2020-06-11: JK Rowling is a TERF and white supremacist. Donate & protect Black & Indigenous trans femme futures ✊?✊?✊?

Needing a short pause from the non-fiction I’d been reading lately, before I plunge into the one book I’ve taken to Brussels, and while waiting for the arrival of one of Joan Slonsczewski’s, I decided to spend a night reading the first Harry Potter.

Which turned into a week reading the first five.

I’ll have to wait till I’m back in Berlin to finish the last two, but it has been highly enjoyable.

There’s a definite turn after The Prisoner of Azkaban, which has long been my favourite, and by The Order of the Phoenix, there’s more being said than needs to be; I was sitting on a train from Zürich to Vevey in 2005, reading The Half-Blood Prince feeling decidedly tired with the proceedings, especially with Harry’s surly moods. Still, many of the books came out on or so near to my birthday, I decided I must share the date with the Boy Who Lived (turns out it’s not).

I’ve been paying more attention to Hermione this time, whose narrative journey over the seven books is the most fascinating, as well as often unexpected — she has a life outside of the pages that neither Harry nor Ron do. There’s an obvious feeling in her character than she is the embodiment of many hopes and aspirations not just of the author, but of what a girl can strive for while growing into a woman.

So, a bit of a distraction for some days, still two and an half to go. Would that there were more from the Potter universe to read.