Pun Salad

For no reason I can put my finger on, I've resolved to get through all seven Harry Potter books. (It might be because my daughter technically owns them, and she keeps threatening to take them away.)

I've assigned myself about 20 pages per day. If my calculations are correct, I should finish book 7 around March 18 of next year. (I'd only managed to read the first two, but I'm re-reading them in this project to refresh my memory.)

This first installment in the series, of course, introduces the main characters: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Hagrid, Snape, Malfoy, etc. Since (from the movies), I already kind of know what's happening, it's funny to note Rowling's foreshadowing. There's a lot of whimsy in this first book that (at least in the movies) gets cut way back later, as things get more and more deadly. The comic caricatures of the Dudleys, the every-flavor jellybeans, quidditch, the sorting hat, …

A very amusing and effortless read. It's easy to see why so many readers got sucked into the Potterverse.