This week I finished reading Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows. It is the seventh and final volume of the internationally renowned fantasy series about a good young wizard named Harry and his lifelong battle against the evil Voldemort.
When author J.K. Rowling debuted the first novel, the Sorcerer's Stone, in 1997, I arrogantly dismissed it as being a book for children. During my sophomore year of college in 2002 I dated someone who was still into the series. She was so into it! Again, I thought it was a book for kids and adults who read it were a little off (how off I was!).
But over the years I had heard constant references to the books, including such strange terms like "quiddich, Gryffindor, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Hogwarts," but I dismissed them the way someone who isn't into Star Wars would roll their eyes at terms like "Chewbacca, The Force, R2-D2, and Luke Skywalker." I also realized that it wasn't just children that enjoyed the books and movies but adults too. I took a trip to Salem for Halloween 2015 and went into an Ollivander Wand Store. I was impressed that the series had such an impact that someone could have a successful Harry Potter store in Massachusetts.
But over the years I had heard constant references to the books, including such strange terms like "quiddich, Gryffindor, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Hogwarts," but I dismissed them the way someone who isn't into Star Wars would roll their eyes at terms like "Chewbacca, The Force, R2-D2, and Luke Skywalker." I also realized that it wasn't just children that enjoyed the books and movies but adults too. I took a trip to Salem for Halloween 2015 and went into an Ollivander Wand Store. I was impressed that the series had such an impact that someone could have a successful Harry Potter store in Massachusetts.
Starting in 2016 I started reading more fantasy novels by Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafon. These were not wild science fiction stories where the characters are part of a different universe abiding by a different set of physical laws and where the nature of the characters strays so far from human nature, but stories that actually take place on Earth. In general I prefer stories that have a clear connection to the world as we know it. In the past I have mostly been into classic fiction. If a fantasy or science fiction book has obvious moral lessons with believable characters I am more likely to read it. Examples of reality-bending novels I have enjoyed in the past include The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and miscellaneous utopian and dystopian tales.
Zafon's books were all in Spanish. I started learning Spanish seriously in 2016 when my Argentinian sister-in-law came to live in the US. Her family and some friends came to the wedding. It was such a pleasure meeting them. I wish I had been able to converse with them in their language because they spoke very little English. In the summer of 2016 I decided to learn starting with Duolingo and kids books.
My sister-in-law loaned me her copy of Marina by Zafon and I devoured it because it was so good. Maybe I could get into these types of fantasy books like Harry Potter. After this book, a few simple kids books, and practice with the language learning apps, I tried reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Spanish. It was way too hard! I was so discouraged! This was a "kids book" that I couldn't even read! So I kept practicing, making it a goal of mine to be able to read Harry Potter without having to look up words from every sentence.
Zafon's books were all in Spanish. I started learning Spanish seriously in 2016 when my Argentinian sister-in-law came to live in the US. Her family and some friends came to the wedding. It was such a pleasure meeting them. I wish I had been able to converse with them in their language because they spoke very little English. In the summer of 2016 I decided to learn starting with Duolingo and kids books.
My sister-in-law loaned me her copy of Marina by Zafon and I devoured it because it was so good. Maybe I could get into these types of fantasy books like Harry Potter. After this book, a few simple kids books, and practice with the language learning apps, I tried reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Spanish. It was way too hard! I was so discouraged! This was a "kids book" that I couldn't even read! So I kept practicing, making it a goal of mine to be able to read Harry Potter without having to look up words from every sentence.
Eventually by 2017 was able to start reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Spanish on Kindle. It took a while for me to get into the story because, in addition to my version being in a foreign language, it starts out immediately with fantastical characters and events. My problem with reading fantasy novels had always been that they were so disconnected from reality that I couldn't wrap my head around the "rules" of the world the author created. In my opinion, it demanded too much of the reader, and was too far from the world we know to be relevant. As I read more and more of the book, I saw how relatable the main characters were. The students' challenges of attending a school a world where grownups were in charge, but didn't always know what they were doing, was very compelling to me.
There were times during the Sorcerer's Stone that I debated whether I should continue. I had to look up so many words in the dictionary, often discovering that the word was made up by the author! While words like "varita" (wand) and "duende" (goblin) are commonly known words in magic in any language, other terms like "Gringotts" (the magic bank run by goblins) and "mortifagos" (death eaters - followers of Voldemort) were new terms that were not in the dictionary. I was hesitant to look them up on wikis because I didn't want any spoilers. So I had to get just enough information from dictionaries and web searches to know what the the term meant.
