I Did It . . . And I Liked It

I couldn't wait. I said I was going to. I said I didn't want to know. But the temptation was just too much and this morning, I caved.

I went online and got a preview of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I know, I know. I was so adamant about not reading anything regarding the book. I stayed away when I heard a couple of days ago that apparently someone had gotten a hold of the book and published photographs of every page on the web. Nope. I didn't want anything to do with it. I would be patient and wait for my copy to arrive early next week.

So much for that.

After hearing about the New York Times book review and the flack they were getting for publishing it before the book was released, I got a little curious. This came after I had reread Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as a primer for the final installment and then went to see the Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix movie Wednesday night. (The movie was amazing btw. There's one scene where Harry and a few other witches and wizards are flying through the night time skies of London on broomsticks - It was simply magical.)

I even thought about canceling my Amazon.com order and picking up the book today so that I could start it sooner, but by the time that idea occurred to me my order was already "being prepared for shipment" and therefore un-cancellable.

So I first gave in by reading the NYT book review which I must say doesn't really give anything away. All these people are up in arms that about it, but it didn't really say anything that we readers didn't expect. There are no big secrets revealed, no spoilers in my opinion. I understand the publisher and the author being upset by the fact that the reviewer was able to walk into a New York City bookstore on Wednesday and pick the book up . . . But then again I'm never all that disappointed when the big almighty marketing machine gets a wrench thrown into it.

The book review, however, did whet my appetite further and I found myself googling "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Sure enough, Wikipedia had an entry about it and gave a synopsis of the book with a few spoilers included. I didn't have to read it. And who knows, it might not even be accurate, but what I did read seemed pretty likely and confirmed some of my own feelings about how the story would wind up.

Now I'm no crazed Harry Potter fan. I didn't have any urge to dress up and go to one of these Midnight Madness events at my local bookstore (I'll leave that to the kids), but I am excited about reading the book and even after I gave myself a sneak peek, I'm still excited.

So if you don't hear from me for a few days starting Monday or Tuesday, have no fear I will be fully immersed in the magical world of Harry Potter. It's a wonderful story - one I never thought I would be the least bit interested in - and I'm a little sad to see that it will finally be over. Thank you, J.K. Rowling for creating such a wonderful reading experience for young and old. It has been a pleasure.

UPDATE, 2:01 p.m. - The mailman just delivered my book! I thought I would have to wait until next week and now I don't so I kind of feel bad that I couldn't wait to find out the end because now I will certainly devour this thing and stay up all too late reading . . . Gotta go!!

P.S. I wrote an entry this morning over at my website for my online writing journal that I'm sort of proud of and would like to invite you to read. I've been trying to give myself (and whoever else is reading) a weekly prompt to ponder and then posting my response to it. I liked this one, so if you'd like to read it I promise a warm, fuzzy feeling :)

If Harry Can't Do It, Who Can?

I know I say it all the time, but seriously, I LOVE National Public Radio. I listen to it everyday on my way to and from work and I'm always amazed at how many interesting stories there are out there. And they're not just 1 minute stories with cutesy soundbytes - the reporters tell a full story (and I love the way they use sound in the background for say a busy street market while they're speaking).

Anyway, I caught this topic today, Summer Reading and Harry Potter. In case you've been living in a cave for the past three weeks, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final installment of the Harry Potter series, will be released on July 21st and has brought about the usual discussions of children and their reading habits.

I'd always heard praise for the series because it was credited with getting millions of kids reading. And while not wanting to take away from what author J.K. Rowling has accomplished, it appears that while kids may be reading Harry Potter they aren't reading much else. As David Mehegan talked about today on NPR, and in a July 9th article in the Boston Globe, a recent survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts titled "Reading at Risk" found that leisurely reading among teens and adults has actually declined.

The New York Times wrote about the same topic in today's edition. Reporter Motoko Rich writes that the percentage of kids who say they read for fun drops from 43% of fourth graders to only 19% of eighth graders. And why is that?

Some believe it's television, although studies don't seem to show any kind of increase in television viewing between the age groups. The consensus seems to be that there are just SO MANY things competing for children's time - television, video games, music, the Internet, text messaging, cell phones and don't forget those traditional activities of going to the movies with friends, athletics and just plain old hangin' around.

I would say that I experienced a similar decline in my own reading life. I was an avid reader for much of my young life and then right around my freshman or sophomore year in high school - I just sort of stopped. Reading became a homework assignment; something I had to do; books assigned to me by teachers I felt didn't understand me and had no idea what I'd like to read.

It wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I returned to the wonderful world of reading for pleasure. I started with fiction - my first love - but have branched out in recent years with plenty of non-fiction which includes some of my favorite magazines. While I don't pretend to represent all kids, I think my experience is pretty common. It was, at least, among my own friends at the time.

So maybe kids aren't all that different today than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Maybe we're just taking more notice because of our fear of "losing" them to a world of technology that we as adults don't fully understand.

What I hope is that those kids who don't read just for the sheer pleasure of it right now will find themselves devouring all that they missed out on in 10 years or so because making my way back to books - smelling those new, never touched, crisp, clean pages of a good novel - has been one of the best experiences (and continues to be) of my life.