Harry, Harry, Harry!

OK, so this really would be more properly done tomorrow, but I'm too excited. I have this mad urge to run around the house going, "Harry, Harry, Harry, HARRY!". Just like the other day I went around going, "Michelle, Michelle, Michelle..." And no, Harry is not a new boyfriend. Unless you've been stuck under a rock, you know that it's Harry Potter. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, to be exact.

I wasn't the first to get into the books- it was sometime around when Sorcerer's Stone (aka Philosopher's Stone in Britain) went into paperback- but I can say I am among the ranks of the dedicated. In preparation for this momentous event, I began rereading the series on Monday, starting with Order of the Phoenix and am currently on Chamber of Secrets. And since I both have no life and am an extraordinarily fast reader, I should be done with the series- again- by tomorrow. (To illustrate, I got home with OotP about one last time and was done with it by five. The U.S. version has 870 pages).

But of course, my Harry Potterification wouldn't be complete wtihout the cinematic experience as well. "Where are you, Nettie?"" At the party for the midnight showing of Prisoner of Azkaban, of course!" "Oh. Um, OK." I just started with SS and should be able to finish all three in between Whose Line and SVU viewings. Obviously I'm a bit obsessed.

But why am I obsessed? Why for Christmas do I not only get Harry Potter calendars and games and puzzles, but a new hardback copy of SS since I wore the paperback one to bits? Why is it that at 6 o'clock tomorrow I will be in line in my Harry Potter T-shirt and socks to get a wristband which will hopefully allow me to get a book at midnight? What is it about these books that inflames my passions so that I was ready to do battle with the many at my Christian high school who thought they were evil? Maybe it's because sometimes I long for magical powers (don't we all?). Maybe cause at the time I started reading them I needed a little magic in my life, too. Perhaps because I was never one to read the classics, stuff that other people thought I should be reading. But in the end, it doesn't really matter. Soon I and others will know just who the Half-Blood Prince is. And then we will begin waiting rather impatiently for the seventh, and probably final book, in the wonderful world of Harry Potter.