Happy Friday! 

It’s a holiday weekend in Melbourne. Monday is Australia Day! I am looking forward to the extra day off. Tj and I will hopefully do a day trip this weekend. All of our favourites have been eliminated from the Australian Open so we won’t be too caught up watching tennis. 

Today’s Friday favourite is about one of my all-time favourite book series. Harry Potter. I've written a bit about this in with my other favourite book series, but Harry Potter deserves a Friday Favourite post all of its own.

Let me start with the story of how I was introduced to this series. I've written about this a bit before, but back in the day, my Aunt Marlene bought me the boxset of the first three books. She had read about them in a magazine and thought I would like them.

To be honest, I thought they looked like little children’s books and I didn’t read them right away. When Aunt Marlene asked me if I liked it I said something very non-specific like oh yeah, it’s great.

After Aunt Marlene died I came across the books again. I missed her and felt a little guilty for lying about reading them, so I decided to start. And I was immediately captivated by the story of Harry Potter and the wizarding world. I fell in love so hard with the story, and over the years it's made me feel a connection with Aunt Marlene even after she was gone.

I love these books because of the characters. I love their complexities and flaws and humor. My friend sent me something online about choosing your Harry Potter fantasy magic team and it was so hard to choose my team LOL. Spoiler: in some of the books characters die. And when I read the last book, it was kind of upsetting. There were a few times where someone would die and I had to put the book down for the rest of the day because I was too emotional haha.

I love the whole wizarding world J.K. Rowling has created. I can't believe she just imagined that all herself. I love the attention to detail in her writing. And I love the magic!

Living in London is a dream come true for a Harry Potter fan. My friend Laura and I did a tour of the Warner Brother studios where the movies were filmed and it was a lot of fun to see all the props. My friend Erin got me a 'muggle' tour where they took us around to filming locations around the city. I dragged Tj along with me and even he enjoyed it. There was a little girl on the tour who was dressed in a wizard robe and Gryffindor scarf, and she even had a magic wand. She was a total whiz at answering all the trivia questions and when I told Erin later she reminded me that this kid had probably just read the books and watched all the movies for the first time so everything was probably so fresh for her. And I was so jealous that she just got to experience Harry Potter for the first time! What a treat.

The movies bring the stories to life. You miss all the details of the books, but it's awesome to see the magic happen before your eyes.

The audiobooks are also impressive. At first, the different voices of the characters was distracting to me. It's an old British guy doing a high pitched voice for Hermione which sounded a little ridiculous and kind of annoying. But it wasn't long before I got caught up in it and now they are some of my favourite audiobooks and every year or two I listen to the whole series over again. I highly recommend the Jim Dale versions.

Finally, if you ever have the opportunity to see the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, see it! I saw it twice in London, once with Tj and once with Jacob. It's an all-day thing. There are two parts and they are each a few hours long. It's the continuation of the story, nineteen years later. You get to see the characters all grown up. But this show is spectacular even for non-Harry Potter fans. Tj said it was the best show I've ever taken him to. He loved the special effects. Hint: there is a lot of magic!

If I had to pick a favourite book in the series, it'd be #3 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (that's why I took a picture with that one on my wedding day).

P.S. 11 months from today is Christmas :)

Happy Reading!