Happy 35th birthday Harry Potter!!!

If I could send a letter via owl to anyone today, I'd send it to my good (fictional) friend Harry Potter on his birthday!! All I'm going to do here today is profess my love for this series and the amazing character that J.K. Rowling created. What better day to do that than on his birthday?

Note- I didn't know this, but today is also J.K. Rowling's 50th birthday - wow - look at what she has accomplished in these 50 years. She has changed many children's lives forever by creating books that kids LOVE to read. I loved these birthday greetings to J.K Rowling from people involved in the Harry Potter franchise.

This probably sounds silly to some people (hi, Brian, xox) but Harry Potter has profoundly impacted my life, particularly during my teenage years. Growing up, my parents always got us at least one book for Christmas, and the year I was 14 they got us the original Harry Potter trilogy. My dad usually picked out our Christmas books after reading reviews or browsing a bookstore, and he thought this series would appeal to his 3 children who seemed to love fantasy type fiction (I had already inhaled His Dark Materials and the Time Quintet aka A Wrinkle in Time at this point). So on Christmas morning in 1999, we woke up to see some fun gifts from Santa and some books about a wizard. I wasn't sure about the wizard books, and I even remember rolling my eyes at my dad a bit but he was certain we would like them. I read another book on Christmas Day before finally resolving myself to starting "the wizard books" so my dad knew I liked his gift.

I started the first book on Boxing Day, and at first I found it SOOO boring (and it is! kind of! in the beginning!) I got partway through it and was suddenly completely hooked. By the time I was done the first book (in a day or two), I just HAD to start the second one immediately even though it was the middle of the night. I was onto the third book by New Year's Eve. A reminder, this was 1999, so New Year's Eve was a BIG deal that year because of Y2K. We were at a party at my aunt's house with a lot of family that night and celebrating with live music and all I wanted to do was sit in a corner by myself and finish Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. So I did. My family made fun of me, but it was worth it at that time. I hadn't ever read books this captivating before. 

After that, I had to wait a bit until the 4th book came out, and by then my brother and sister (and dad) had caught up to me and we had to share our copy of the 4th book. My parents decided it would be fair for me to read 2 chapters, then give it to my sister to read 2 chapters, then my brother, etc. etc. This was great except that I am older than my siblings and I was a faster reader, and eventually I *needed* to know what happened in the book! One afternoon, my family went out somewhere and I finished it all off in one sitting. I got in trouble for that but again, it was worth it. By the time the 6th book came out, we decided to buy more than one copy so we could read it simultaneously. lol.

Anyway, long story short, Harry Potter is probably the book series that has had the most impact on me. It's the only series that I have read more than twice. There are a lot of books out there that I've re-read, and many that changed the way I think, but Harry Potter is different. I made friendships because of it. It made me feel closer to my siblings because we all enjoyed the books so much. I loved the world of wizardry. I related to the characters so much because they were around my age when I was reading. Even now, sometimes I say to Brian that I wish I could just apparate somewhere, and although he rolls his eyes, he totally agrees ;) I am dying to re-read the books again, because it's been a couple of years, but I want to finish a few more other books this year. I want to re-watch the movies again too, so maybe I'll do that first.

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I'd love to do a post someday about all of my favourite moments and thoughts throughout the series, but I think I'll do that when I re-read them this fall. I'll end this post today with a couple of my favourite quotes from the books (none of which will be "new" to fellow fans, I'm sure): 

Are you a Harry Potter fan?

Which book in the series is your favourite? Least favourite?

My favourite in the series changes...I used to always like Goblet of Fire best, and I think it's still between that one and Prisoner of Azkaban, but I love the way things wrap up in Books 6 and 7, even if they are darker. My least favourite has always been Book 5...I felt so much rage at Umbridge and felt that Harry was so grumpy, not to mention the part about Sirius...*sob*

Thank you for creating a fictional world that we'd all love to be a part of, J.K. Rowling!!

I'm going to convince Brian to watch one of the movies with me tonight & drink some homemade butterbeer via Recipe#4 here.