It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live

It's Friday again and we're finishing up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Book one of Alice's HP Readalong completed! THE FEELS. Because I am loving this and remembering how much I love them and I'm so excited to be reading these with everyone.

I finished up enough of Pottermore to get my wand AND get sorted. Both processes were a little bit...meh. Not that I know what I was expecting. I think actual magic. But ANYWAY, I am in Ravenclaw.
Where are the other eagles? (Even though we should totally be ravens cos it's RIGHT IN THE NAME and also ravens are way smarter than eagles. Those majestic bastards get everything.) Also my wand is 11 1/2 inches, hazel with dragon core and it's flexibility is unyielding. I'm not really sure what that means, other than the unyielding part, which I'm pretty sure means I'm stubborn. So. Yeah.

Before I get into the post I just want to put the spoiler reminder. Cos this is going to just full of them. Also I thought by now I'd be able to form coherent thoughts about the book overall but NOPE, we're going with random bullets again. Maybe for Chamber.

I love Dumbledore. Enough to overlook the fact that he is very lucky none of his students die on his watch cos he is CRAZY negligent. But he's so twinkly that I don't care. The scene with the Mirror of Erised. And the end after Harry has fought Quirell. THE BEST. So Twinkly.*

I'm so happy Harry and Ron and Hermione are now best friends because those were some tough chapters when they weren't. Even if Hermione was was completely insufferable, still, DID NOT LIKE. Plus they calm her down.

We finally learn about Quidditch, and I know I linked to this already, but I'm going to leave this Cracked article right here: A Harry Potter Protest (aka Quidditch is Bullshit). Cos for serious? This sport does not work. Well it works to make Harry Potter the super hero and the rest of the team pointless which is not the purpose of team sports. Sorry Rowling. Awesome job creating a magical world, not-so-awesome job creating a new sport with rules that make sense.

The Mirror of Erised chapter is so sad. Poor Harry when the only thing he wants is a family. Doesn't it make Ron's desires seem shallow. Especially the image of him sitting on the ground and just gazing into the mirror and watching his parents and distant relatives. SAD.

So most of the time magic is awesome and way better than living in the real world. But there are a few things that I can't help think that if wizards would just embrace some Muggle technology, they could save themselves a lot of trouble. You know, like when it came to looking up Nicholas Flamel. I bet Harry, Ron, and Hermione would have LOVED Wikipedia to be available.

I know this is a children's book and we NEED Harry and Ron and Hermione to be the heroes and get to the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone and save the day. But really? These great wizards and witches put together elaborate obstacles to keep the second most powerful wizard and his accomplices from the stone and 3 first year students are able to figure it out. Two of whom didn't even know wizards were a THING until like 8 months earlier. I mean, if this was an indication of the type of defenses the good side was going to put up against the evil one, we're screwed. (Yes I did put myself in their world.)

One thing I was happy to see was that Voldemort didn't start hanging out on the back of Quirells head until AFTER Harry had already met him at the pub before heading to Diagon Alley. Therefore it makes sense that Harry's scar didn't hurt then. Plot hole closed. Plot hole opened, Harry doesn't mention his scar hurting every time he's in Quirell's class. Unless the scar only hurts when Voldemort is super pissed and during class time he was sort of just hanging out back there. Probably thinking the turban was smelly cos who would want to be cooped up there all the time, evil incarnate or not. Except he didn't have a nose so he's prob fine.

AND NOW we can move onto Chamber because it has been super hard to not just pick it up and keep reading.

*I can't remember which one of you described him that way but it is the perfect description. So if it was you let me know and credit will be given.
UPDATE Jennifer over at Soy Chai Bookshelf described D-dore as Twinkly. Credit given!

Title quote from page 214

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Scholastic, 1997.

Harry - yer a wizard

It's time for the first Harry Potter readalong post about the book (as opposed to the intro post which is like the foreward to the whole readalong). THE EXCITEMENT
We're beginning this with the first 9 chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone if you're not American and therefore, you don't get babied. Because apparently we are too stupid for any book that has "Philosopher" in the title.) And warning for everyone, there will be spoilers. And not just for those first 9 chapters. The whole series is fair game, though I'll try to only bring up spoilers when it's actually necessary for whatever ridiculous argument I'm trying to make. But this will mostly be made up of random thoughts.

I love the opening sentence. "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." It's the "thank you very much" that does it. You can tell from that one sentence the stick up their collective ass is huge.

I don't so much mind the exposition dump when Dumbledore and McGonagall are waiting for Hagrid to show up with Harry. I have much more of a problem with the fact that Dumbledore's device is called "the Put-Outer". That sounds like the name you give something as a stand-in while you come up with something better. Come on now, Rowling.
The beginning spends a lot more time with the Dursleys than I remembered. But then again, I mostly remember the Dursleys as those few pages that happen at the beginning of the book before we get to Hogwarts and the magic. But that's cool cos I like those chapters. You gotta see how awful things are for Harry at home so he can be so excited and not-at-all homesick while at Hogwarts. Besides, I like the scene in the zoo with the snake. Although, how exactly was the snake planning on getting to Brazil? It's a bit of a ways away from England. I fear things don't end so happily for the snake.

It seems like the only place for you to buy all of your Hogwarts supplies is at Diagon Alley. Does that mean all of those stores have a monopoly on spellbooks and wands and cauldrons? That said
I love the scene at platform 9 3/4. Mostly because we get to meet the Weasleys and let's just admit that Mrs. Weasley is one of the best characters (and we can discuss how terrible the twins are later). Except I don't understand. Why doesn't the letter tell you how to get to platform 9 3/4? We've established kids born to Muggles get these letters so why should we assume they know what they're doing.

Why is Ravenclaw's mascot an eagle? Not a raven? No? Is there a clever reason behind that?

Man, Hermione is insufferable early on. I mean, more than normal 11 year olds. I don't like her not being friends with Ron and Harry, but I'm actually more surprised they all ended up besties. It just goes to show how awesome she is that her good qualities out weigh her know-it-all-ness. But I mean, someone has to have all of the answers throughout the series.

Here's something that randomly bugs me about the series, even though it's totally just me thinking WAY TOO HARD into this series and I should really just accept that it's a children's series. So the Dursleys HATE Harry and treat him like dirt and make him sleep under the stairs with the spiders. They've been his guardians since he was 1. And yet Harry is amazingly well adjusted. I keep thinking "Harry, wouldn't you be more of a sociopath? How are you able to form bonds with people if you had been completely neglected through your formative years? Rowling, why haven't you done extensive research into childhood psychology to answer these questions?" I know. I need help.

I was going to find my Hogwarts house by going through Pottermore and I made the username and everything and now it's telling me I need to go through chapters before I can get sorted. So what I'm saying is I haven't been sorted yet. Perhaps before the end of this readalong I'll get my house figured out. But I have really important places to be in the meantime


Title quote from page 50

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Scholastic, 1997.