The first Harry Potter book was published in the United States in 1998. It was a real big hit and everyone was reading them. Because everyone else was doing it, I decided I would never read the books. My family felt about the same way.

Three years later I was in Brasil and saw the second Harry Potter book at the grocery store. I thought that would make a fun souvenir since I loved children’s books and it was in Portuguese. By that time I was also getting letters from my family about how much they loved the books.

I returned to the United States in 2001 and that Summer set about to read the first four books because my parents and sister kept going on about how good they were. Besides, I now owned one of them, and so I should probably read them. I checked out the first one from the library and set to it. It was a great book. I then read the second one in Portuguese. It was a bit of a challenge, I didn’t know the phrase “vomiting slugs” in Portuguese so I had to look that one up, along with several other words. And somehow, when they were doing the translation, they left out one key sentence. So when Harry turns to Ron and asks him if he remembers where the spider said the dead girl was found, I had no idea what he was talking about because the spider hadn’t said anything about where the dead girl was found.

I was hooked.

My sister went to England for a semester and I told her I wanted the Harry Potter books in the original English, not the American I had at home. She gave me a boxed set of the first four with the children’s covers. Those were fun to read. I’m going to get the rest when they are all out in paper back and combine my order with some other people so the cost of shipping will be split amongst us. I’ve also found the first book in Portuguese and am always on the look out for the others. And I think it would be fun to read Harry Potter in Latin and Ancient Greek as well (which it has also been translated into).

I ordered the fifth one on-line to be delivered the day it was released. But it wasn’t. It was so hard to wait for it to finally be delivered on Wednesday. By then my parents and sister had already read it.

For the sixth book I decided a midnight party sounded more fun, but I didn’t bother pre-ordering. Instead I took my chances and ended up winning a book at the party I was at. We started reading it on the drive home, and other than a brief stop to sleep and another one to go buy milk, I read the book straight through (book 6).

This time, I actually pre-ordered. Again we started reading on the drive home. I took a four hour nap in the middle of the book, and finished it this evening. I loved it. It was a wonderful book that had me sobbing with red puffy eyes at times, sitting forward trying to catch every word at times, and wanting to stand up and cheer out loud as well. I’m working on getting the chapter by chapter notes/times up right now like I did with the last book. It will be on the other part of my site. (edit: It’s up => HP7)

Part of me was sad to know that this would be the last Harry Potter book. J. K. Rowling equated it to a bereavement as she finished writing it. But that didn’t stop me from reading it straight through. I had to know how it ended. It really is almost like an addiction. I had to have my Potter.

As someone who now has made some Harry Potter inspired witch’s outfits (2, actually) and who people look to as someone who knows a lot about the world of Harry Potter, well, you’d never guess I’m someone who said they’d never read them.