Day 132: Never Have I Ever... Realized That I Am A 'Muggle'

I’ve been reading since I was 4 years old – or so says my mom. She told me that I was able to read simple stories by myself before entering kindergarten. I can buy that. My love of reading has to have come from somewhere.

I grew up with Sweet Valley High and the Babysitter’s Club, and read book after book in both series’ throughout my childhood and junior high years. I then graduated to classics we were required to read in both high school and in my English lit classes in college, where I discovered Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and Toni Morrison.

And while reading took a backseat during my time experiencing life in New York outside of the book I read for my book club, I seem to be making up for lost time here in Chicago.

Never have I ever read an entire book series of more than 3,400 pages in about two months.

It all started when I was spacing out while a bunch of my female colleagues were swapping stories about the different Harry Potter-themed events they’ve gone to, and how they were excited for the release of the final movie of the series. I wasn’t participating in the conversation because I had never picked up a single book in the seven-book series. They noticed my lack of interest, and asked incredulously why I wasn’t more excited to which I of course had to respond that it was because I had never read Harry Potter.

“YOU’VE NEVER READ HARRY POTTER?!?! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU???” is the standard response, which is of course what I got. I told them I’ve just never been into sci-fi and or wizardry and all that, but they kept insisting that I’d love it, so I told them I’d think about it.

This pacified them for the moment, but over the next several weeks, most of them kept asking me if I’d started the series. Because I’m always willing to try something new, I told them I’d read the first book and let them know what I thought of it (and had to give chapter by chapter updates to one of my younger coworkers who grew up with the series). One colleague told me I’d have to read books 1-3 to really be able to judge, another told me the fourth one was her favorite, and yet another one said he loved the fifth book the best, but each one of these statements were prefaced with something along the lines of “While the seventh one is absolutely as good as it gets…”

So of course I had to read the entire series and found myself reserving the next book in the series at the library before I was finished with the one before it. And there were long stretches of time in that two months where I was waiting for a book to be returned before I could check it out – and I had picked up two of the shorter ones at once and had them read within a few days.

They are books written for children, so it’s not like there were tough concepts to understand or difficult language to plow through. But there were storylines coming from dozens upon dozens of different characters, which kept it interesting all the way through. I liked the coming of age concept as well as the recurring theme of death, and did enjoy the series although it isn’t one I will be going out to buy. Experiencing it once was enough for me, and it was a good experience, but there are millions of other books out there waiting for me. I’d better get started.