I have just finished the last Harry Potter book today, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  I didn’t just acquire it.  I loved the series.  I bought it on the day it came out.  I even waited at Barnes and Noble for 2 hours to buy the book.  I got home and started reading it.  But, something strange happened, I couldn’t get into it.   While I was reading it, I kept thinking, “when is it going to end?”.  It was boring!  It didn’t grab my attention like the previous books did.  It wasn’t fun.  It wasn’t interesting.  It was not enjoyable.  I felt, as though, I was back in school reading a book I had to read for a class.

So, I stopped.

Six months or so went by.  I was traveling to Thailand in February.  It would take twenty four hours, door-to-door.  I needed something to pass the time.  A book to read sounded good enough.  So, I thought I’d give it another try.  I brought it along with me.  I read it.  I read it to chapter eleven.

And I stopped.

While I was in Thailand, I got to talk to one of my best friends from childhood, Dao. (It means a star in Thai).  Somehow we ended up talking about books.  I asked her if she had read Harry Potter.  She said yes, and said that she loved it! And she didn’t think she could die happy without finishing the series.  I told her about how I couldn’t finish the book, about how boring it was, and she said, “How could that be?  You must be crazy!”.

Another six months or so went by.  One day, someone on my vanpool talked about the next Harry Potter movie, the Half-blood Prince.  It was supposed to be released this November, but Warner Bros. had decided to postpone it until July of next year.  It made me think about the Half-blood Prince.  I read it so long ago.  I didn’t remember how went.  I remembered enjoying it very much.  So, I thought I should re-read it, before the movie comes out.  So, I did.

I finished the Half-blood Prince.  Then, I thought I might as well read the Deathly Hallows.  “Just finish the series”, I thought.  “I am going to give my best effort to finish it”, I told myself.  So, I grabbed the last Harry Potter book from the bookshelf, and I started to read it.  I read, and read, and I kept on reading.  And I FINISHED it!

And…

I LOVED IT!  I love the book.  I love the series.  And here I am, on the couch, hours later, still having bits and pieces of it pop into my head.  I’m thinking about the whole series, about how it all went down, about how well everything tie together at the end, admiring J.K. Rowling for her amazing piece of fiction, and feeling sad that there won’t be the next book…

I guess, everything has its moment, where it’s got to happen at the right place, and at the right time.  So, I am still here, on the couch, hours later, trying to figure out what my problem was, about how I just couldn’t finish the book …because it was boring?

My gosh, I must be (temporarily) crazy!