Just finished the third Harry Potter book, and, to tell you the truth, not without a sigh of relief. This book project is starting to feel like just that - a project. It is a chore that I have to work through, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears it will cost. That is not the way to read any book, I know, but this time it is a bit different.
As a matter of fact I have already read book one to five, so re-reading everything is more like watching a movie from the start when you have already seen most of it and only want to get to the end.
I only do this because I have a very strict and completely random principle without much basis in reality that I must always read a series from the start to the end. I don't know where this principle originated from, but I believe it has something to do with my wish to give literature a fair chance by fully experiencing it in its original form. I.e. reading from the start.
In this case I also thought it best since it was almost four years ago I read the last one.
I do the books injustice by doing this. They are well-written, witty and charming. They have a colorful use of language and imagery, and the storyline is surprisingly fantastic. I cannot say whether it is worth all the attention it has gotten - I know Dan Brown certainly didn't - but it does stand out amongst most other books for that age group.
Not to mention the fact that wizard is among the coolest professions in the world, second only to ninja, and just slightly above pirate.
Still I am looking forward to the books ahead. Most others seem to like the first, cheerful books best, but I am eagerly awaiting for the story to become darker, more worrysome, more realistic. Magic by all means, but merry spell-throwing for seven years straight is so not something I would buy.
I like Battlestar Galactica because space life is not all sliding doors and steam pressed uniforms. I like The Death Gate Cycle because there are no antagonists and protagonists in this circle of life. I like Farscape because no matter how funny your costumes are and how unrealistic your situation, your relationships are as complex as a nervous system.
I am fascinated by things that can turn my perspective, challenge my views. Books that right in the middle make you flip over the covers, put the book in your lap and just sit down and think. I like movies that leave me walking from the cinema with a confounded expression that just won't leave me for weeks. I like stories that turn your world upside down and rip your heart out with simple beauty.
But before you start wondering, I am not a David Lynch fan. More down the lines of Guillermo del Toro.
I long for complexity in Harry Potter. So far he has only shone by simple childlike heroics and sheer luck. So far there has been no moral difficulties. No ethical choices. No heart breaks. No brutally bad failures. No is-little-evil-worth-it-for-the-greater-good dilemmas.
Robert Frost once wrote a poem about two roads that diverged in a yellow wood, and both that morning equally lay, in leaves no step had trodden black.
And I am looking forward to seeing which road Harry leaves for another day.
I plodded my way through the Potter books when the last one came out, and was enjoying re-reading them at a reasonable pace, but then suddenly I was starting number 5 when 7 hit my mailbox, so then I had to try to get through 5 and 6 as fast as I could to see what happened in 7, so they weren't as enjoyable because of that.
When I get like that I do feel guilty, like I am not doing what the writer would want me to do, but in actuality I am because I am reading it in the first place, I just wish I would think more when reading, instead of a couple weeks later when something astounding hits me from the book that I read four books ago, but alas I probably won't be changing that any time soon.