If the reader feels overwhelmed by the magical world they are introduced to by Rowling in the first chapter, imagine how Harry must have felt! To him, the magic was real, and since he had grown up with "muggles" (non-magical humans), he needed to be educated along with the rest of us. Getting through the first novel was a struggle because of the new terms, new world, new characters, and (to me) a new genre. By the end of the novel I had a crash course in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, poltergeists, muggles, strange magical plants, fantasy creatures, wands, brooms, potions, etc., etc. I used this as a reference for book #2 and beyond. Rowling opens up this magical world more and more as the series progresses so you have to keep up, but by taking it slow, rereading parts, looking a few things up, you start to understand the incredible depth and connections she is able to make between the characters.
There were books in English on my reading list and other books in Spanish that I wanted to read in addition to Harry Potter. I would never read two Harry Potters back-to-back. I would always read at least one book in English between, and often a different Spanish book too. For example, instead of going right to Harry Potter 2 after 1 I might have read a Hemingway novel then a book in Spanish by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. My sister-in-law got me A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab because she knew I liked Harry Potter and Zafon novels. This was in English so I read this book and the next two in the trilogy between other Spanish books. Spacing out my reading of the Harry Potter series was the reason why it took me three years to read them all. Not to mention that the Order of the Phoenix was so long (800 pages!).
Immediately after reading the Deathly Hallows I sat back in my chair, took a deep breath, let out a sigh with a smile on my face as if just finishing the last morsel of a satisfying meal. I knew what I wanted to do next: go to the wikis and review what the heck happened in the first 5 books! The Half-Blood Prince was the 6th book so I had read it recently. Plus, Half-Blood was my favorite of all of the books so I remembered a lot of what happened. I had been wanting to review the previous books since I finished the second one. What prevented me was fear of reading something in the summaries that would spoil something for me down the road. For example, I didn't want to know which characters would appear in the later books, which couples would be romantically involved. I didn't even want to know what the characters looked like from the films because I preferred the versions I had in my imagination. Of course, because images of Snape, Harry, Hermione, and Voldemort were everywhere in popular culture, I could not help but picture those characters as the actors who played them. But I wanted to minimize that association for the rest.
So after I finished Deathly Hallows I spent a day reading and writing down the synopses and highlights from each story. Things I had forgotten which I wanted to reviewe were:
I was so thrilled with the series I wrote J.K. Rowling a handwritten letter thanking her for the amazing world she created, for getting kids to read more, and for making the books so much richer than I had expected. I also told her that I thought the books were much darker than expected. I asked her if that was because I was reading them as an adult and I see so many similarities between the out of control adults in the book and the same breed in the real world. Her page says she does not personally sign books, which is too bad because I would love to have a signed copy of the Half-Blood Prince, which was my favorite.
Half-Blood Prince was my favorite because Harry finally was getting so wise. He felt confident enough in himself to speak up to the adults who were behaving badly. He was doing well academically. The journeys he would take with Dumbledore to learn about the history of Tom Riddle were amazing! I also loved seeing Harry and Ginny getting together and Ron and Hermione becoming a thing. The scene where Harry and Dumbledore get the Slytherin Locket in the cave will be with me forever. What an incredible story! By developing Riddle's character, Rowling made Voldemort much more relatable and much more scary. When you can see how a villain becomes evil, it makes the character more real.
At some point I would like to check out the Cursed Child and the spinoff books that Rowling has created like Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Update on 7/11/20. I wrote this blog entry last week. Today was my first trip to Barnes and Noble bookstore since retail stores closed down because of Covid. I bought Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Harry Potter y el Legado Maldito) in Spanish. And I also got the next novel in the Zafon series - El Prisionero Del Cielo. I saw the Beedle the Bard book which is a children's fairy tale book with five or six stories. I might get that later. There is also a book called The Crimes of Grindelwald, which I might get too.
There were times during the Sorcerer's Stone that I debated whether I should continue. I had to look up so many words in the dictionary, often discovering that the word was made up by the author! While words like "varita" (wand) and "duende" (goblin) are commonly known words in magic in any language, other terms like "Gringotts" (the magic bank run by goblins) and "mortifagos" (death eaters - followers of Voldemort) were new terms that were not in the dictionary. I was hesitant to look them up on wikis because I didn't want any spoilers. So I had to get just enough information from dictionaries and web searches to know what the the term meant.
