During the holiday shopping season in 1997, I got a second job working at the Barnes & Noble close to the Perimeter Mall in Marietta, Georgia. I remember when I interviewed for the job I told the manager, If you put me in the Children's Section, I will sell lots of books. I kept my promise. All of the other seasonal hires were put on registers to ring up customer's purchases... purchases that I had sold them if they had shopped for kids' books. As part of my elementary education major while earning my bachelor's degree at Florida State University, I had to take a class called Children's Literature. (We called it Kid Lit.) I learned a tremendous amount in that class about all kinds of books-- alphabet books, counting books, board books for the little 'uns, picture books, Caldecott and Newberry Awards, chapter books, historical fiction, fantasy, poetry, etc. You name it, if it was a type of children's literature, I read it. We had a certain number of pages that we had to read, along with a log to keep, for the class.
Back to my job. I loved working at Barnes & Noble... and everyone in my family got books that year for Christmas. My knowledge from taking Kid Lit, as well as the other classes in my major, helped me to steer shoppers in the right direction for appropriate reading material no matter what the age of the child they were buying presents for-- or their reading ability. I remember seeing this book with a beautiful cover-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone-- and thinking, Wow. I bet that's going to be a hit. I hadn't heard about Harry Potter, and to be honest I don't even know if that's the first year HP came out, but the book looked interesting, and well-executed. Sometimes you really can judge a book by its cover.
Books, and reading, have always been a huge part of my life. My parents read to me from the time I came out of the womb. I love to read... my mother says that from the time I learned to read until I graduated from high school she didn't know what I looked like because my nose was always stuck in a book.
She's such a kidder.
I was always reading, that is, until I went to graduate school. In grad school, I was forced to read hundreds of pages every week for my classes... and I didn't mind doing it, because I am a voracious reader, but it wasn't exactly page-turning material.
I remember loving waking up early on a snowy Saturday morning, making a pot of hot green tea, munching on toast spread with Nutella (whoever thought up spreadable chocolate for breakfast deserves a Nobel prize in gastronomy!) or Map-o-Spread (spreadable maple syrup-- hellooooo, yes please!!!), stretching out on the couch, reading. I'd face the huge sliding glass doors so I could enjoy the snow (This was Nova Scotia, mind you, where it started snowing in November and didn't stop until the end of May-- MAY!!!), light a little candle, maybe have some jazz on... and it was actually really, really nice. Some might say perfect. Or at least, as perfect as a situation can be where one is forced to read hundreds of pages each week for her classes so that she can earn a Master's which will enable her to work in her dream profession as a school counselor.
Having that much required reading, though, kind of took the fun out of books for me. I didn't mind chewing on a good magazine article, but books went by the wayside a bit. Unless they were cookbooks. Nova Scotia was the place where I learned how to cook using Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. It really did teach me how to cook everything!!! But that's another post.
It was years before I truly started reading again. When I returned to Florida, I had several teacher friends who were reading the Harry Potter series, but I turned my nose up at them. I thought I was too cool to read children's books. (Seriously? How on earth can I be too cool for anything?) Like the counseling theories that had been crammed down my throat, the thought of reading any more children's books felt beneath me. While I was overseas I had been turned on by the classics, particularly Jane Austen, and there was no way that this Potter character could equal Mr. Darcy or Elizabeth Bennett.
One summer I found myself with a lot of time on my hands after returning from a trip to England. Someone lent me the first Harry Potter book. I started reading... and devoured it in a few days. Then I watched the first film on DVD. I did this with all the books that had been made into film. Read the book, watch the movie, start on the next book. I drank hot tea, lit a candle on the coffee table, and settled in. It was great. The only book I waited for was the last book, which I read a few weeks after it had come out, being lent from another fellow fan. I wouldn't say I am a super-fan, but I did enjoy the books in a huge way. JK Rowling introduced us to a most incredible world.
I haven't been to Universal to witness the new Harry Potter world in the flesh, because I've been waiting for just the right day to go. Last year no matter what day I had chosen it would have been too crowded... now... I am thinking I'll take a day off in the middle of the week one day in early November, before the holiday tourists descend upon central Florida, ride the rides, drink butterbeer, and gaze at the overpriced wands. I've been waiting. Patiently.
I seem to be good at that. (Or at least I am trying!)
This summer after going to see the last film, my friend and I talked about how we wanted to read the books again. I was in the gorgeous media center at my school today when I had a thought. I jumped up and picked through the shelves. Sure enough... there it was. Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone. I immediately checked it out and stuck it in my bag to read this weekend.
Even though I already know how the story ends, sometimes it's good to be... back at the beginning.
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