J K Rowling

“Good thinking, it’s often infested with nargles.”

Series Title: Harry Potter
Author: J K Rowling
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Genre: Fantasy

“Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter ‘H’.”

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry’s eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

-Goodreads

Well this is just a ramble, I’m having trouble focusing as I’m still a little feverish, but I don’t currently care! I want to ramble about Harry Potter!

I think the last time I ran through the whole series was when book 7 came out! And as we were running through the films before Christmas and I’d planned to re-read them the last few years I decided to seize the opportunity in the form of listening to them!

One of the main reasons I wanted to re-read the series was because I wanted to pay attention to Ron and the things he says when he’s jealous as apparently they’re pretty prophetic. There weer some pretty good ones! Until I forgot all about it somewhere between books 3 and 4…

Book 2 is my least favourite book, but I actually really enjoyed it this time. I think I was enjoying the ridiculousness of Lockhart, but also it was the first year of Ginny (and Luna) and I wanted to pay more attention to them too.
Incidentally, people talk about how Neville had his fathers wand but they don’t talk about how Ron had Charlies old wand – why?! Why didn’t Charlie have it anymore? Unless it belonged to someone else before Charlie and he got a new one at some point?

I was excited to discover that Luna went to the Quidditch world cup! It’s a throw away sentence, but it’s mentioned that the Lovegoods are there already.

From watching the films I had a lot of questions and there were several plot holes that never actually existed in the books. Graveyard scene in book 4, I’m talking about you!

I hadn’t listened to the last few as audio books before so that was quite fun. I didn’t like the voice given to Tonks which was a surprise, but other than that they were just as great!
Harry on Felix Felicis was fantastic!
And just any part with Ginny and Luna to be fair.

It’s odd because while the films stripped Ginny of her sass and personality, they gave some of it to Luna – she had moments when she was far more commanding in the films than in the books. Not that I’m complaining – except I will always complain about what they did to Ginny. This is why people protest her and Harry, because book them are perfect – actually so is book Ron and Hermione – but the film versions were just what?

Speaking of which, I loved the fact that we find out what Amortentia smells like to Harry! I never realised. When I first read it, it was mentioned in passing before we knew what the potion was and the films miss it out completely. Hermione’s is all over the internet, but I haven’t seen Harry’s! (Treacle Tart, the woody smell of a broomstick handle and a flowery scent he thought he’d smelt at the burrow.) It made it kind of exciting, finding that.

What I did find quite odd was that Harry’s been learning magic for years, sure, but we barely see him using it, then suddenly in the last two books, he’s using magic all over!
I also ended up disliking Dumbledore so much more than I already did too.

And all the really stupid internet theories and “what if’s” are now getting on my nerves WAY more than before because really, if they just picked up the BOOKS they’d see a lot of it’s all right there. I mean really.
One thing I loved though was that in #3 I realised they had no plastic! Amazing! Wicker cat carriers and quills and glass bottles! fantastic.