Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone Review

Alright y’all, brace yourselves. This will hopefully be short, sweet, and to the point, but you are bout to get a review from perhaps the only 20 year old interested that has just finished actually reading the first Harry Potter book for the first time in her life.

(I say actually reading, because technically and physically I have read this book before. But, it was with the intention of reading it so I could say that I had. This time it has been MUCH more enjoyable as I read it at my own leasurely pace)

Okay, in all honesty I don’t quite see what all the hype about this series is about. Maybe I just need to keep reading, idk, we shall see. However, I will say that I did genuinely enjoy this book. Why? Well, let me tell you.

The pacing.

The pacing was PERFECT and that’s not something I say about many books. Most that I read I say are either just slightly too fast or ever so slow. But this one?

Something was happening just often enough to keep you interested. JKR managed to take us though an entire school year without too much “time skipping” but with relatively logical “they got so busy getting ready for exams they just didn’t have time to do the thing” phrases and descriptive paragraphs that let us in on just what it took to actually get through their first year at Hogwarts. 

I own used copies of all the books except “Goblet of Fire” and it was fantastic to be reading a well worn and well enjoyed book as one that I was enjoying for the first time. I was able to take my highlighter and pens (very sparingly, for those who think writing in books is a criminal offense) and mark the phrases that I remember picking out from movies or from HP posts on Tumbler.

I will say one thing. At this point, I HAVE seen the movies at least two times each, possibly three. So as much as I hate to admit it, the characters in my head as I read the books look exactly like the actors that portrayed them. I realize that this takes away from my own imagination and how JKR might have pictured them, but I just can’t help it. I cannot imagine Harry, Ron, or Hermonie any differently than how they were portrayed on the Silver Screen.

That being said: I loved being able to catch the little details that weren’t in the movie. Like Nevil going out into the Forbiden Forest with them instead of Ron, or the inner workings of the Dursley house that had to be left out of the movie for times sake.

All in all, I definately understand they how behind it when it first became popular. It’s an entirely new fictional world, and we as readers eat those up. I can’t tell you how many times I have lost myself in the fictional world of the Hunger Games or Divergent or something mystical and magical simply because I wanted out of the world that I was in for an hour or two.

Next on my list is Chamber of Secrets. This one I do remember more of from when I read it last, so I am hoping that I can get through it quickly and have another HP review for you sometime in March.

Goodbye writers and readers alike, stay creative!