WATCH OUT FOR SPOILERS BELOW! Read at your own risk.

Are you bored at work? Are you late-night surfing, looking for something interesting? Kill a few minutes answering these three questions:

1) How/when did you become a Harry Potter fan?

— I'm going to cheat a bit and link to a book review I wrote. An excerpt:

When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone premiered on ABC last year, I intended to watch an hour’s worth to see what the Harry Potter hype was all about. I ended up watching the entire movie, which I found completely charming. I hadn’t read any of the books at that point, but “the boy who lived” had captured my already-active imagination.

After that, I saw "Chamber of Secrets" and "Prisoner of Azkaban," and was totally taken with both. But the real magic didn't happen until I read the books. In early summer 2005, the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) pre-release hype was driving me crazy.

Why is this so big? What am I missing?

Arriving at the conclusion that I had been missing something, I ordered Books 1-5, and started reading. I thought reading Books 1-3 would be tedious because I'd already seen the movies. Boy, was I wrong! In adapting the book to the screen, scenes had to be cut, condensed, combined — it was almost like discovering a new story.

Continue reading Three Questions