This Owl Just In...The Harry Potter Posts (#3: And Onward)

Today
The one thing Erik missed out on is the whole Harry experience. Because he came to the books over a three week period, there was none of the anticipation, the lining up at midnight at Chapters for a new release (and, yes, for the record I'd have taken him), the building excitement over a new movie. He just read and watched and read and watched...

Until now.

The final Harry Potter release today. If this is news to you, you might want to get out more. It's huge. It's a phenomenon. It has gripped an entire generation, more than one actually. And finally, Erik gets it. He is excited. He is anxious. He has re-read the books. He has watched all the movies. He has seen the preview for Deathly Hallows so often he can quote it. He is ready for the final movie.

And I'm glad I finally get to share that with him.

This Owl Just In...The Harry Potter Posts (#2: Fast Forward)

Fast Forward to 2008
I had all the Harry Potter books, standing stalwart on the shelves waiting for children to become as enthralled as I was. It didn't happen. My eldest - he for whom I bought the first Harry Potter, back before he was even born - read The Hobbit, Bone, and Scooby Doo. He was 8 - surely a wonderful time to start on the Hogwarts journey. But no. He wanted nothing to do with the books or the movies.

I had seen the first two movies, maybe the third, but then stopped. I had envisioned taking Erik to them, but he wasn't interested. And so I didn't see them either. To be honest, the movies never grabbed me the way the books did, although I give credit to the actors who all do a phenomenal job (full disclosure: HUGE Alan Rickman fan anyway - I swear I liked Snape because he played the part). I still wanted to see them, just not alone. Andrew had no interest either and Erik's younger sisters still were not quite ready for the books, and I reluctantly admitted defeat, enjoyed re-reading them myself, and put them on a shelf in the library.

Fast Forward to May 2011
I have nothing to read.

We've all heard that from time to time. Erik is almost 11 now. He's an avid reader and like me, a re-reader: Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Redwall, Star Wars. But he wanted something new.

Try Harry Potter, I said. I was working in the library. I handed him The Goblet of Fire, thinking the size of it would entice him.

Mom, he said, brushing it away, if I am going to read Harry Potter, I am going to start with the first one.

And he did. He finished it that day. I had lent out The Chamber of Secrets years ago and it was never returned, so I made a frantic call to a friend whose daughter is in Erik's class. He read it the next day. By the end of the week he was on The Goblet of Fire and we had watched a couple of the movies (1, 3 and 4 which were all we had). Within three weeks, he'd finished all of the books.

And was starting again.

I guess Pottermania finally caught up with him.

(to be continued)

This Owl Just In...The Harry Potter Posts (#1: Flashback)

Flashback:
I can still picture the bookstore. The kind you don't see so much anymore. Someone with thoughtful and discerning tastes stocked it with a wide selection of books so that even though it was small and local, there was always something to intrigue me. I was six months pregnant with my firstborn, and while shopping invariably found myself scanning the kids shelves thinking about the wonderful world of books my children would have. I must have passed over Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone a hundred times without a glance when suddenly the world around me went haywire. Harry Potter was being made into a movie. Everywhere people were talking about Harry Potter and I distinctly remember having two cohesive thoughts:

1. That Harry Potter sounded like a stupid name for a kid's hero; and
2. That if the books were this important (because even then it was obvious they were achieving market saturation) then I had better read them to stay informed for my kids. Yeah, that kid still firmly in utero.

I think the third book had just been released and there was talk of number four. I marched in and bought the first of the series. I took it home to read....and couldn't stop. I read it in one day. Devoured it. Dreamed colourfully of Hogwarts, so vivid were the pictures Rowling painted for me in my mind. And rushed out to buy number two.

I wasn't one of those lining up to buy the books at midight as they came out, but I certainly wasn't waiting for the paperback either.

And so my love affair for Harry Potter novels began.

(to be continued)

Real World

The first week of summer was low key and full of possibility, then we escaped to the cottage for a fabulous week of relaxation (I did some work, but editing doesn't feel so much like work to me - it's so much fun), followed by a day out with friends at a battle re-enactment and rounded off with a dinner party at another friends where we swam in a lit pool until midnight and ate filet mignon with a lovely Cabernet Franc.

But today, reality hit once more in the form of piles and piles and piles of dirty laundry; a kitchen in dire need of cleaning after we were away for a week and my dear hard-working husband had to juggle mowing 30 acres of hay and work despite nursing a serious gastro virus that laid him low all week; and weeds that I swear were not here before we left but which are now three feet high. I washed, wiped, and weeded, saving tomato and basil and tomato plants as well as my asiatic lilies, all of which were greatly at risk from the creeping charlie and dandelions and one bizarre weed I don't recognize but which takes over as soon as I turn my back.

Got most of it done. Or at least started. Then swam with Grace and Erik. Then sat on the veranda with a Smirnoff Ice. Oh yeah. Now dinner awaits Andrew and Anna who will be home soon, and I think we are settling in to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Ah, Sunday.

