“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
– J.K. Rowling, The Philospher’s Stone
Harry Potter: the series that opened my mind to the wider, more wonderful possibilities in life. A fantasy ‘children’s’ tale, written in 1997. I had just turned five years old when it was first published in 1998 and I didn’t experience the magical world of Harry Potter until I was about eight and even then, I couldn’t believe there was no such thing as witches or wizards, or a secret palace called Hogwarts. I lived and breathed the fantasy realm of the wizarding world Rowling created, and thank god for that. Even now at the age of twenty two, I can appreciate the fantasy and get lost in the world of good and evil, and the characters who’ve grown up right alongside me.
During my English degree, my love for literature lessened slightly and I couldn’t appreciate a novel or even a short story without the antagonising pain of analysing the themes or the syntax and even the sentence structures; it was absolutely dreadful and so upsetting. I used to love getting lost in a book, but since doing my degree, it simply became another chore, another thing to procrastinate on. My love for reading lessened, as did my love for writing, everything just became effort when once it was so effortless. A thing I learned from doing a degree that you’re really into is that you should definitely keep your hobby a hobby.
It’s been two weeks since I’ve finished my degree however, and the first book I’ve pulled off my bookshelf to FINALLY read for myself is none other than Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone. From the first page I admit, my mind flashed back to my eight year old self; I’m sitting cross legged on my single bed with my forever friends posters and Spice Girl CDs stacked up on top of my portable CD player (yeah I was cool enough to have one of those) and I have this brand new shiny book in my hand. The cover is smooth and the pages have that new book smell, they are crispy white, and life is just so simple.
Looking at the copy I hold in my hand now, that same copy; the pages are yellow-tea stained, the corners are bend and the spine is creased, and in the top of the left hand corner inside the front cover is a messy scrawl of handwriting claiming the book as mine. It’s perfect. It is one of the only books I will allow to look like this, because it is my most prized and loved possession and even now fifteen years on, I love it as much as I did when I first read it.
I’ve only just started reading it again, but I’m sure it won’t take me long at all to read the two hundred and twenty three pages. To my eight year old self, this was of course such a huge amount of pages. But ha. This is peanuts compared to Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, or even ‘The Woman In White’ by Wilkie Collins.
Bring on the whimsical, witty, and magical ride!
Ramblings of a Country Gal 