The Harry Potter Experience

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" <dumbledore11214 at ...> wrote:
 
Alla: 
> I started reading books right before GoF came out. LOVED it, also looked for fanfiction while waiting for OOP, joined this group somewhere in 2002, am here ever since :-)
 
> Family and people around me does not quite get it, or should I say not gets it at all. Oh they are avid readers, they just do not get the level of you know erm... passion devoted to one series, in short they do not get what fandom is.

> I do have couple friends at works who are fans, but still they do not discuss on Internet, heh.
 
> I like movies as illustrations to the books, but I certainly prefer books.
 
> Managing just fine when books are done LOL, am very happy that we went through waiting periods, discussions, waitings, guessings, it was FUN.
 
> I am still here, so you can guess I will happily talk about Harry, but there are so so many books in the world that I still have not read, I cannot be fixated on one series forever, I found several new ones to enjoy as much as I enjoyed Harry.

Geoff:
Unlike some people, I came to Harry via the films. Although I have been 
a fan of young people's fiction all my life - I first discovered Narnia 
when I was 23(!) - Harry didn't register on my radar in the early days.

The first time I noticed the phenomenon was when "Philosopher's 
Stone' hit the cinemas in 2001, largely because a number of folk in 
my church were campaigning against it. Rather stupidly, I took the 
view that Harry Potter was "a Bad Thing" without really looking at it 
myself.

It was when "Chamber of Secrets" was released that things changed. 
We were in Cardiff and the friend with whom we stayed often liked to 
see a film when the evening was quiet TV-wise. On this occasion, he 
asked if we wanted to go to the cinema in Barry which was showing 
CoS. My wife looked at me to see and I said something like "Well OK".
We went and I was very impressed; later that week Sky Box Office was 
showing PS so I saw that too. Returning home, I rapidly got the books 
plus "Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Goblet of Fire" and I was into the 
Wizarding World with a vengeance.

As an evangelical Christian, I personally see nothing which I find 
disquieting. I believe there is a lot of Christian subtext there and a lot 
of Christian writers have seen this also, although I find I cannot agree 
with John Granger's mixing of alchemical ideas with the Gospel.

I have enjoyed both books and films. I feel that the films do suffer a 
little because they have had to have some plot lines cut because of length 
and I feel that to appreciate the films, the books are mandatory reading.  
I would disagree with one recent poster who felt that the films got 
worse. With hindsight, i would say that the first two films are a trifle 
Disney-esque in places but OOTP for me was pretty much the best so far.

Quite how the filmmakers will handle the last two books will be intriguing. 
Of all the books, I possibly have the most mixed feelings over "Deathly 
Hallows" 

After all, who doesn't?
:-)

I found the middle of the book, with the "camping" sections, dragged. I 
still have the same feeling about the Frodo/Sam sections of "The Two 
Towers" despite it being a long time favourite book but I have noted on 
several occasions that the last few chaptersof DH  (excluding the 
epilogue) are, for me, JKR's finest piece of story telling.

But it all boils down to "each to his own" when it comes to our feelings 
about the Wizarding World and no matter how much some contributors 
to this group like to range their big guns to try to persuade us otherwise, 
we all hold - and will continue to hold - our own interpretation of the 
events.