Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling, 435 pages
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling, 734 pages
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling, 870 pages
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling, 652 pages
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, 759 pages
Even if they haven't read these books or seen the movie adaptations, most people have at least a passing familiarity with the story of the boy wizard with the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. For those who don't, Harry is an orphan who grows up not knowing that he's a wizard, and that his parents were killed by the most evil dark wizard ever (Voldemort to you and me and Harry, though most wizards can't bring themselves to speak his name). He attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and under the tutelage of headmaster Professor Dumbledore, the strict Professor McGonagall, and the loathsome Professor Snape, Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione fight magical beasts, learn magic, and find out that the power of friendship and love is as good as any magic they can learn at school.
I've read these books more times than I care to admit, though I will say that my copy of book 5 (the longest in the series) needs replacing due to the wear and tear on its spine. The reason I've read these so many times is because they're simply magical, in every sense of the word. Rowling knows how to weave an excellent story, dropping innocuous breadcrumb hints throughout the seven books that, when you reach the series' conclusion, you think, "Duh, I totally should have thought of that." That, I think, is why I keep reading this series.
That said, this is my first re-read after reading The Cuckoo's Calling, a hard-boiled adult mystery written by Rowling under the pseudonym, Robert Galbraith. That was an excellent mystery and showed what Rowling is capable of when not held by the constraints of a young adult fantasy world. For that reason, perhaps, I didn't find this re-read quite as magical as the previous trips through the series. I still love Harry Potter and I'm sure I'll read them again (though you won't find me posting about them on this blog again), but now that there's a fantastic adult Rowling book (The Casual Vacancy was meh, or at least it was as far as I got through it), I'm a lot more keen to see what else Rowling can do.
*I didn't include book 1, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in this post since I last listened to that on audiobook in August, before this blog started. But I highly recommend starting there, and even if you have read the book, give the audiobook a whirl. Jim Dale reads it, and he's fantastic.
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