If all were to go swimmingly…

Of course.  Indeed.  I so confirm. I do say. Harry Potter is in my top 31.

I’m also taking a small liberty and including all 7 books, and no-

No!  I will absolutely not force myself to choose a favorite.  I don’t believe in that sort of thing.  It’s a series!  What if you could only read the second one?  You’d never know Edward Cullen as Cedric Diggory! Or the fifth one!? You’d only know Snape as a villain, and you would never know about that cool trick Lily could do with the fish.

Harry Potter is a series that touched a lot of people’s lives.  I’m not exaggerating.  I was a stick in the mud about it, and later declared I would not read a word until the whole series was out.  I’m so glad that I did, even though I missed a lot of the excitement, because I am not great at waiting. I couldn’t have handled it and what could I have done about it? A big, fat nothing… I would’ve been a wreck! I always find my way to Downton Abbey before it reaches the states, for example.

Back to the life-changing world of Harry Potter.

I read Harry Potter while I was in Indonesia. If you don’t know, the weather in Indonesia is HOT.  It’s humid, it’s hot, and there is no air conditioning, at least not in the little room on Alor where we were staying.  Sometimes we would walk to the one ATM in town just to get a breath of A/C!  I’m not even kidding!   In four and a half weeks, I read the first four books (yes, easily), and then I had to go in search of the fifth.  I found, it, on Bali, and I got to read that one too. I had to wait until I got back to Holland to read the last two. (Ohhhh! The pain!)

My little sister had read the first book 17 times by the time the last book was published.  I’ll double check with her to make sure.  Natalie?  By the way, this is the same little sister (now in her 20s)  that made all of the sketches for the stories in “Case by Case Basis.”  She was a wonder to work with, mostly because she always responds to emails.  How is that?  Right now, I have more than 3,000 unread messages in my inbox.  What? That’s not normal? I don’t think they’re important.  I usually get to the important ones.  But I digress.

In the past there has been some quarreling over whether its better to read one thing (like HP) more than once, or over and over again, or if it’s better to read a vast, diverse number of works (like every Goosebumps book? Every Baby-sitter’s Club?)

I agree with the idea that HP single handedly increased the number of readers, male and female, in the world.  Kids jumped on board, they read, and they loved it, and that makes readers.

I don’t care if you read the same book over and over again for your entire life.  You’re still reading… There are many worse things you could be doing.

I’d love to see some long-term research done on this, and I bet my ass there will be.  Because Harry Potter lovers don’t die, they just get older, and when they reach an age at which they have the time and energy and utility to do a study on how Harry Potter increased literacy for an entire generation, they’ll do it.

A question for you: What’s your favorite Harry Potter Book?  I think numbers 1, 4,5 and 7 are my favorites 🙂