Today, we begin our celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the U.S. The book was unfortunately renamed for publication in the U.S. (originally titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – sadly, this eliminated one of the first concrete alchemical references, at least in the U.S. editions). While it’s my practice here at The Hog’s Head to use the book’s original name, I’ll be using the U.S. name for just this week, since it’s a specific celebration of the U.S. release.
There will be lots of fun discussion this week, but this intro post is sort of a free-for-all discussion. Tell us about your experience with the first Harry Potter book. Favorite quotes? Favorite moments? Did you start reading it when it was released, or did you come to the series later in the game?
I was given a copy of the first book back when I was, for religious reasons which I now consider quite silly, opposed to even reading the books. Begrudgingly, I gave it a try, but I set it down after a chapter or two; I was determined not to like it. Probably a year later, I decided to watch the movie. Enough of the book’s magic had been translated onto the screen to convince me to re-read the books, and I flew through the five that were available at the time.
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Travis said, “Probably a year later, I decided to watch the movie. Enough of the book’s magic had been translated onto the screen to convince me to re-read the books, and I flew through the five that were available at the time.”
That brings up a good point of discussion. Do you think any of the most current movies, i.e. GOF & OOTP, would’ve had enough of the book magic translated to screen to change your mind about reading the books?
My husband and I read the first two books aloud to each other after we saw the first movie on TV. We had so many friends who refused to read the books, but my sister-in-law’s family loved the Harry Potter books, so we decided to see for ourselves what we thought about them. Of course, we just fell in love with them! We started reading them aloud as a family a year or so later – we waited until the kids were old enough to understand them.
My 10 year old son has dyslexia and is just starting to read chapter books independently. He has such a hard time with reading, though, that he usually just reads what is assigned and that’s all. This week, though, he picked up Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone and started reading by himself. I read a couple of chapters to him the next day. The day after that, he read 25 pages completely by himself! (That may not seem like much, but for a dyslexic kid who normally doesn’t read, that is a huge amount.)
revgeorge, I would have to say that the movies up to and including GOF contained enough “book magic” to get me to read the books if I hadn’t already decided. I can’t say the same about OOTP, though. It felt rushed and the character development was weak. I doubt the movie would have motivated me to read the book, especially given the length of the book!
Catherine
Ironic, isn’t it, that a publisher with the name Scholastic would dumb down the title?
I was introduced to Harry Potter a few years ago by my wife. Knowing that I was a huge fan of LOTRs, she thought that I may be interested in the Sorcerers Stone and gave me a copy to read. Well, being the mature adult that I am (lol), I put the book aside for about 2 months until one rainy Saturday that I had nothing to do. I picked it up and looked at the cover and thought why would she want me to read a children’s book? Settling in to my favorite chair I begain to read page after page. Hey, this is not bad I thought as the pages flew by. But I was wrong, this is good, this is really, really good . When I reached the point where Hagrid told Harry, “Welcome to Diagon Alley.”, I had been taken in hook, line, and sinker. I was transported away into a world filled with magic that still holds me intranced to this day. This week, as we celebrate the 10th anniversary of this magical book, everyone should take the time to be carried away again, because the magic is still there!
The Sorcerer’s Stone was given to me by my dear friend, Prof. McDaniel of Marietta College, with a promise that the series was, indeed, dark enough for my tastes.
(Later I took her as my guest to J.K. Rowling’s Carnegie Hall book reading/signing and Q&A as at least a partial “thank you.”) This was just after Prisoner of Azkaban debuted, and so I was able to devour the second and third books immediately after completing the first. It wasn’t long after this that I began writing about the series and developing my “Harry Potter and His Predecessors” university course – which, incidentally, I will be teaching again in Spring 2009. How the years have flown!
Catherine, thanks for your answer about the movies. I didn’t see any of the movies until I had read through most of the books first, so the question never applied to me. It’s good to hear someone else’s perspective on them.
