There's someone else besides "Badda Being" (a contributor to the library blog for a brief time) who's never been able to get through a Harry Potter book (see our July 15th post). A few people have remarked that they shared Badda Being's sentiments, and so when I spotted Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's August 11th post, I thought I'd share at least part of it here. She begins: "At an Angels game last night, as we took our seats, I turned around and saw yet another person reading the latest Harry Potter.
Am I the only person I know who has not finished an entire Harry Potter novel? It's great that J.K. Rowling gets kids reading, and entrances adults as well, but I just cannot get into these books..."
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On the other hand, I know lots of brilliant, remarkable, creative people who adore Harry Potter. This includes Andrew, who read Deathly Hallows for hours at a time.
And now for a bit of a tangent: I personally haven't read beyond Book 4, but to my mind, it's whatever suits the individual. Far be it from me to say. You, after all, are the one who's going to spend the 10, 15, 20 hours of your reading life with the book. So you can read said book, or you can stick it back on the shelf. Take your pick.
I've never been the sort of person who could force a book on someone else. I will rave about a book, but if someone wants to know whether or not he should, in fact, read it, and have a book report ready for me in a week, I become instantly vague: "Well, maybe. Then again, maybe not. What would you prefer?"
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why a certain poetry professor I had in college, Larry Kramer, meant so much to me. He was the only professor I ever had who wouldn't hand out a syllabus, and when students asked him what poems they should read for his class he said, "Read the poems that interest you."
I have carried his words with me.
I appreciate that there's no required reading at our house. Only suggested reading. And as one of my closest friends puts it, "I read the books I was meant to read."
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Painting by Bissell
