Deathly Hallows

I read what will likely be my last for-pleasure book before law school this weekend. It was "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." I read it in the span of two days.

I discovered Harry Potter in early 2007 in the basement of the library where I worked. I happened upon the J.K. Rowling (pronounced ROLL-ing) section, an event that seems weighty in a college library that uses the Library of Congress call number system. (I've worked in the MIT science library for almost four years and the system still makes little sense to me. Cutters and decimals confuse me and mnemonics fail. One must happen upon books or intentionally seek them out because pointedly browsing in the LC call# muddle doesn't happen.)

I say I discovered Harry Potter because I started reading "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" in a basement years after the craze had hit the world's young-adults. I started reading and kept reading and took the book home and stayed up most of the night with it. I was shocked, astounded, and I understood that that Harry Potter is celebrated because the books are stunningly good. It's the best fiction I've ever read.

In that period of early 2007, when my life was crashing around me, I read the rest of the series straight through, pausing only for a few days to wait for the release of "Deathly Hallows" in July, 2007. I purchased my reserved copy the day of the release and read the 759-page book straight through, beginning at 1 pm and finishing at 3:38 am. After two hours of sleep I opened the book to page one and began again.

The Harry Potter books aren't about magic, even though they are. Rowling used the pretense of wizardry to write about love and friendship and family and mystery and growing up and self-discovery. The books captured my heart and my imagination and it was then that I settled on law school. The books aren't responsible for my decision but they are connected. Harry Potter served as a bridge between the facts of what existed in my life at the time and the fiction of the doors that were there to be opened.

But I'm not trying to moralize here. I'm trying to pass on this one overriding message: Read Harry Potter. Go to your library (trust me, libraries need all the business they can get) and borrow "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." (In your public library it is probably shelved in the young adult fiction section under "R.") Open it up and read late into the night like the rest of us have. If you take nothing else from me take this: do not live your life without reading these books.

Please see my original post here: http://lauramcwilliams.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/deathly-hallows/
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