I have never read a Harry Potter book, and I really don't expect I ever shall. No particular reason, except that I have piles - literally and metaphorically - of unread books, and therefore HP is low priority. I think I've seen three films, and will probably see the rest. If you're a bit like me, there's a plot summary over at Four Cranks With Opinions: Not So Happy Days at Hogwarts: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and some comments on their attraction to adults and children.
I first came across HP when my friend Helen read the first one on a Transatlantic FLight in 1999; a few weeks later I learned that my cousin's boy, then 9, was well into them. Interestingly, another cousin's boy, then 11, had received a copy from a publisher friend, long before they had hit the consciousness, with word that this was the next Big Thing. They had both (mother and son) tried reading it and had found it as dull as ditchwater. I think we concluded that some people are into fantasy/adventure, and some are not. Helen's a big Pratchett fan, which has never really appealed to me, either.
I'm not sure what fiction really appeals the most to me. My favourite book of all time, and well overdue a re-read is Wuthering Heights. I have read a few Dickens, and although it can take me months to get through the first half, I usually manage to devour the second half, and end up in blubs of tears, thinking it was well worth the effort. But I'd never call myself a Dickens fan. Elizabeth Gaskell is probbaly my favourite author, although a bit uneven.
I rarely read modern 'literature'. I suppose I ought to. I do like a certain amount of middlebrow chicklit - I'm a fan of Freya North (who emailed me once!), Marian Keyes and Mary Wesley. But I suppose I'm more a reader of factual. In the past ten years the best four books I have read have been Norman Davies' 'The Isles' and 'Europe', Peter Ackroyd's 'London The Biography' and Roy Jenkins' 'Winston Churchill'. I found them all impossible to put down. Pretty difficult to lift up, true, but bloody good reads.
I have found I have been reading less since Jimmy moved in. I used to go to bed and read for an hour or more most nights, but that's a luxury of singledom that has to be sacrificed for lurve. Perhpas I should get one of those lights that clips to a book.
