Expecto Patronum!

Madison, Wisconsin, is a delightful town.  The center of town sits on a narrow isthmus between two large lakes.  At the highest point is perched the majestic state capitol building.  Roads radiate outwards from this hub, one of which is the pedestrian only State Street, which links the downtown with the University of Wisconsin.  Bars, restaurants, clothing stores--everything a college town needs--line the street in abundance.

Five years ago my wife and I had the pleasure of ambling down State Street.  The greatest discovery (for me at least) was a used book store across from a Starbucks.  I don't know if it's still there today, but I'm glad it was that day.  For just a few bucks we came out with the first two books of the Harry Potter series.  I'd seen all the movies (four had come out at that point) and enjoyed them thoroughly.  But I'd never read the books.  I knew a lot of people who thought they were pagan, or something like that, but this wasn't my own view (I later noticed that all the people who objected to these books didn't read books at all, so I didn't find their objections very credible).  So we took them back to Wheaton where they sat on a bookshelf for several months.

I finally picked them up at the end of that year.  I was studying for finals but needed something to distract me from the academic drudgery.  Once I started I couldn't put them down.  I finished one and went right to the next.  After I finished the first two books I either borrowed or checked out the next four.  By the beginning of the next semester in January I had finished all of them (except of course the final book which had yet to be published).

The final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, came out that summer.  My wife waited in line at midnight to pick up our copy from the now defunct Borders Bookstore.  The next two days we swapped the book back and forth, reading two chapters at a time.  As I finished it I felt a mixture of pleasure and sadness--pleasure because I enjoyed it so much, and sadness that it was over (and because sad things happen of course).

Then it joined its brothers on the bookshelf for a few more years.  Slowly, as time passed from this first reading, I felt the growing desire to return to them once more.  But this was during a time of long term unemployment.  I decided at some point that I'd wait until the job situation was settled to reread the series as a type of reward for my new job.

I had to wait until August of last year for this prize.  Three and a half years had passed since my first reading, and I had forgotten so much of the details.  But I enjoyed it so much (and read at the same pace as the first time) that I said to myself, "Self, you enjoy this so much.  Why not just read it every year?"  Thus the birth of an August tradition.  This August I began my third reading, and, yes, I'm still loving it (though life circumstances inhibit the earlier pace of reading).

I don't want to do review these books.  Two articles in Wayfaring by Alan Jacobs (English prof, author, Harry Potter lover) do it better than I ever could.  However, I do want to state the two biggest reasons why I find the series so satisfying.  First, they're just a lot of fun.  The plots are fun, the mystery elements are fun, and the narrative world of Hogwarts and the rest of the wizarding world is just a lot of fun.  There's so much charm and humor, which the movies don't always capture.  Second, I can't help but care about the characters.  Maybe it's because they're mostly kids, and maybe it's because so much evil has been perpetuated against them, but I have rarely identified so closely and rooted so hard for fictitious characters.

And, of course, I have to mention all those elements of Christian symbolism, especially in book seven that I personally find so intriguing:  the chosen one who defeats evil by his death and resurrection (of a type--you might have to make your own judgment about that--I disagree with Alan Jacobs on this point), the location where Harry and Dumbledore speak (King's Cross--say those words out loud and listen to what you're saying), and the two biblical quotations in the graveyard scene.  I really have no idea where J. K. Rowling identifies herself religiously.  I just think all this is really cool.

I enjoy reading (obviously), but I really enjoy Harry Potter.  I hope you do too.

Reading Update

Once again the busyness of life has distracted me from blogging.  Here's what I've been reading since my last review:

 Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring:  Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant.  Jacobs, an English professor at Wheaton College (IL not MA) is one of my favorite writers.  Wayfaring is a collection of essays previously published in various periodicals.  He's a fantastic essayist and writes on a delightfully broad range of subjects:  trees, Harry Potter (which he loves:  "the best penny-dreadful ever written"), Bible translation, friendship, and more.

 Stephen Mansfield, In Search of God and Guinness:  A Biography of the Book that Changed the World.  I love Guinness, but I only liked this book.  It tells the story of Guinness' founding in the 18th century all the way through to today but with particular attention to how much the Guinness family used their wealth for good, including providing wonderful benefits to employees (way before anyone else was doing it) as well as for the poor of Ireland.  The writing was competent but much less enjoyable coming off of Jacobs.

 Mike McKinley, Church Planting is for Wimps:  How God Uses Messed-Up People to Plant Ordinary Churches That Do Extraordinary Things.  Very good read on planting churches, or rather, one man's story of revitalizing an all-but-dead church.  Anyone interested in church planting should read and learn.

 Neil Gaiman, American Gods.  Gaiman is a fantasy writer.  At least I think so.  He's a bit hard to pin down for me, but not as hard as Neal Stephenson.  Anyway, American Gods tells the story about a battle between the old gods who came over to America with their former adherents (like the Scandinavian god Odin) and the new American gods like Media and the Internet.  I didn't find the story as intriguing as Gaiman's Anansi Boys and Neverwhere, and it was also a lot dirtier.  And, to my disappointment, it didn't give any substantial critique of our modern idolatries.  The gods in this book (including Media) are actual gods not false idols.

 J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  This deserves a blog post all of its own.