It's definitely Harry Potter season, with book seven less than a month away and movie five close too. The local library had to pull all Harry Potter books out of storage because they kept having to send employees down into the storage bowels to retrieve them. Heaps of them are piled on a table right inside the main entrance. I'm finishing up the CDs of book three and went to reserve book four. Oops! With book three I was number 8 on the list and it took only days to get. This time I'm number 56! Looks like I'm not the only one doing a refresher. I'll never make it through now!
   I'm glad to revisit though. I've gotten used to thinking only of the movie versions, but the books have all kinds of cool stuff the movies don't, and the characters, especially Ron and Hermione, are more richly drawn. In the books they are heroic but very flawed, which is more interesting. I still have that sense that I did back in my first read, that the characters are written very age-appropriate in term of how they behave. It is instructive and makes me want to be careful with my own young characters.
   While waiting, I'm going to be listening to The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, soon to be a major motion picture. I listened to the first ten minutes or so and was immediately turned off because the book is acted by different actors. I wasn't expecting it! Hopefully I will get into it when I try again. After three Harry Potters I've gotten used to the same voice talent doing different accents and the like. My favorite voice in the third one is Professor Lupin.

 

What did you think of this article?

Liked
Disliked
No Opinion