I'm on a bit of a Harry Potter kick lately (you don't say, Meg?) so I apologize, and I promise that the next book will NOT be HP. But having finished book 7, and film 7.5, I wanted to go back to the beginning while it was all fresh in my memory, and see the differences between the start and the finish of the series. And so book 64 for the year was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
Seven years before the Epic Final Battle...Harry Potter doesn't know any magic. He's not even famous (well he is, but he doesn't know it yet). He hasn't got a clue what he's doing, or where he's going. He's an orphan who has lived with his mean-tempered uncle and aunt and his bullying cousin ever since his parents died when he was one. But when Harry Potter turns eleven years old, a mysterious visitor tells him the truth: that he is a wizard, he's just been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and his parents were not killed in a car crash as he was told, but murdered by the most feared and evil wizard of all time, Lord Voldemort.
Re-reading Sorcerer's Stone after so many years (I first read it in 1999, when I was 16 years old) was like a breath of fresh air (excuse the cliche), especially after seeing how everything ends in Deathly Hallows. Harry is still young and naive, has low self-esteem, and lacks the "hero complex" that a lot of people say he has in the latter books. It's funny to see Ron and Hermione as their pre-teen selves as well: Ron is still a scrappy little redhead with an inferiority complex, and Hermione is a bossy know-it-all who hasn't learned to reign it in for diplomacy's sake yet.
The plot is much more subtle as well. I feel that in later books, J.K. Rowling hits you over the head with plot points, or becomes repetitive. In Sorcerer's Stone, the villain is much more subtly revealed, and I like that. I like how Rowling doesn't reveal too much about Harry's past, or what makes him special in the books to come. It's definitely written for a younger audience, but that is really what made Harry Potter so appealing -- he grew up as we did.
Rating: ****
Re-reading Sorcerer's Stone after so many years (I first read it in 1999, when I was 16 years old) was like a breath of fresh air (excuse the cliche), especially after seeing how everything ends in Deathly Hallows. Harry is still young and naive, has low self-esteem, and lacks the "hero complex" that a lot of people say he has in the latter books. It's funny to see Ron and Hermione as their pre-teen selves as well: Ron is still a scrappy little redhead with an inferiority complex, and Hermione is a bossy know-it-all who hasn't learned to reign it in for diplomacy's sake yet.
The plot is much more subtle as well. I feel that in later books, J.K. Rowling hits you over the head with plot points, or becomes repetitive. In Sorcerer's Stone, the villain is much more subtly revealed, and I like that. I like how Rowling doesn't reveal too much about Harry's past, or what makes him special in the books to come. It's definitely written for a younger audience, but that is really what made Harry Potter so appealing -- he grew up as we did.
Rating: ****
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