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So I am sitting on my terrace right now feeling pretty spoiled and happy (and just missed a call from Rachael in the midst of my I love my life moment.) I am reading Harry Potter, but we aren’t really surprised by that since I am obsessed with it. I am not really sure how to explain to non-HP addicts why it is so great; I can read the seventh book repeatedly and yet always find some new deep life metaphor about it. I read a quote on someone’s Facebook:
"Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that [Harry Potter author] Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and [Twilight author] Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."
— Stephen King
I was pretty much in love with this the moment I read it. I am a Twi-tard, as have been dubbed those people willing enough to put themselves through hours of reading painfully simple and grammatically ineloquent writing to get their fix of Edward and Jacob who are somehow in love with the whiniest, most superficial character written, Bella. Be it the deliciously romantic inability to stay away from Bella that makes us love Edward, or the die hard hottie Jacob’s humor that make just about every girl on the face of the earth want to drop kick their boyfriend (and don’t even get me started on the unanimous intake of breath when Taylor Lautner took off his shirt during the movie….) but despite Stephanie’s ability to write the perfect male characters, any self-respecting writer, reader, or English speaking person should theoretically be in pain over her lack of writing ability beyond your basic sentence structure: noun + verb + adjective. If you gave me a red pen while reading the book, I’m pretty sure it would be about as bloody as the elk hunting pictures the boys from my high school are obsessed with posting on Facebook to remind us what we are eating.
I just am in one of those moods where I feel the need to express how amazing Harry Potter is to anyone who will listen. While I realize that it is not related directly to anything exciting happening in Spain, it is my life today so that’s what you get: a fairly biased due to obsession rant about how amazing, deep, and overall mind-blowing HP is.
Emma and I have a new rule that anyone we date is going to be obsessed with Harry Potter. And reading in general.
So back to Harry. I am just constantly astounded that JK was somehow about to write seven books and by the end, have them not only all connect but bring back to every detail, every unanswered question. I love catching authors on forgotten ends, on the unfinished parts of the story. Generally I can always find at least one detail that they brought up and never tied together. After AP English, I am a firm believer that anything mentioned has a purpose… authors don’t just tell you random details for kicks and giggles (however I also don’t think that everything is symbolic, for example a mango supposedly symbolizes fertility and I am sorry but maybe I’ll have a mango salad and will want to write and tell everyone about it, and that definitely doesn’t mean I am talking about my biological clock. Just saying.) The fact that the story is so intertwined and so complex yet appeals to all age groups is a true accomplishment. I am, to say the least, in love and admiration of JK. But I’ll stick to my blog because I’m pretty sure that while I love to catch authors on their unfinished business, I myself am far too ADD and scattered to write seven books and have every aspect not only tie together but profoundly influence the story.
If you haven’t read the books, shame on you and get started. If you have, you should start at book one and read them straight through. After my super fun getting dumped experience, I replaced boys with Harry Potter and finished all seven books in a week and a half. And let me just tell you: it was the first time I had read them start to finish and while the first two were definitely easy and breezey, it is as amazing as reading them separately times fifty on steroids. If only I could get my dad to read them all, then my full family would be Harry Potter addicts and we could sit around like a precious fam talking about how amazing it is. Until then, I will stick to writing and trying to convert every single person to be a Harry Potter fanatic. It’s like evangelism, only Harry Potterism. But with more peer pressure.
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