My Harry Potter Reading Experience

Until last year, I had never read Harry Potter.

That’s right. You heard it here first. I turned 21 years old this past year and I had never, in all that time, read the whole Harry Potter series. This was not something I was proud of. I had seen all the movies countless times. They were favorites of mine. They meant the world to me, but I could never get myself to read the books, which is odd when you consider how much I like reading. So, I promised myself that I would read the books and read them I did.

Now, when I say I had never read Harry Potter it really isn’t as bad as it sounds. I have read the first three books of the Harry Potter series so many times I can’t even count how many. After seeing the first movie as a child I was hooked and I really wanted to read the books. Eventually, I got around to it but I always found myself getting stuck at the third one. I would slog through the first two (they were so much like the movies I found them boring to read) and I would get to the third and it would be more exciting than the first two but then I would take one look at the fourth (and how big it was) and I just couldn’t bridge the gap. Again and again I would do this. Never making it to the infamous Goblet of Fire.

So, last year when I decided I wanted to finally finish the Harry Potter series from start to finish, I knew I need to do something different. That something ended up being audiobooks.

I signed myself up for a free trial of Audible, I grabbed my new illustrated edition of the Sorcerer’s Stone and I was off! I listened for hours on end to the audiobook, flipping the pages of the Jim Kay illustrated edition (see review here) in awe. It was truly a magical experience. It was, I’m sure, the magical experience everyone else always talks about when they had first read Harry Potter—the magical experience that had always eluded me. It was what I had always hoped reading Harry Potter would be like for me and, finally, it was.

I listened to the next two books on audiobook as well, and though I didn’t have illustrated copies to flip through, the experience was still more than I had imagined. Then, before I knew it, I had made it to the Goblet of Fire.

It was here that I put down the audiobooks and picked up my sister’s old paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I was going to read this one the old-fashioned way. I was finally at a new part in the series for me and everything else I was going to read straight from the books. So, I started reading and I devoured the rest of the series.

The Goblet of Fire is now my favorite Harry Potter book. It was so much more than the movie. More detail in the plot. More interest in the characters. It was just more. It was my gateway into finally finishing a series that has meant so much to the whole world, including myself.

After all that, after 21 years of trying, I finally finished the Harry Potter series. I can’t believe it and I can’t wait to get to read it again.