Book Report: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Now as long as we’re on about Your Humble Blogger’s pathetic Anglophilia, it may be time to admit that the next book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Not the Sorceror’s Stone, the Philosopher’s Stone. You see, back when I was really enjoying the series, and was frustrated that the Scholastic editions just weren’t English enough, I went into a bookshop in, um, Driffield, and bought a boxed set of the first three in paperback.

Actually, I became interested in the book when in England in 1999, I think, and almost picked up a copy of the first one, but I knew it was available in the US, and books are expensive over there, and are heavy besides, and between my Best Reader and myself, we had already purchased enough to require also purchasing a new piece of luggage to take home. However, and I want to emphasize this, the rumor that my Best Reader went into the bookstore of the British Museum and said “One of each, please” is completely false and I have no idea where it started.

Anyway.

On return, of course, I found that the first Harry Potter was only theoretically available in the US, and that and actual copy of the book was not to be had for love nor money. Well, and I only really offered money, come to think of it. Anyway, I did manage to buy a hardback copy eventually, and I’ve bought hardbacks of all the US editions since and will undoubtedly buy another in July, but I’m still glad I picked up the paperbacks when I did. I do prefer paperbacks. There are a few entertaining bits of Britishness, but on the whole I don’t think people reading the American translation are missing much.

So, on my third time through, did I like the book? Yes, actually, quite a bit. It’s not great. It’s not Oz. It’s not Alice. But it is awfully good. It was interesting reading it alongside Five Children and It. I’d always thought of it as being essentially a schoolboy novel, which it is, of course, but I hadn’t really thought of it as also being an E. Nesbit book, which it is as well. The second one, too, I think, although I’d have to go back and read it (and perhaps I shall). I think by the third one, they’ve become something else again. Part of that is the way Ms. Rowling makes the main characters grow up and change; part is the way they succumb to the overarching Plot. The Philosopher’s Stone has no plot, really. Well, that’s not quite true, but the plot takes up very little of the story. Mostly, it’s just Harry, and stuff happens to him.

It’s a slight, entertaining, funny book with a few flaws. In some ways, it’s the opposite of book five, which is a overwrought, dull, scary book with a few virtues.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.