LJ! You are back! Never leave me again!

( Spoilers )

In light of the release of OotP, just some random things about me and Harry Potter. No spoilers, seeing as how I haven't gotten my hands on the latest one yet!

I first picked up Philosopher's Stone in paperback my freshman year. I think Prisoner of Azkaban had just come out then, and I vaguely remember seeing it plastered everywhere in British bookstores when my family was there for summer vacation. I bought the first one hoping it'd make me feel happy and less homesick, seeing as how it was my first week in college. Unfortunately, it didn't... perhaps because of the circumstances or just the book itself. I also vaguely remember all the hype, and I felt as though the first book by no means stood up to them. I got very many "You don't like Harry Potter?!" this year. Mostly, Harry just annoyed me. I felt as though everything Snape was saying about him was true -- he relied on his fame and special status with the teachers to get away with a whole lot of stuff and was arrogant to boot. Then Draco and Snape and the villains felt incredibly two-dimensional, with Snape being nasty for no good reason, ditto with Draco. I was vaguely fond of Hermione, especially since I was someone like her. After that, I decided not to read the rest.

Then, that summer, after a highly traumatizing freshman year, I was at a friend's house for a few days while my mom had to take care of my grandmother in Ohio. My options for new reading were either thrillers like Meg or The Relic or the third Harry Pottery book. So I figured I've give it another shot. And I loved it. The third book is still my favorite so far. I think something about Harry seeing his father in the anti-Dementor spell and the revelation of history did it. I'm a sucker for history -- that's mostly why I loved Anne Rice's Witching Hour and Queen of the Damned. Exposition of the past, mmmmm. And I loved the sense of history Sirius, Lupin, Snape and Peter Pettigrew gave to the book, the sense of depth that I thought was mostly missing from the first one. I got the second one for my birthday and quickly read that. I think Goblet of Fire came out that summer, and I managed to get my hands on it by borrowing my sister's friend's copy. And I loved that one too, although not as much as the third. I do, however, think Goblet is technically much better than the third, and I loved the fact that the final scenes were actually scary and made consequences finally very real for Harry, which was a definite quibble I had with the first book. On rereading, it's very impressive how much of it JK Rowling has planned from the start, from that little mention that Hagrid is riding Sirius' motorcycle in the first book to the continuing mystery of Harry's scar. I like that in a series.

Ok, now there are some tiny spoilers about the tone of OotP, gotten from other people.

The boy keeps telling me that the latest one is very depressing and dark, and I read some interviews where JK Rowling basically says that this is the one where they all must grow up very quickly. And the major character death, which I'm betting is Dumbledore. The boy keeps saying this to warn me, while really, it makes me quite happy. I loved season six of Buffy, where everything was messed up beyond belief, and I especially love season six Buffy/Spike fic that's twisted and dark and abusive and angsty. And the few Harry Potter fics I've read so far have been about the impending war and that makes me shiver in a good way (like post-colonial X-Files fic). I want to see what happens, how all the happy characters will handle it. I desperately want to find out about Snape's past as a Death Eater and why he defected. I love that the series isn't all happy and fluffy and is getting some teeth, because I'm a firm believer of the fact that that's where some of the really great moments of kid lit come in. The Prydain series, the Dark Is Rising series, His Dark Materials, Narnia, they all had those grand, bittersweet endings. Not that I'm saying Harry Potter has to end like that, but I like knowing that large epic feeling, that mythic quality that I can feel hidden in the earlier books is seeping out now, textured along the silly, happy, crazy world of Diagon Alley, Muggles, and spells with funny names.

Perhaps another entry some other time on pain, violence and darkness in books. Had an interesting online talk with a friend on what I feel are the differences between the very painful violence to characters in Robin Hobb's Assassins trilogy versus the same in George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice.