First Impressions: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I have never been the big rereader, but I made some exceptions for Harry Potter and some other great series. I’m currently in the middle of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and here are my thoughts!

I started reading all the Harry Potter books at age 10 or 11, if I remember this correctly. I absolutely loved every every page of every book in this whole series, except for the fifth book, which gave me a really hard time. This may have to do something with the fact that this book is over 800 pages long, and back then, I wasn’t as patient as I am today (after reading Winter, it kind of makes patience obligatory – don’t get me wrong, I loved that finale).

Anyways, my 10 year old me just thought that this book was super slow and nothing really happened most of the time. I get it, there is a lot of teaching, Umbridge stuff going on and the start really isn’t the fastest, but I love it more than ever the second time around.

I reread a lot of Harry Potter books over the years, especially Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which was my favorite, but I had immense problems with this one, up to the point that I had to lay it down to read something else for a while.

I am now 200 pages in and I have to give my 10 year old me some credit, it really isn’t the fastest start, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. Harry and the others are currently on their way to Hogwarts, so the story is finally starting to pace up. JK Rowling really took her time developing the Order of the Phoenix and the whole situation at Grimmerauld Place and the Dementor attack, and I didn’t like that when I was younger. To be fairly honest, I’m not such a huge Harry Potter fan because of the action, but rather because of the atmosphere and the small details and jokes and I think I couldn’t really appreciate this wonderful extraordinary detail when I was younger.

I really noticed this wonderful detailed world which is what is making Harry Potter so special for me while rereading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows two weeks ago.

So, conclusion: I didn’t have the experience of knowing what to appreciate about Harry Potter when I was younger and so that’s the reason why I wasn’t the biggest fan of the fifth book, but my current (more) mature self surely knows to appreciate this book!