If the reader feels overwhelmed by the magical world they are introduced to by Rowling in the first chapter, imagine how Harry must have felt! To him, the magic was real, and since he had grown up with "muggles" (non-magical humans), he needed to be educated along with the rest of us. Getting through the first novel was a struggle because of the new terms, new world, new characters, and (to me) a new genre. By the end of the novel I had a crash course in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, poltergeists, muggles, strange magical plants, fantasy creatures, wands, brooms, potions, etc., etc. I used this as a reference for book #2 and beyond. Rowling opens up this magical world more and more as the series progresses so you have to keep up, but by taking it slow, rereading parts, looking a few things up, you start to understand the incredible depth and connections she is able to make between the characters.
There were books in English on my reading list and other books in Spanish that I wanted to read in addition to Harry Potter. I would never read two Harry Potters back-to-back. I would always read at least one book in English between, and often a different Spanish book too. For example, instead of going right to Harry Potter 2 after 1 I might have read a Hemingway novel then a book in Spanish by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. My sister-in-law got me A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab because she knew I liked Harry Potter and Zafon novels. This was in English so I read this book and the next two in the trilogy between other Spanish books. Spacing out my reading of the Harry Potter series was the reason why it took me three years to read them all. Not to mention that the Order of the Phoenix was so long (800 pages!).
Immediately after reading the Deathly Hallows I sat back in my chair, took a deep breath, let out a sigh with a smile on my face as if just finishing the last morsel of a satisfying meal. I knew what I wanted to do next: go to the wikis and review what the heck happened in the first 5 books! The Half-Blood Prince was the 6th book so I had read it recently. Plus, Half-Blood was my favorite of all of the books so I remembered a lot of what happened. I had been wanting to review the previous books since I finished the second one. What prevented me was fear of reading something in the summaries that would spoil something for me down the road. For example, I didn't want to know which characters would appear in the later books, which couples would be romantically involved. I didn't even want to know what the characters looked like from the films because I preferred the versions I had in my imagination. Of course, because images of Snape, Harry, Hermione, and Voldemort were everywhere in popular culture, I could not help but picture those characters as the actors who played them. But I wanted to minimize that association for the rest.
So after I finished Deathly Hallows I spent a day reading and writing down the synopses and highlights from each story. Things I had forgotten which I wanted to reviewe were:
- What exactly was the Sorcerer's Stone?
- How was Tom Riddle's diary discovered?
- Why did Dobby start out against Harry?
- Why did Sirius take the form of a dog?
- What happened to Cedric Diggory?
- How did Sirius die?
- Who were all the Defence Against the Dark Arts professors?
- What exactly were all the Horcruxes (Horrocruxes in Spanish) and how were they destroyed?
- What exactly were all the Deathly Hallows (I knew them as Relics of Death in Spanish) and how were they created and passed down?
I was so thrilled with the series I wrote J.K. Rowling a handwritten letter thanking her for the amazing world she created, for getting kids to read more, and for making the books so much richer than I had expected. I also told her that I thought the books were much darker than expected. I asked her if that was because I was reading them as an adult and I see so many similarities between the out of control adults in the book and the same breed in the real world. Her page says she does not personally sign books, which is too bad because I would love to have a signed copy of the Half-Blood Prince, which was my favorite.
Half-Blood Prince was my favorite because Harry finally was getting so wise. He felt confident enough in himself to speak up to the adults who were behaving badly. He was doing well academically. The journeys he would take with Dumbledore to learn about the history of Tom Riddle were amazing! I also loved seeing Harry and Ginny getting together and Ron and Hermione becoming a thing. The scene where Harry and Dumbledore get the Slytherin Locket in the cave will be with me forever. What an incredible story! By developing Riddle's character, Rowling made Voldemort much more relatable and much more scary. When you can see how a villain becomes evil, it makes the character more real.
At some point I would like to check out the Cursed Child and the spinoff books that Rowling has created like Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Update on 7/11/20. I wrote this blog entry last week. Today was my first trip to Barnes and Noble bookstore since retail stores closed down because of Covid. I bought Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Harry Potter y el Legado Maldito) in Spanish. And I also got the next novel in the Zafon series - El Prisionero Del Cielo. I saw the Beedle the Bard book which is a children's fairy tale book with five or six stories. I might get that later. There is also a book called The Crimes of Grindelwald, which I might get too.
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