I didn’t start reading the books until after OOTP was out & close to the time that HBP was released. But after I started, boy, I read & read & read. The whole series to that point over & over again. I had heard a few things about HP previously to this time but not much. Certainly none of my parishioners ever asked me about it but looking back in hindsight I would’ve much preferred them to read HP rather than many of the so called ‘Christian’ books they were reading!
But I hadn’t heard much for HP either good or bad, although probably more bad. I read some reviews by Bert Kbjos (I mispell her name in the John Granger tradition.) & she was definitely negative about the series but I didn’t take her too seriously because she’s also against the Narnia stories of Lewis which I love.
In response to revgeorges question about the later releases ie GOF& OOTP having enough screen magic to make me read them if I had not already,I believe that i would have read them.I also feel that I would have taken the baggage of the films with me.What I mean is i would be reading with a preconceived idea who Harry,Ron ,Hermoine and the rest of the characters in the books were through the eyes of the Directors of the film. Their interpretation of them is different than mine. Their Ron is not my Ron. Their Harry is not my Harry. Watching a movie before you read the book does not allow you to see the depth and the deminsions of the character. It also does not show the whole scope of the interactions between all the people in the books. This is similar to reverse engineering, having a product in front of you already completed but not knowing how and why it was developed to begin with. So the magic would be there, but it would not have been the magic Rowling gave to us.
I bought a 10th anniversary edition of Sorcerer’s Stone (I was hoping they’d take the opportunity to correct that naming error, but they didn’t) last Friday and have been rereading it carefully, looking for any changes. I’ve read that first Harry Potter book so often that a change does tend to leap out at me, and I found one in the first chapter, but so far that’s it. I’m finding that I enjoy the story just as much now as the first time I read it.
I remember reading an article in the Seattle Times sometime in 1999, probably in the spring. It talked about this British children’s series that had kids and their parents lining up to get the next installment, but here in the US there were groups of parents who wanted to ban the book for religious reasons. Well, that was enough for me. I knew right then that I had to read it for myself. It didn’t matter much to me about the banning it from schools–my oldest was away at college and my youngest was ending her junior year in high school. If they didn’t have enough common sense to choose appropriate books by that time, then I’d missed my chance to influence them anyway.
However, I was then very involved with working with kids of all ages through Camp Fire day camp so I tried to at least be aware of what they were reading, watching, listening to. Besides, the idea of banned books has always been something I oppose. I might choose not to read a book, but no banning please.
I think I went to the book store the same day I read the article and bought the first book in paperback. I was hooked right away. Being an adopted child who knows nothing about my birth parents, I could identify with Harry–although I had a loving family, but still.
Everthing about the story just drew me in. Part of it was that, even though it was a children’s book, I felt like the language usage was so much better than most of the children’s books that I’d read in the 80s when my girls were that age. I loved all the mix of the story being set in modern times with the fables, folk lore, mythology mixed in. And I loved the sense of humor in the book.
And then there was Hermione’s hair. When my hair was long, if we had a rainy or even a humid day, my hair (unless I tied it back) was so extremely bushy–I could literally feel it growing bigger by the second. So I knew exactly what Hermione’s hair looked like–they’ve never got that part right in the movies, even though I like Emma Watson. I was never as bossy as Hermione, but that’s only because I was too quiet to say what I was thinking, which often was just the kind of thing Hermione would come up with.
Then there was Ron. One of my best friends when I was 11 was the third child of seven. So there was Ron, behaving in ways that fit my friend Cheryl, with all the teasing from his brothers mirroring the teasing that went on in Cheryl’s family–something that I, as an only child, didn’t experience.
It seemed that all through the book, there were characters that became so real to me from the first reading, because Rowling managed to make them come to life. Even the teachers–some nice, some inept, some mean, some hard to figure out, a few gifted teachers, mixed in the with the mediocre and the ones who should be banned from being in a classroom. (I am actually thinking of Binns and Quirrell, rather than Snape. Snape was the brilliant sort who knew his subject well, but was just mean–the kind of teacher who, years later, you realize taught you a lot.)
