Harry Potter Has Me In His Spell

You haven’t heard me talk about what book I’ve been reading lately because I’ve been on a Harry Potter vacation for the past month and a bit. My sister Tracy is a big fan and has all of the books. I had seen the movies but not read any of the books so I thought it was time to start. Well I’ve read the first four books and only have two left. The good thing is the books are great. The bad thing is that they are so addicting that it’s all I’ve been reading. Is too much fiction bad?

It’s an interesting thing reading a book after seeing the movie. My brain didn’t have to do any of the work of creating mental pictures of characters or buildings or much really. It’s kind of nice to have an exact picture of what Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry looks like from the movie but I wonder if my mind would have created something else. At least I’ve got book four read before that movie comes out next month.

This is why reading is so much better for our minds than watching videos. That is if you want to work your mind. With video the images are all presented to us immediately. We don’t have to create pictures in our mind. We don’t have to picture a short plump little girl with a blue ribbon tied to her ponytail chewing bubble gum while walking to school with her pink Pocahontas backpack on. She just walks across our screen and it’s done. I think I may be just regurgitating this from something I read about children and TV. Makes perfect sense to me though.

Maybe I will have to reread The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe before that arrives in theaters so I have my own mental image first. That made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory extra enjoyable. That was a book I knew quite well and read right before the movie was released.

So all that to say, no I haven’t stopped reading, it's just that the greatest wizard in the world has a spell on me that I can't escape! And why not, Halloween is just around the corner.

GL