Synopsis:

Harry Potter has no idea how famous he is. That’s because he’s being raised by his miserable aunt and uncle who are terrified Harry will learn that he’s really a wizard, just as his parents were. But everything changes when Harry is summoned to attend an infamous school for wizards, and he begins to discover some clues about his illustrious birthright. From the surprising way he is greeted by a lovable giant, to the unique curriculum and colorful faculty at his unusual school, Harry finds himself drawn deep inside a mystical world he never knew existed and closer to his own noble destiny.

Rating:

Review:

I have always loved the Harry Potter books. I was first introduced to them about six months after Prisoner of Azkaban was released. And I devoured them. I was the crazy person who signed up for all of the midnight releases of the new books. Got locked into the Barnes & Noble to await the book being delivered, got my book at midnight and went home to start reading. Once I was an adult I would take the following day off work to read the book in one sitting. I couldn’t get enough. I saw every film on release day. I bought every audiobook on release day. For a long time when I worked a data entry job I would listen to the audiobooks on repeat. I would get to the end and start again, over and over and over. So this was a comfort listen for me.

As far as the narration goes, what more do I need to say other than Jim Dale. Disclaimer, I also love the audiobooks by Stephen Fry because he is a legend and I adore his version. But there’s just something special about the Jim Dale audiobooks. He puts on such a performance! All of the voices and the inflection and the emotion. He is a legend. I could listen to these audiobooks every single day and never get bored of hearing his voice.

Enough of my fawning over Jim Dale, on to the book. It was just as book as I remembered it. One of the most memorable opening sentences in all of fiction, ““Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” This single line puts you into this world immediately. You know exactly what kind of people the Dursley’s are. And then you have the wonder of all the “strange” and “unusual” thing that Vernon Dursley keeps noticing, but doesn’t say anything to Petunia because he wouldn’t want to worry her. The moment Harry Potter learns he is a wizard is a moment filled with so much emotion that it still makes me tear up.

Naturally the book isn’t perfect, but it’s close. You have to suspend reality a lot for this plot to be plausible. Why a group of 11 year old children, who had been learning magic for about 5 minutes, thought that they were more capable of protecting the stone than a group of wizards and witches that had more magical experience in their pinky finger? Realizing that if Harry had just left well enough alone that Voldemort wouldn’t have stood a chance at getting the stone in the first place, so he put his friends in danger entirely unnecessarily. And, of course, the royal screw job that Dumbledore gives Slytherin for the House Cup at the end of the book.

But, if you just suspend your imagination a little then these are merely things to giggle about in an otherwise legendary book. The only place where this book loses a star for me is that is it full of tropes. The nerdy, unattractive girl. The fat boy who resembles a pig. The shabby kid who comes from a large family and doesn’t dress well. A lot of tropes that make me crinkle my nose a bit as an adult. But it is just as magical reading it for the thousandth time as it was the first.