Harry Potter and the Monday blog post.

I know I promised you the second part of Ogyhphoapbidciltsmiwttata! this week, but I had forgotten that I wanted to talk about something else this week, so Ogyhphoapbidciltsmiwttata! will continue next week.

This week I want to talk about...

There is not much I could say about Harry Potter that has not already been said, you know how much money it had made, you know about the 7 books, 8 films and countless other merchandise that has come from the world of Harry Potter.

But with the release of the final film, something I have been personally invested in since the age of 10 is coming to an end. So today I'm going to talk to you about my personal experience of Harry Potter, how I came to be interested in it, and my own personal story of Harry Potter.

I have my mother and my grandmother to thank for my love of books, my mom taught me to read when I was very young, and I have never stopped since, my grandmother however, is responsible for introducing me to Harry Potter.

When I was younger I would quite often stay over at my grandparents house, and to keep me and my brothers entertained my grandparents would employ all kinds of tricks and games, once such trick was to give us books to read. When the first Harry Potter book was first released, my grandmother being friends with the librarian at her local library got given a copy of it first as something to entertain us with, my grandmother read it, and gave it to me to read. I still remember to this day my reaction to the first time I held the book in my hand.

“I don't want to read this, its got a steam train on the cover”

But my grandmother talked me into it, and that night I sat in her spare room and started to read it.

I remember that spare room very well, and I'm sure I only remember it because its the place that first introduced me into the magical world of Hogwarts.

I read the entire book over that weekend, cover to cover, and I loved every page of it.

I remember coming down stairs after a weekend marathon read and the first question I asked was “Is there a second book?” I thought because of the title “Harry Potter and the...” that there probably would be, but my grandmother told me the book was only a small release, and it was unlikely there would be a second book.

But then, as we all know, the world woke up to magic.

My only other memory from my first reading of Harry Potter, is that I could not pronounce “quidditch” for many years I always called it “qwiddle switch”

Skipping forward a few years, the next major Harry Potter memory I have is of the Harry Potter trading card game. I'm pretty sure this does not exist any more. But me and my younger brother used to collect the cards, and we played pretty much every day of our life back then.

It played a lot like Magic: the Gathering, you used “lessons” to power your spells and creatures and then tried to do more damage to your oponate than they did to you. I had a deck that used Herminone (who could get an extra lesson out every turn) to great effect, I remember the joy that used to come of getting twice as many lessons out than Jacob then crushing him with spells.

Skipping forward again, the next major Potter memory was going to pick up the Half Blood Prince at a midnight release in Stourbridge, By then I had grown up enough to start getting embarrassed for liking Harry Potter, so I managed to talk my friend that we should take his little, Harry Potter obsessed sister to the midnight release. Trying to hide my excitement for the new release while in line almost killed me. The air that night was palpable with excitement, the rumour that a major character died in the book was the only thing anyone in line could talk about. But when I read the book it still took me completely by surprise.

I should touch on the films here, but I really don't have any major memories for them, I have seen every one of them at the cinema, and will see the final one there also. But I still don't really like them. Too much has been removed from them. Its nice to see Hogwarts on the big screen, but its not nearly as magical as it was, when it was only in my head

My favourite way to experience Harry Potter however is the audio books read by Stephen Fry. This is the format I have experienced the most. I have listened to all of the books at least 7 times, when I run out of podcasts my next choice is always the Harry Potter audio books. It has got to the point where the way Stephen Fry does the voices in Harry Potter, is how they sound in my head when I read it, and I think that might be one of the reasons I don't like the films so much, the voices are all wrong.

Now I'm a 24 year old, and I'm proud to say I'm a Harry Potter fan, I wish I had gotten my Hogwarts letter back when I was 10, I want a wand, I want to ride the Hogwarts express, and I'm pretty sure I would have been a Ravenclaw.

With the upcoming launch of Pottermore, I fully expect to join and experience Harry Potter again. But I still find it strange, that people view me as too old for Harry Potter, considering I was a ten year old boy when I read the first one, I grew up with Harry Potter, and he grew up along with me. Harry Potter is the classic of my generation and I can not wait for the day when I get to read them to my children.

Thank you J.K. Rowling. You made reading cool again.