same age, recommended the series to me. I was still skeptical and didn’t read the books, even though she kept insisting that I do.

Until last year I taught a Bible study group for high school girls. (They have since graduated.) We had a special retreat every summer and I would always try to make it extra fun. Having success with a ” Pirates of the Caribbean” theme the year before I was looking for something else current that we could do. I was at the bookstore when I found a copy of “Finding God in Harry Potter.” and knew that my girls loved Harry Potter even though they were now 18 years old. So, I bought it and incorporated it into our retreat. After reading the book, which explained many of the Christian meanings and themes in the books, I was already hooked, even though I hadn’t read any of the actual Harry Potter books yet. The day after our retreat I went and got “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer˜s Stone.” This happened around the first of August, after the last book was published. From then until the middle of November I read all the books 1 through 7. I already knew after the third book that I was going to be hooked so I actually started pacing myself back then and only allowed myself to read 3 chapters every night because I knew I would be sad when I got to the last book and it was all over. I would usually make it almost to the end of a book and then break down and stay up really late to finish it.

I ordered each movie after I’d read the book. In the middle of reading the series I got online one night, not being able to sleep, and typed in Harry Potter to see what would come up. I went to J.K. Rowling’s site first and spent forever on there and then when I found the fan sites that were listed on her web site I went to check them all out. I liked The Leaky Cauldron the best, and soon began looking through everything they had and checking it several times a day. I also found youtube at this time and began watching any and all interviews of the cast from the movies. After I finished the last book, I immediately started re-reading them all again. Incidentally because of my obsessiveness, I know WAY too much about anything Harry Potter, not to say I know anywhere near it all since I am still a relative newcomer. My friends who actually read the books or have seen the movies are very gracious and rarely tell me to stop talking about random things Harry Potter. I have also, on occasion, mentioned a few things to my friends who aren’t into Potter, hoping to convert them. So that, in a nutshell, is how this chick became a giant Harry Potter fan.