The Levels of Potter

There is a dilemma I face every time I want to discuss a book, movie, or TV episode. In the first place, I want to stimulate interest in whatever I’m talking about. So, those who haven’t yet read the book or seen the show can’t be told of their outcomes. But it’s often the outcomes that I want to discuss! This is particularly annoying when I want to bring up something that happened within a series, such as Harry Potter, for example.

The Harry Potter series is especially obnoxious in this regard, since there are people at all kinds of different levels therein. First, there are those who’ve never read any of the books nor seen any of the movies. Then, there are those who are in various in-between stages. Finally, we have people who’ve passed the fourth book/movie Goblet of Fire but have yet to read the fifth installment Order of the Phoenix, people who’ve passed that level but still haven’t complete book #6 The Half-Blood Prince, people who’ve gone from #1 through #6 but haven’t completed book #7 The Deathly Hallows, and finally people who’ve read it all (like me)! I abhor plot-spoiling (I heard that movie critic Roger Ebert once gave away the ending of a movie on his movie review show). And the fact that this series is so spread out makes it almost impossible for two people in a group to discuss it without a third person being told something they hadn’t yet gotten to.

The only thing I know to do about this is to put a warning about plot spoilers right after my entry’s title and just before the body of the article. Then I could feel free to write my articles like the literature assignments I did in high school. Of course, when I did my book reports back then, I didn’t have to concern myself with spoiling the ending for the teacher. The idea was to describe the setting, characters, plot, and, above all, what I as a reader came away with from the story. And since I’ve done that so many times in the past with books that I did NOT want to read, I think it’s only fitting that I catch up a little and write a few reports about some books that I actually wanted to read. With the prefaced assumption, of course, that you, the blog reader, like my teachers of old, have already read the same material (or seen the same movie or episode). I know that if I had written a book that many people had enjoyed reading, then I would like nothing better than for them to freely discuss it a lot among themselves, without fear of “giving it away” to others!

With this end in mind, I will put a disclaimer “THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN PLOT SPOILERS FOR ______” so that you can avoid having the story given away to you accidentally. The subsequent review then may not necessarily be comprehensive, and it might not even give away much of the plot, either (but better safe than sorry). And, of course, what I write on it are MY reactions. Each of us has our own personal take on what we read or watch, and that is equally valid as well. I’m looking forward to seeing how this works!