Hmmm. What's your favorite *now*?

[Zara]

No: HPFGUIDX 183015

> Geoff:
> I can't quite see why they should be turned off...
> 
> There are plenty of things going on at the beginning of Philosopher's 
> Stone to capture the attention: Harry being left on the doorstep, the 
> snake incident at the zoo, The Dursleys fleeing from the letters, 
Hagrid 
> turning up, the magical entrance into Diagon Alley and the alley 
itself. 
> If those don't whet your appetite for wanting explanations, you might 
> just as well go away and read a book on knitting patterns. Dumbledore 
> could probably recommend one.
> :-)

zgirnius:
Or you could just go read PoA, where the *real* fun begins. It's where 
I recommend people start the series, if I want to be sure they will 
like it, and I think their tastes are similar to mine. The doorstep 
seemed contrived (thought tolerable in a series about a biy hero), the 
snake did little for me, and I was annoyed by its use of Spanish, since 
it speaks snake and was born and raised in London, Hagrid annoyed from 
the start, and I did not particualrly care how to get into Diagon 
Alley, though the concept of a hidden world inside ours was cool. The 
letters were funny, though, I will give you that. And I became 
interested in the plot of what was hidden in the school who was after 
it, and why, once we got to Hogwarts. Though not enough that, when it 
ended, I had any particular desire to seek out CoS.

It was the good reviews for PoA in TMTMNBN that won me over to the 
series - I am the sort of nerd who won't see a movie before reading its 
book, and the movie sounded cool. PoA the book, felt like part of a 
series. A good series. One in which really I wanted to know what 
happened next.