Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

So let’s talk Harry Potter. Now of course I’ve read them before, each several years apart, and some so slowly it’s almost embarrassing, but hey, excuse me, understandable: I spent a whole six months getting through Deathly Hallows, my first and only time reading it so far. Stayed off of LiveJournal for months even though I was exposed to some basic spoilers. It wasn’t that I’m necessarily a slow or slacking reader, It’s that I wanted to make it last. That’s important to me. Ah well. The problem with that is of course, that you lose details along the way. And now, to make up for the fact that I didn’t feel like I have soaked in the experience properly, I am going back and reading each of the books quite methodically in order, a little bit every night, and out loud at that, to Nick (who has not read all of them). I am doing all the voices to an accurate degree: in British/Scottish/Irish/Cockney as the movies would have each character speak. It is…loads of fun. And being someone who enjoys projecting and getting into character it’s wonderful (hope it’s just as fun for the listener :D) Anyway, so of course they are being chronologically taken care of, and here we are talking about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. While I haven’t read Deathly Hallows recently enough to say this for sure, but I am fairly certain that she has improved muchly since the first book. I find it interesting how often she performs the exact opposite of the “show, don’t tell” rule that we talk about so often in story concept class in animation. It is very important that you do not say what is about to happen before it happens. Though of course, as Nick argued back, it was a children’s book originally, meant for 11 year olds like Harry, and yes, fine, I can give it that. But compare that to the Hobbit, ha ha. That’s alright. I am quite glad that JK does not at all write like Tolkien, or I don’t know if I would have been able to get through seven of them! What I love about reading them, and why they are enjoyable to read out loud, is the fact that it is an easy literary experience, and quite comical at that. OH! Something I noticed that I never noticed before is how cartoonish her imagery is in these more light hearted earlier books! Several times there was very Warner Brothers like visuals. I quite remember that there was this scene that I believe occurred when Harry won the first Quidditch match…when he came to Gryffindor tower after the victory, he opened the portrait and a hand grabbed him and whipped him through the hole. Sounded very Looney Tunes like, and I remember more such cartoonish writing when they are facing fluffy and fighting the troll. Once the books get darker you see the humor start to wane. Not that the enjoyment does, in fact I find the books progressively more exciting, as anyone should. It’s just that you can very much see the series as a gradient from light to dark, through and through.