By the time I finished the first book, I had already gone back to buy the second and the third which had just been released, and I had gotten my 17 year old hooked as well. We spent the next year reading and rereading and discussing the first three books, anticipating the release of Goblet of Fire. But at that time we only had each other for discussions. I’ll always remember that time as very special. And when I think back to those early talks we had about the books, I remember that it didn’t take either of us long to see that there was nothing sinister about Harry Potter, but that there were instead so many positive things that it was hard to understand why anyone thought of banning them. I think it was somewhere in POA that I became convinced the Christian imagery wasn’t just wishful thinking on my part, and in rereading the first two, I started to see it there as well.
So, for me, it isn’t really a 10th year anniversary, but a 9 year anniversary of when I found myself hooked on a children’s book series that has led me into some of the most interesting discussions ever, and back to the book store to a host of other authors that I had put aside for far too long.
Pat
I still remember the day a friend handed me a copy of Sorcerer’s Stone and suggested I read it. He had liked it “OK” but wasn’t wildly enthusiastic. In fact, I think his exact words were, “Well, it’s not Tolkien, but…”
So I came to the series with a few preconceived (and very silly) notions that it somehow wasn’t great literature. Given how much I love good stories, and children’s literature, that was just plain dumb of me. I had heard enough about the hoopla surrounding the books to know that people were lining up in droves for these stories, and I think I had a touch of weird literary snobbery when I first opened the book because I thought anything that popular must be dumbed-down or pandering to some lowest common denominator.
How glad I was to be wrong!
I must confess, however, that it wasn’t Sorcerer’s Stone that really grabbed me and hooked for the duration of the series. I love the book now, partly because it’s the beginning and there is so much woven into it that becomes deeply significant in hindsight. The first time I read it (aloud to my husband, incidentally) I enjoyed it and found it highly creative and interesting, but it didn’t hook me completely. I did find the ending especially intriguing — not sure what I was expecting, but not the direction JKR took it.
So it was a few months later before I actually got around to Chamber of Secrets. By then I was an exhausted new mom struggling with the joys of brand new parenthood coupled with the totally unexpected challenge of postpartum depression, and also dealing with the death of several family members and friends within several months of one another. I devoured Chamber…could hardly put it down…and then went out and got the next two books, which at that point were the only ones available. So Chamber holds a special place in my heart (hmm…you think they’ll do another special anniversary edition for it?) but I do love Sorcerer’s Stone.
Being a mom and a reading teacher, I was so upset when my oldest son was ten and decided that reading was not cool. I felt as if I’d failed him.
We walked up to his baseball practice and his best friend was reading a book. His mom later told me she’d picked it up at the book store on the recommendation of the sales person. This “book about a wizard” was the only thing she’d been able to get her son to read in a long time.
We left the practice and headed to our local Barnes and Noble. I promised him that we’d read only the first two chapters and he could stop if he didn’t like it. He grudgingly decided to start reading in the car. He was to read one chapter out loud, I was to read the second.
When we got home it was time for chapter two. We read the entire night stopping only to eat, the next day we started our search for the second book.
We read that book several times waiting for COS, but we also found books about alchemy, read King Arthur and discovered that fantasy literature was (and still is) is favorite literary genre.
When he graduated high school, he listed Harry Potter as his favorite book on his college applications. I still can’t thank Jo enough for writing that “book about a wizard” that helped my son rediscover his joy for reading.
Doris
Felicity, yes, very ironic. (And, really nice to see you here.)
Doris, wait, let me get this straight: You finished book 1, and while waiting for book 2, you were reading books on alchemy? Prompted by having read book 1?
All: great stories so far! Thanks for sharing.
Travis,
Actually I was so excited to see alchemy references in the book that I mentioned them to Jerry. (then 10) He choose to read more about Flamel since we could not find the second book.
I was thrilled to see him reading and loved the reaction of my students to the book.
