Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | Thoughts
5 Stars.
It has been years since I've read this...ten is probably a safe estimate. I had read this many times over in waiting for the next installments, but still I am amazed reading it again now at how utterly entertaining and engrossing the world of Harry Potter is.
I can't urge enough readers who have never experienced this journey to begin...is this a "children's" novel? I suppose you could argue it that way...and it is also one that I would recommend to any adult I know. I won't go into specifics of this story...really if you don't know at least the basics of Harry Potter now you've been living under a rock for two decades.
I will say, I was thrilled to rediscover some of what I hadn't realized I'd forgotten. While this is the fifth - my best guess...it could very well be the seventh - reading for me, the finer details of thevery beginning were becoming hazy. Towards the end of the series I had been rereading just the last few novels before the next big release; books three, four, and five before book six...books four, five, and six before book seven. And especially with the film adaptations so easily available and popular, with critical (but mostly understandable) changes to some plot lines...it was easy to blend some details.
Additionally, having reread Deathly Hallows much more recently (in the last five years, at least), and with those details fresher in mind, how fun it was to see all the subtle hints and clever clues the brilliant worked into Sorcerer's Stone...I am in awe of this woman. Not only for her ability to create such a world, and weave so many intricacies where we as readers did not even realize they existed at first, but for the ability to take us from children to adults in the course of seven books. Arguably, we reached YA by the end of book two and were settled firmly in adult territory by book four.
Not just for those of us who grew up with these novels (I began the journey at 12 or 13 I believe), Harry Potter is for anyone who'd like to feel like a kid again and grow up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione over and over again.
J.K. Rowling, this world, the emotional high that comes from being engrossed in all that is Harry Potter...are nothing short of magic, in its purest form.