This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
I am recording this a while after I had recorded the other section, which is a casual book chat,
on the Harry Potter series. So I'm pulling up notes right now to give more of the full
treatment, the professional treatment, the more measured treatment, and I'm going to admit to you
that I used the Bing Chat AI function to pull together some information on the Harry Potter
series by J.K. Rowling. I'll share that with you now, and then I'll just let myself go into
the casual book chat on Harry Potter book one, The Philosopher's Stone.
Or is it the Sorcerer's Stone? Depends on what country you're from, right? I'm from America.
I only speak two languages, English and bad English. So anyway, here we're going to go.
Oh, that was really bad English. I'm so sorry. So, all right. Oh, also it is interesting to me
that today is September 1st, the day that Harry goes back to Hogwarts, and it just seemed like the
right time to release this. I've got a couple of these already ready and prepared, well prepared,
but not produced. So I decided today's the right day, September 1st, to produce this and get it
released. So I hope you all enjoy. And if you want to hear about my writing woes, I made a super short
about 10 minute long episode of story over everything, standard episode. And then I decided
to make this skimming leaves episode separate for me to talk about Harry Potter. So some facts.
So the Harry Potter, it says, here's my facts about it. The book was written, The Philosopher's
Stone, Sorcerer's Stone, by British author J.K. Rowling, and it was her debut novel. That's pretty
cool. The book was first published in the United Kingdom on June 26, 1997 by Bloomsbury under the
title Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Oh, so 97. Whoops, I got to adjust my thumbnail
card thing that I made. The book was published in the United States the following year, 1998,
by Scholastic Corporation under the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The book had an
initial first printing of 50,000 copies and was acquired by Scholastic at an auction for a low
six figure sum. I'm assuming the 50,000 copies was in the UK. The book won most of the British
awards that were judged by children and the other and other awards in the US. Which other awards? I
don't know. It doesn't say. The book reads the top of the New York Times list of bestselling fiction
in August 1999 and stayed near the top of that list for much of 1999 and 2000. The book has been
translated into into at least 73 languages and has been made into a feature length film of the same
name as well as six of its sequels. I would say seven because Deathly Hallows is a two-part movie,
right? There's two of them. The book has sold in excess of 120 million copies making it the
third bestselling book of all time behind the Bible and what? I don't know. Next bit of information.
According to one source, the first Harry Potter book has 76,944 words in it. Assuming an average
reading speed of 250 words per minute, it would take about five hours and 32 minutes to read it.
However, this may vary depending on your reading speed and comprehension level. Another source
provides a handy guide to reading the Harry Potter books for the first time with some tips and trivia
and there's a link there that I won't share because that's kind of weird. This is interesting to me.
The reading level of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is measured by different
metrics such as lexile rank, grade reading level, and guided reading level according to the very to
various sources. The reading level of the first Harry Potter book is as follows. Lexi, I have no
idea what this means, lexile rank 880L. What's that mean? I don't know. Grade reading level is five to
six for ages eight to eleven and grade reading level is five but Roman numeral V? I don't know
why it's like that. These metrics indicate the difficulty and complexity of the text as well as
the expected reading ability and comprehension levels of the readers. However, these are only
general guidelines and may not reflect the individual difference among readers. Some factors
that may affect the reading level of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone are the length of the
book. The first book has 223 pages which may be challenging for some younger readers. The
vocabulary and sentence structure of the book contains some words and phrases that may be
unfamiliar or confusing for some readers such as British slang, magical terms, and Latin spells.
The content and themes. The book introduces a fantasy world with its own rules and history
which may require some background knowledge and imagination. The book also deals with some topics
that may be sensitive or scary for some readers such as death, violence, and evil. Therefore,
it is important to consider your own reading level and interest before choosing to read Harry
Potter and Philosopher's Stone. Of course, that's just a chat, GPT, you know, pandering and
soft peddling so I'm not going to continue reading that. So I thought that that was interesting
and yeah now I will after doing that little bit of an introduction there I will let you
hear my initial thoughts on Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the UK called the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
is an interesting book. My daughter finally decided to read the Harry Potter series and I
had read the first two books back in the day when I was in high school actually I think and I
which it came out before I was in high school but I was so late to it and uh so much focus on
other I was playing Sonic Adventure on my Sega Dreamcast okay I didn't have time to read Harry
Potter anyway um but I I think I read the books before I started watching the movies and like I
remember my sister and her friend going to like a midnight release of it which I guess if it released
in the UK you would have had publicity about it and people talking about how it's sweeping the nation
and that could have jumped of excitement but I was like what do you a book about a wizard boy
what are you talking about this is weird you guys are weird why are you going why are you all excited
for books and then I realized books are super cool so um anyway which actually uh ironically
because of uh other or interestingly enough because of some things that are going on in my
life right now I actually kind of fell in love with books and after reading uh some of the Star
Wars books um so many cool old school expanded universe uh Star Wars novels and uh anyway very
cool stuff but that's not what I'm talking about here I'm talking about Harry Potter so I decided
to anyway my daughter's gotten into it and um it's been a long time and uh I barely know Harry
Potter because I watched like the first four movies maybe I think I watched Goblet of Fire which I
thought was movie five but I don't really remember it that well and I liked it all right you know I
thought it was pretty cool um and uh you know I hadn't read past the first two books and I thought
you know what it's there's an opportunity here we're using cloud library from our local library
to get all these in audiobook format which is super cool and uh you know why not give them a
listen so I've been mainlining Harry Potter books and I actually have already finished book two