Doris
Excellent. All the way back in Book 1, someone was seeing it. Good to know.
It was a dark and cold night, in late January of 2004… My dad put on The Fellowship of the Ring on the TV… By the time it finished I had totally reconsidered my thoughts on the fantasy genre. (I used to be one of those extreme Fundamentalist who thought Tolkien, Lewis, and of course Rowling were all of the devil.) Once I actually encountered the genre it changed my life forever. (Really, it did.) I LOVED IT!
Then I read Narnia… Well, I had been about as wrong about Tolkien and Lewis as I could just about possibly get… I was ready, though not aware of it yet, for Harry Potter.
Then, by chance, my interest in Harry Potter was brought about by a website called “The-Patronus” which explored various themes in the Harry Potter books. It basically told the plot-line from book one through five. Enough so that I had some idea of the story… (The site is now dead.) That was in June 2004.
But I greatly desired to read the books after reading that website and one of John Granger’s articles. (The-Patronus had a link to one of his articles… I can’t remember which one it was but I think it was published in “Touchstone” or something like that.)
We bought the paperback version of book one along with the first two movies in September of 2004. Read it shortly after and have enjoyed it several times again since.
I’m pretty sure I was wrong about Rowling too. They’re quite enjoyable and I can’t tell the number of times I’ve only gotten some point that the pastor made because I was able to conceptualize it from Potter.
Encountering the book itself lead to being locked in my bedroom until I had finished one through five. I still laugh every time I read about Mr. Dursley’s antics in trying to escape the letters from no one.
Well, I for one still want to slap myself in the face every time I think about the way reading Harry Potter went for me…
One year (I’m a bit hazy on when this all exactly happened), probably summer of 2002 (2003 ?), my parents went to England on holiday and as a holiday gift to me returned with the paperback book set of Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban. Shortly after I started reading the set and liked the first. I wasn’t blown away yet, or I would have made a bigger effort.
Then I started Chamber and the reading came to a screeching halt in I think the second chapter…. Dobby !! The elf really annoyed the buggers out of me ! I literally couldn’t get through that chapter ! I threw the book aside.
Then all sorts of things happened, working in a cinema I saw the first two films through work. Was busy with studying, went abroad for a year while storing all the books I owned. Anyway to make a long story short, the books disappeared in a box somewhere for a long time.
In the meantime, my mom did keep on buying the subsequent books for me. Although I did specify each time that I would only accept the original British hardcover version, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I hadn’t gotten through the second and had never even read the third and so on. It went like this until the release of Half-blood Prince.
I had graduated, was a single living by myself, and having a full-time job. I didn’t have many obligations besides work. One day, when the Half-blood Prince release was looming, my mom asked whether I wanted her to buy me the book. When she asked, I felt so guilty. Having five books standing on my shelf of which four were unread I said yes and promised myself to start over, give Dobby another go, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad this time.
Well, having seen Dobby on screen, he made a lot more sense to me and I didn’t find him the least bit irksome on the second try. I liked Chamber, I fell mad in love with Prisoner, cried when Cedric died in Goblet, was cheering aloud when the Centaurs galloped Umbridge away in Phoenix and cried again when Dumbledore died in Half-blood.
I literally flew through all six books in two weeks time. I cleared all my appointments to keep reading, saw no-one – family, friend nor foe – in those weeks and popped open my book every chance I got at work. And of course, after those two weeks, I was hooked. Worse than hooked. I was staring into the big black hole…. the interlibrum !
That year and a half was bad… very bad….
My wife, Jamie, read SS just before we got married in 2004, and then read CS on our honeymoon. From there she blazed through them, eagerly awaited HBP the night it came out, and then fully started in on me to read them. I never had a problem with Harry Potter — as an English teacher, anything that will make kids read goes in the plus column in my book. And I don’t really subscribe to the “Great Literature” question that much. I just never took the time to read them until Christmas 2006. As a slow reader and adjuncting writing teacher, I took a few months to make it through the first six.
