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Getting Into H.P. next 20 stories

My first exposure was to PoA a couple of years ago. It was my friend's daughter's 10th (I think) birthday and I was on the lookout for a decent gift. As she is a voracious reader and PoA had just been published, I decided to get her that, only to be told by her mother once I'd got the book home that she'd read it already. So, there I was with a book aimed at children that I wouldn't be able to palm off on anyone else. My niece was both too young for the book and also not a very avid reader and all of my other friends children were (I thought) too old.

It gathered dust on the shelf for a few months until the fateful day when I decided to open it to see what all the fuss was about. Four hours later, I put it down, finished, but not really understanding some of what had obviously gone before. Still, I did nothing about it for a while until last year when I went on holiday and saw a promotion at WH Smith (a supposed bookshop chain in the UK) at Manchester airport to buy all 3 paperbacks for a small discount. So, I bought them thinking that they would see me through the two weeks, not knowing that I would finish them in the first week. The rest is history.

I first heard of Harry Potter through Rosie O'Donnell in late 1999. She had said how great they were, and I trusted her opinion. (I am a big fan of Rosie's and my tastes are similar to hers on many things.) Also, I'm an avid reader and love children's literature. I collect and read Nancy Drew books and have no qualms about reading books intended for children. A book club I was in was offering the first three HP books in a hardback set, so I ordered it.

I must admit, that after they arrived, they sat on the shelf for awhile while I finished what I was reading. I was in no hurry to read them. Finally, I opened up book 1, totally unaware of what kind of a world I was stepping into. Needless to say, I'm hooked!! I finished all three in no time and quickly re-read them. By this time, news of book 4's arrival was highly anticipated and I joined in the hulabaloo! I was there bright and early that morning to buy Book 4 and read it straight through that very weekend! I've read all four straight through several times since and cannot wait for the movie and, of course, Book 5!

I bought book one as a christmas present 1999 for a 11-year old girl, and was told by her mother that she had it already. So I put it aside and about six months later I re-discovered the book on the shelf. First, I just thought about reading through the first few pages to find out what all this fuss is about, then I finished the book that same day, got the others immediately from Amazon... and here I am. I'm still fascinated about all this, because I see myself as quite immune to media manipulation, I don't go with trends (still wearing Levi's *g*)

I came home from work one day to find our then-9YO son with a lightning bolt sticker on his forehead. His aunt Liz, Amazon.com employee, had sent him SS as a birthday gift, since it had been on the top of their children's bestseller list for a while. "OK," I think, "I have to know why he's doing this." My wife and I finished the book at about the same time, and immediately placed an order for the next two, PoA having just been released.

I actually had never even heard of HP until all of the hullabaloo over GoF. Then I was avoiding the books because I thought they were for too young of an audience. It was over this summer when I was writing a stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" that my English/Theatre professor, mentor, advisor, cohort and HP fanatic threatened me, quite jokingly, that I would fail forever if I didn't read the HP books!! She also knows my personality very well and recommended them highly.

I was still avoiding the books, mostly due to the writing, until it came time for me to go on a slight trip to Williamsburgh, VA to be with my girlfriend. I asked her what she thought of the HP books and she immediately started telling me I should go and read them. Well, now I had two excellent recommendations that I couldn't possibly ignore. On the day of departure, on the way to the train depot I stopped at the William and Mary college bookstore. There, in all their glory, were the four hardcover HP books. Over the course of the 13 hours of train travel back home, I was very impressed. I still wasn't a huge fan. Two weeks ago, also during a break, I figured I should re-read the books (as I do with most of my books). That clinched it enough for me to go out and hunt down all the HP stuff, especially a good newsgroup, I could find. The rest, as they say, is history.

I work in a bookstore. I started work there when PoA came out; since it was in the children's section at the store and looked "too young" (oh how wrong that assumption was), I didn't actually get involved until a few months before GoF came out. I worked the release party, pulling pre-order forms out of a Sorting Hat. I had a lot of fun with that, and later read all 4 books in order--in a month.

Prior to the GoF release announcement, for no real reason other than pure silliness I drew a lightning bolt on my forehead with gold ink. When a customer asked me "Hey, do you like Harry Potter?", that was when I started reading to get the reference. My boss has taken to calling me "Harriet Potter" whenever I come to work with that drawn on my face...

Every year for Christmas my family, close friends, and I, exchange books. I lucked out this year, and was given the HP boxed set by my fiancee. Since I love 'childrens' books, I started reading them a week later and finished them all as well as GoF in two days. Wish I had have taken more time, though, since it's going to be a while until the next book. Just a tip for everyone starting out - take your time! They're really great books, but once you've finished you're stuck wanting more.

I kept hearing about it from my and my (British) husband's friend, a UK artist who absolutely devoured the first three books in a row and was just as enthusiastic about #4. When we visited him last spring he was still going nuts over the first three, and talked me into buying them in paperback. We bought them for me and his mum (who just passed away last week, the dear heart) at the same time, and she loved them every bit as much as I did! My husband's only listened to the tapes so far but he loves them too. I've since proselytized for them with our other friends, and bought a set of the first three for our friend Alan (another UK artist) when we visited last October. So don't be surprised if you start seeing HP characters crop up in some comic books soon. ;)

In my case, a very prosaic story: My curiosity had been piqued ever since the saturation-bombing hype over HP4, and one day I was in Borders and saw the first two books in paperback for 30% off, so I figured "Hey... total price would be less than ten bucks so what the heck, let me see what all the shouting's about." Two weeks later I was buying PoA and GoF in hardcover, read PoA in one day (!) and this past Christmas I used some gift money to get hardcovers of SS and CoS. Now I'm thinking of getting some copies of the UK versions...

