Hooked on HP. Can you beat that?

[Hans]

I love hearing about how people have found Harry Potter and I've 
enjoyed the stories on the main board. I guess I'd better contribute.

I'd heard of Harry Potter in the news what GOF came out. I remember 
hearing an interview with an adult fan, and the interviewer 
asked, "Harry Potter is a boy?" That was enough. No kids' stories 
for me!

In September 2001 a colleague put the Dutch version of COS on my 
desk and said, "You've got to read this, it's so good." She happens 
to be a lady I respect very much and out of politeness I took it 
home. I didn't start reading straight away but one day out of 
curiosity I decided to read a few pages of the beginning just to 
satisfy the minimal amount of curiosity. The first thing that struck 
me was how the author got my immediate empathy with Harry. Poor 
little kid, stuck behind bars for a thing he didn't do. I was 
hooked, of course. When I read about Harry facing the basilisk 
alone, and how he invoked the phoenix to come to his assistance I 
was deeply overwhelmed by the knowledge that I was being confronted 
by an extremely powerful archetype. I knew then that Harry Potter 
was a message of great spiritual significance. I won't pursue that 
further because that's in my article "Harry Potter - Christian 
Rosycross in Jeans", filed on the main board.

My Australian wife at that stage was just starting to learn Dutch 
and I recommended it as a good first book to read in Dutch. She was 
immediately hooked too. Now, three years later, we must be the 
world's most dedicated fans.

We have the five books in both languages, as well as PS in Latin. We 
also have CDs in Dutch and cassettes in English. We have the films 
on videotape, and I have the CDs of all three soundtracks. I have 
also recorded the Dutch CDs onto tape, interspersed with music from 
the films. Friends borrow these and love them. Whenever we go on a 
long drive we play them, and my wife plays the tapes on the bus trip 
to and from work.

I have downloaded several hundred pictures and there's an option on 
our computer to have a continuous slide show of my pictures as a 
screen saver. Hence the computer is showing lovely pictures whenever 
we're having dinner or whatever. Pictures include book covers in all 
languages, stills from the films, posters, and even stamps from 
around the world showing HP. I have copied them all and put them on 
my computer at work, and I've given them to several colleagues. 
Talking about colleagues, don't ask me how many people I've 
converted to Potterism. It must be well over a hundred by now. We 
always have a HP calendar of course, and I have about 20 text books 
discussing various aspects of HP. We drink from HP mugs and my wife 
wears HP socks. Whenever we have visitors the conversation 
inevitably turns to HP. My wife always says, "I wondered when you'd 
get on to that." And we're in our late fiftees! Can anyone beat that?