Friday Reads: Cottage Reads

The beautiful thing about a week at the cottage is the time it affords me to read.

On Tuesday, I read To Defy A King, a historical novel by Elizabeth Chadwick about the daughter of one of my favourite all time knights....William Marshall. I know so much about Marshall, about his contribution to the reign of Henry II and his sons, including the Lionheart and King John, but did not even know he had a daughter until I picked up this book of my mother-in-laws that was lying around the cottage.
 It makes me think...so many of the historical novels I read are about the women, the women about whom we really know so little. Their fathers and husbands, brothers and sovereigns, we know plenty about them. But with the exception of great queens, the women of the centuries are harder to find. And yet, and yet...they make the stories richer, they give depth to the past, and they add a real solid dimension to history. I admire writers such as Chadwick who bring these forgotten women so marvellously, so richly to life.

On Wednesday I read Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and The Castle of Adventure, an old children's favourite of mine by Enid Blyton that Anna had brought with her this week. A serious book club classic and a light lakeside read. I so loved Enid Blyton as a kid, and even now, when I see the similarities in all the plots and the rather old fashioned style of them, I enjoy them, probably harking back to my old memories of time curled up on a battered couch or in a tent by flashlight. I've always enjoyed the classics too, but it has been so long since I read Jude that the ending took me by surprise and I hated it, perhaps because of my own three children happily sleeping next door as I got to that bit. But the themes I thought were of interest. Hardy's views of marriage though causing apoplectic uproar at the time seem quaintly familiar today, but it was the themes of recurring patterns and the value of education that intrigued me most this reading.

And today, I read another Agatha Christie. Murder in the Vicarage. Another oldie but goodie. And have started reading Persuasion by Jane Austen, another book not on my summer list, but conveniently on my kobo.

I was supposed to be reading The Great Gastby this week, but rushing out of the house on Monday morning, do you think I could find it? Not a chance.

Time Stands Still

I wish I painted. Even photography can't always do justice. I'm at the lake this week with the kids, and we are spending our days swimming and canoeing and reading. And last night, sitting down by the campfire, I looked up to see Anna and Grace standing beside the cliff, the lake and trees and sunset behind them, and I wanted to paint.

The sun shone into them, flickers of light that encased them in mellow gold. Grace wore dark denim jeans and a yellow peasant top and Anna had on pink shorts and an aqua shirt that I would never have imagined together, but that really worked. As they stood together, their blonde tresses flying in the breeze and their tanned, laughing faces relaxed and happy, the rosy glow from the fire before them and a streak of scarlet behind as the sun descended in the sky, I had one of those moments where you just want to capture it forever and never let it go.

I had neither camera nor brush and they'd I'm sure be rolling their eyes if I told them how, in that instant, time paused for me, and I drank it all in greedily, ignoring the smoke that got in my eyes, the haunting call of the loons on the lake, and the deer flies (oh, the deer flies) that flew around my head looking for fresh flesh. Knowing I could not make time really stand still, I wanted, needed, to imprint it on my memory.

Two girls, with the world before them. And nothing to hold them back.

Friday Reads: The Secret Adversary

One of the things I thought would be fun for my summer reads was to choose the next book on my list by some inspirational moment or thought or passing fancy in the current book. I thought it might be very cool to harness the power of serendipity and see if the Fates could lead me forward.

(No, this has nothing to do with my abysmal indecision: though my dear husband claims if I were stranded on a dessert island and had to choose between chicken and fish I'd starve to death, it's not true. Or is it? Can't decide.)

I thought this in an offhand way as I was starting the first of my reading list books, but lo and behold, 150 pages in, I found my moment.

P141 The Eight
"The road curved slightly away from the sea. On either side manicured hedges, ten feet high, enclosed large estates. From time to time I caught moonlit glimpses of huge manor houses set back on sweeping snow-covered lawns. I had never seen anything like it near New York. It reminded me of Scott Fitzgerald."

Does it need to be any clearer? Scott Fitgerald was on my list. Obviously the next book had to be The Great Gatsby.

Of course, Fate has a way of playing tricks and though I started Gatsby, I got sidetracked during a long wait in a car when I got out my trusty Kobo and, flipping through the classics it came with, discovered an Agatha Christie novel I had never read. That seemed pretty serendipitous too, and since it was handy and short, I actually finished The Secret Adversary (Tommy and Tuppence's first adventure) before getting any further into Fitzgerald.

And that's ok, because Agatha Christie is also on my list this summer. I've read so many of them, but oddly, always stuck to Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot stories. I really enjoyed this one too, though it was more espionage than mystery.

So that's Friday Reads for this week. My friend Leanne is blogging about books too at My Window On The Journey, and there's a few on her list that I want to add to mine (Left Neglected, Her Fearful Symmetry, The Red Queen), but really, Summer just isn't long enough.