book review, sorta (harry potter, b1)

 (re-read: 20/Oct/11)

      Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone

   Prod dets

Harry Potter series, book 1

Pub: Great Britain in 1997 by Bloomsbury. 

Author: J. K. Rowling

Cat: fantasy & Magical realism

Format: paperback (mid); 223 pp w/ 17 chapters

Age Range: middle grade

                Summary

Harry Potter thinks he is an ordinary boy – until he is rescued by a beetle-eyed giant of a man, enrols at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizards, learns to play quidditch and does battle in a deadly duel. The reason HARRY POTTER IS A WIZARD!

      my Thoughts (review)

Harry Potter has just discovered he’s a wizard after eleven years of his aunt and uncles silence in the matter. And so he’s off to his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where he learns that he’s not only magical he’s also famous.

I would love to have been able to pick up this book and read it fresh, nothing but nothing in the way of what this story really is. But instead I watched the movie first, fell in love with it, and didn’t read this one until, I think, Order of the Phoenix came out on movie, and that was after I finished the series first. (This was due to the fact that I’m a shit reader—though I’m better now, I was still shit)

Still I loved the book. my first read—back when I bought it—was more about seeing the movie behind the book, seeing what was there and used, I didn’t really take in much of the story that I hadn’t seen, and so with that thought, it was only the movie that I remembered. And this one was so along the lines of the book that I can really see why it became so popular so quickly and why everyone that read the books loved the movie. It was one of the great ones.

This read I actually saw the book, read, and took in what was really there—though I’m sure it wasn’t the first time.

This book is amazing and you can already see the finer workings of the full story making itself known even there, you can see that she had most of the end story line already mapped out in her head when this book came out, it was new, and impressive world that had rich characters, and creatures, they seemed as if they were hidden back there for the centuries they had been.

Even the characters at a young age feel it. It’s one of the only books I have read that the characters really have a feel of growth as the books go on and you can really see the youngness—the naiveté in the three main characters in this book. Which is absolutely amazing.

It’s one of those books that if you haven’t read it, you should make the time, especially if you are a fan of the movies. And if you haven’t seen or read any... well, where the hell have you been?

Thought on the movie: great, loved it. I was one of the ones that, since I was 15-16? when it first came out I didn’t watch this one at the theatre, but when it came out on DVD I took it in and I didn’t stop watching the thing. I absolutely loved it. More than I thought I would have. And I became a fan (though I have never been overly, I don’t know what my house is, or any of that crap. I don’t own anything but all the movies in two disk sets. But fan I am.

Series

[this book], and the Chamber of Secrets, and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and the Goblet of Fire, and the Order of the Phoenix, and the Half-Blood Prince, and the Deathly Hallows