But I saw what everyone was all kerfuffled about. I read John Granger’s Unlocking Harry Potter, didn’t agree with all of it, and started thinking about the books in a serious way.
Jamie and her closest friend were also inveterate readers of some blog, and kept talking about this guy named “Travis” all the time. So, one day during some downtime, I typed in the URL, http://www.swordofgryffindor.com, found a place with some fun discussion going on and just watched. This “Travis” guy seemed pretty smart, had an interesting story about how/why he read the books, and had a boatload of readers.
Then, one day, I saw my beloved postmodernists besmirched as a babbling, bumbling band of babboons who berated authors — I could sit on the sidelines no more! As an academic who likes to argue over pretty much anything and everything you might put in front of me, I threw up a ridiculously long comment, and I’m all the happier for it.
Travis, consider this a public letter of thanks for both providing this kind of forum to begin with, and for inviting me into the fold. It’s had a profound effect on many parts of my life.
~Dave
I’ve been following the discussions here for a while – they’re so interesting and intelligent! – but I haven’t commented before. Hi!
I missed ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ completely and started with ‘Chamber of Secrets’. My son was given the paperback of CoS for his seventh birthday in 1999. We both read it and bought PS straight after. I remember a colleague at work telling me sometime earlier that her children liked the Harry Potter books, and I thought Harry Potter was the name of the author! She said her children had heard about them from other children, and everyone was reading them.
It was quite a while before I found out about disapproval of HP from Christians in the States. This seemed incomprehensible, even laughable. HP was so enmeshed in familiar myth and literature – from King Arthur to Oliver Twist and on to Charlie Bucket. And it was quite clear that Rowling wasn’t on Voldemort’s side. Disapproving of HP seemed to come from a narrow and rather fearful outlook that had no feeling for the richness of our culture.
I started re-reading the books in 2001, when on maternity leave and looking after my baby in the night. I got into HP internet discussions about three years ago – Mugglenet and then Livejournal – and was introduced to alchemy at some point, which opened up a new interest and made the series even more fascinating! The films don’t match the books but they’re not bad, and it’s lovely that there have been alchemical wall-paintings in the Great Hall at Hogwarts from the start.
My favourite moment in PS is Harry seeing himself in the mirror holding the Stone. He wants to find it, and then he sees he’s already got it. Fab!
Rather relevant to this thread: a former student of mine sent me the link to this at PostSecret, and it made me laugh.
My son received SS for his 8th birthday. I read some of it with him with him and he read some of it independently. My overall feeling was that I enjoyed reading with him. The following year we went as a family to see the first movie. I was AMAZED! I went home found and reread the first book. I then went out and purchased and read the others and prepared to wait. In the mean time, I decided to re-read the books. When I read about Hagrid flying Sirius’ motorbike, I realized that JKR is a genius. Upon the release of OotP, as I was driving around a strange city looking for a place to purchase the book, I realized I was obsessed. Sometime after this, I got online and I found that I “was not alone”. The final outcome is that this book has changed my life. I have read the series with my children. We have laughed together and discussed our theories. We have attended the movies, midnight release parties, Wizard Rock concerts, seen We Are Wizards (where they briefly appear), and I took my mother and daughter to see JKR at Radio City Music Hall. I have gone on to run our local HP Meetup Group so we continue to celebrate Harry Potter with others who love the books as well.
I was reading PS last night and I was a bit surprised when Rowling seemed to slip out of the limited omniscient (or whatever it’s called) writing. It’s during the troll fight in the girl’s toilets.
Does anyone else detect it?
Matthew, I haven’t gotten there in my reading of HPSS yet but I would suspect that action scenes are best done & flow better in 3rd person.
Although she doesn’t ever do that for Quidditch matches as far as I know. But then the Quidditch games are usually quite short scenes, as she didn’t much like writing them & simply had to do so long enough to get Harry’s perspective & the outcome of the match across to us.