It's been a long time. The Harry Potter craze. But it felt like AVPSY was a salute to the end. We're told that it's okay to let things go and move on. And "okay" is definitely good enough.
Move on, eh?
Reflecting back on Harry Potter instead of moving on for the purposes of this post, I remember in maybe 4th grade, my elementary school librarian held up the book and gave us a concise summary while I thought to myself, "That looks weird..." This coming from the only girl in her class who wore tights after the age of six. It wasn't until one of my friends talked it up and lent me the first two books that I really got into it. I remember reading Chamber of Secrets at night and shivering at the voice in the walls, and I remember asking for my own copies of the first three books for Christmas. I didn't read the third one until I had my own copy. I remember being at a birthday party when the fourth book came out and my dad and grandpa going at midnight to get me my copy. Books 5 through 7 were delivered straight to my house through Amazon. I never went to a release party, and looking back on it, I regret that.
But I think a big part of why I wanted to write when I was younger was because I was reading good books. I used to write about witches and magic all the time, and reading Harry Potter was fuel for that, I think. At that time I wanted to write a book. A novel. Right now, I'm not so sure, the only thing I'm sure about is that I want to keep writing.
It's probably been said a ton, but I think the magic of Harry Potter is the effect it has on its readers. That a series of young adult books could inspire a group of college kids to write a series of parody musicals, that a movement of poets and musicians are out there creating wizard rock, and that the Harry Potter Alliance is making love, not horcruxes. It's amazing to me that I can look at all that a boy wizard and his friends have done for us and realize that Harry's part of the reason we knew "okay" was good enough. So even though we're growing up and some of us are graduating college or adventuring off into the real world, we still carry Hogwarts with us.
I'm not really sure what I'm going to read next, and I'm not really sure that it'll have the same impact on me that Harry Potter did, but I'm kinda hoping that it does. I'd hate to go through the rest of my life reading things that are any less than magical.
"I do not read for I have renounced life, I read because one life is just not enough for me."
- Abbas Al-Akkad
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