Harry Potter Readalong: An Illustrated Introduction

Harry Potter, I am re-reading you. In toto. All of you. In order. For the first time. And I am excited! (NOTE: This is not my first read of the series. Or my first re-read of any individual book. Just my first re-read of the whole series in order start to finish.)

There will be a lot more like this as we progress, I promise you that.

I'll be participating in Reading Rambo's Harry Potter All the Gifs Readalong, which basically means there will be a lot of gifs and a lot of my looking for clues of horcruxes and Dumbledore's awesomeness and generally oohing over how adorbs Dobby is and a lot of remembering how I spent most of my adolescence waiting for an owl of my own (I read the first book when I was ten so my eleventh birthday was simultaneously the most stressful and disappointing birthday ever, because, spoiler alert, I never did get an owl).

Introduction-y bits: I am Kerry, from Maryland, and my Instagram account is pretty much all pictures of books I am reading, books I think are pretty, bookstores I like, and/or my dog wearing silly sweaters.

Other things of relative import that sort of qualify as introduction-y:

I once read Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis, which is Harry Potter in Latin. Now I can only read the first sentence (and by "read", I mean "have memorized in English and can therefore sort of translate.")

I read the first book when it first came out, which meant I waited for each and every single solitary book to follow, which meant I went to a lot of midnight book releases. I even worked at a local bookstore for one of them, and wore a homemade glitter-y Harry Potter tank top to work that night while decorating the store in all HP everything (including a snitch and a broom hanging from the ceiling).

Notice that we made the drink cooler into Hogwarts Cafe.
No corner of the store escaped undecorated.

Also, when the sixth book came out, my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I were too broke to buy two copies, so we bought one and read it out loud to each other since we didn't want to wait for the other to finish it before starting. #truelove

When my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I talk like our dog (that's a normal dog-owner thing, right?), we speak in Dobby's voice, because Indy and Dobby have the same crazy expressive ears. 

Indy will be going as Dobby for Halloween next year.

So, full nerd-dom confessed, I am setting out to re-read the whole series which I conveniently own in a boxed set with what promise to be some very fun fellow readalongers. Read on!