I'd sort of vaguely heard about them for a while. This would have been autumn of '99, so PoA would have just come out, is that right? I had this vague impression that they were good kids' fantasy but overly hyped, and I hate to be trendy, so I decided I'd wait until the fuss died down. Anyways. I was working in a displaced music shop, sharing an office with the three guys who had been staffing our Musical Instruments department. All of them serious professional jazz and rock musicians with the usual complement of long hair and piercings and leather jackets--all of them older than me by several years--and all of them reading the Harry Potter books!! I kind of figured, if these guys weren't too cool to read Harry Potter, *I* certainly couldn't claim I was too cool. I bought SS (this is the USA after all, spit spit), read it in two days, and was at the local kids' bookshop when it opened on Monday morning to buy the other two. Went to the same bookshop to stand on line for my copy of GoF this summer. Great stuff.

In 1998, I went to great aunt's house for Thanksgiving, and my mother's cousin (a children's librarian) recomended S/PS (which was the only one out at the time) to me. I went to the library and had to wait a couple weeks to get a copy as there was only one in our library county system. I loved it and finished it the first night I began it, and then read it again the next day. I had heard CoS wasn't as good as S/PS and was reluctant to purchase it, but finally gave in when I actually saw it in stores.:) I really liked it, and absolutely loved PoA!:) And then I reserved GoF from amazon.com.... And I'm rambling now...

The Sci-Fi book club had them for $7 or $8 each. I had heard about them, and bought them "for my daughter" (that's what I told people.) And, of course, I wanted to make sure they were age appropriate (that's what I told people) so I read them first. So what if she didn't start reading them for a while. (she's read them several times now!)

My brother, who was living with me at the time, heard me talking about an interview I had just seen with one of our Canadian broadcasters an JKR. I told him that the plot lines sounded rather interesting, and about the fact that JKR was a single mother living on welfare...blah blah blah. And low and behold, when I got home that night there was my brother curled up on the couch totally entranced in PS. He finished it that night and I started it around 10:00pm. 6:00 am I finished it and by the time I woke up the next afternoon (it was a weekend) my brother had already gone out and purchased the other three books ...the rest is history.

I didn't even hear about the books until last summer, even though they had apparantly been around for three years by then. As it happens, I was at beer with some coworkers, when one of their wives pulls out (what I think was) Book 4, telling her husband she had just bought it that day. Obviously, it looks like a kids' book, so I said something about it in connection with their children. But no, they told me, it was for them to read -- they really are quite good. So, I left the table (later, I didn't jump up and leave ;) thinking they were a little odd -- how many electrical engineers with M.S. degrees read kids' books and seem excited about it?

In any case, some months later, my mother and sister are shopping in Barnes and Noble, where they find one lone copy of Book I, in German, which I received as a Christmas gift. Of course, this was great fun to read over two weeks following Christmas: because it is a kids' book, I could read it without a dictionary -- I try to read in German when I can to keep in practice, but having to continually puzzle over complex grammar or language gets very tedious sometimes, and if you're reading something by Nietzsche you often can't just pass over a word you don't know without really missing something.

Well, I found the book quite enjoyable in any case. It's not a fantasy on the level of Tolkein certainly and I don't think Knut Hamsun and Joseph Conrad are faced with a serious literary contender, but it is quite good. I ordered the other three books in German from amazon.de two weeks ago (amazon.com didn't have the fourth book in German, and with the exchange rates right now, it was actally cheaper to buy 2 & 3 from Germany, even with shipping). Unfortunately, I am still waiting for delivery. Fortunately, we have the internet, so I downloaded the texts and read the last three books last weekend. I suppose once my books finally arrive I will be obligated to read them again... ;)

I hadn't even heard of Harry Potter until the frenzy over GoF. I was actually working at a natural foods store at the time, and the morning GoF came out, we had a ton of people coming in with their children, all toting the new book with them. some of these people (especially the kids) looked like they had just gotten out of bed and ran out the door to the bookstore. I still remember this woman with her two kids, the boy was probably 8 or 9, and his hair was all a mess and he still looked like he had sleepys in his eyes. They came through my line buying breakfast-type foods, and the mom and little girl looked just as sleepy. The boy was reading the book... he looked like he was already pretty far into it even. Mom said that they woke up at 5am to go wait outside barnes and noble so they could get the book.

That kind of intrest by kids was what sparked my intrest. It takes a lot to get a kids attention in this age of technology, and if these books were taking kids away from the tv and their video games and computers and what not, then they have to be something special. I bought the first book on paperback mostly because i'm poor, but also because I thought there might be a chance I wouldn't like it. There could be nothing further from the truth. I finished the book at 10pm and had to get the next one right then and there. I got dressed and drove 20 minutes to the borders. I bought the book, read half of it that night and the rest the next day. I went to buy the third book as soon as I got off work that day only to find out that it is only on hardcover. My money situation is pretty bad right now, so I have yet to buy the 3rd book. This is my 3rd day without HP, and I am ready to just snap and buy the other book anyway... whoever said it was like drugs is right.

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Getting Into H.P. next 20 stories