Reading through the Wizarding World

“I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed - or worse, expelled. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to bed.” -Hermione Granger, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"

Prior to recently, I'd never read a "Harry Potter" book. There's a couple reasons. First, I think I've been up front that I usually like to see a film or TV show first, and then go deeper in the story. And second, I never really got caught up in "Harry Potter." By the time it debuted, I was a junior in high school. It wasn't high on my list.

Then when I saw the first movie in 2001, I thought it seemed like something of a children's story. It wasn't until the third and fourth film I started to get interested in the world and the ongoing story. Then I tore through all the movies and have a different appreciation for the series. When Binge Mode tackled Harry Potter last summer, it made me curious. So I've decided to go back through and read through the books. And I'm going to capture the process.

Over Christmas break, I finally finished my first "Harry Potter" book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Of course it has a different name in England, but that's another conversation.

One of the things I realized when going through the book is I was already invested in the story because I've seen all the films. I know these characters and like them a lot. And that helped me sink into the first book because, much like the movie, it feels more like a children's story than later installments. That owes to the fact the principal characters re children. They're just 11 years old.

I was fascinated by how much was different from page to screen. The way sequences come together, etc. really was interesting. And two, since I'd seen the film, I had a pre-conceived picture of some of these characters that are a little different from the illustrations and even some of the descriptions. And that was interesting, too.

It's fair to say, watching the films, that Hermione was probably one of my favorite characters, but I felt that more reading the book. I was really struck by chapter 10. It starts with Ron being cold to Hermione and ends with them defeating a troll and becoming something of better friends. It was a chapter that really hooked me emotionally in a way I found different than the films.

In fact, I found the whole exercise of the book to be something that gave me a new appreciation for the story, especially as I re-watched the movie following finishing the book. It made me more excited to go through the series and see how it changes my appreciation of the characters and the world.