and I thought you know what I may as well use this for skimming leaves because
uh it would be foolish not to so uh here we go I I interrupt my uh planned schedule of books to talk
about on skimming leaves to talk about to do a casual book chat about Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone and uh I gotta say now that I've listened to books one and two and I'm on the uh
verge of listening to book three I gotta say I'm very impressed with JK Rowling's planning and
plotting that she did for the series I think she must have taken a lot of notes and spent a lot of
time some people you can tell it feels like they made stuff up against touching on Star Wars George
Lucas made stuff up as he went along and massaged it all and wrote himself into corners and just made
it work basically and I he didn't even plan out the prequels as well as he could have but uh he
definitely stuck to his own vision and I think that's why the prequels were not a disaster like
unto the uh sequel trilogy but again we're not here talking about Star Wars we're talking about
Harry Potter um which is the story of an orphan boy who lives with his aunt and uncle until one
day he tragically gets called something crazy happens and he gets called into adventure uh and
plenty of people have pointed out over the years how much uh you could say that Luke Skywalker and
Harry Potter are similar characters to each other and I would say uh just on the surface that's true
but the details are what make the difference and the details are what matter and I think Harry is
very different from Luke uh in a lot of ways and they're significant and uh I would say beyond
that uh basic outline or sketch of the hero's journey there are not many similarities between
the two characters which I think is good because as much as I like one character and I can't stop
referring to the franchise he belongs to um I also like Harry as his own entity and uh yeah there's
more parallels than that because of the things that happen later on in the other books as you
know get into a little bit more of he who shall not be named and uh his connections to Harry and
whatever their parallels it is interesting though but uh I think um I think Harry Potter
the Harry Potter series is less a fantasy story and it's more a coming of age series
slash like academy series which I think I haven't read a lot of the genre but I think the academy
series is not a super old thing again talking about Star Wars I can't believe this they have
uh Jedi Academy books and they have young Jedi Knights books I believe those are the two
series that are written for kids for a children's audience and that uh started in the early 90s so
even before Harry Potter was released I believe the first Harry Potter book released in 1997
and I'm gonna guess the first Jedi Academy or first Jedi young Jedi Knight book was released
in like 94 95 um just based on my background uh history and knowledge with the Star Wars and I
remember like some of the stuff was coming out in Scholastic catalogs while I was in school I was
in high school until 2000 I think so I would have been exposed to that stuff then before then anyway
um anyway um so I'm not super familiar with the genre of the like school academy boarding school
type thing but I think it's new-ish uh it's definitely more popular now you even have in
like anime you know My Hero Academia Little Witch Academia you've got uh you know a lot of stories
in anime that take place in school or high schools or whatever but like this whole uh we're gonna do
a year one year well it tells you in book one that Hogwarts is seven years worth of school
and it becomes pretty clear oh each of these books is going to be one school year and the crazy
events that happen with Harry or to Harry and his friends and what they you know the adventures they
go through throughout these as you're reading them and I think that's apparent by book one
because uh at the end of it there's the hook for them coming back for the next year and I gotta say
it's a gutsy move of rallying to just think I'm gonna make seven of these and I'm gonna put them
out and people are gonna like them and it's gonna be a success and I don't care what happens especially
because uh that's risky you know how can you do that but then again uh I think I don't know I
don't know what her mindset was but it's really interesting but again I think she did a really
good job of seeding things for the first book or in the first book for later books so uh again I
don't know how to talk about this casually other than to talk around the book for the most part
which is what I've been doing most of this time but yeah I'll say I'll just say this uh it's
interesting there's stuff and I'm not going to spoil anything but there are
it's really interesting how she tells a complete story while setting up the future stories uh you
get the enigmatic you get the introduction to the enigmatic character of Elvis Dumbledore and you
kind of sense his favoritism towards Harry and you sense that he's got a sweet spot for the kid
but you're not quite sure why and I think by the end of book two it isn't 100 clear why but the
genre savvy reader the clever reader the reader who's been really paying attention will see
oh I think this is what the trajectory of the rest of the books are going to be which again
I have not seen all the movies or read all the books so I don't know the full trajectory of the
series but I know the broad strokes and I believe I'm correct but I think that's again seated in
book one and it's grown a little bit it developed a little bit in book two and I think that's really
interesting there's something with with Hagrid the lovable weird character Hagrid he has at least
two things that are seated with him in book one that become manifest in book two which is really
interesting and I think there's even a little bit more to come from him and it sets up different
ideas like you hear that he was in the book one you hear that he was expelled from Hogwarts
although nobody knows why you find out in book two but you also get to hear a mention of when
he's with Harry in Diagon Alley buying his wand or helping him buy his wand you hear the wand maker
whose name I can't remember right now ask or say something about Hagrid's wand being still in his
possession somewhere but being properly snapped in half or snapped in two and it's kind of interesting
because you get to see Harry put two and two together and figure that Hagrid still does have
his wand and the way that he's carrying it around it he's Hagrid is treating it like contraband and
he's got it basically concealed and it makes sense um yeah it definitely makes sense and it's just
it's funny the way like you're introduced into it in like a kind of a backwards way like Harry sees
it being used but he doesn't realize what it is and neither does the reader for sure but it asks
it raises questions and it brings it brings up suspicion about Hagrid which is actually utilized
in book two because he's scapegoated for an incident that's going on and he's actually
scapegoated twice for the same incident which is kind of funny and it all makes sense in the
context of who Hagrid is as a character and everything that you've learned about him up into
that point starting in book one and continuing through into book two so that's pretty fun
pretty neat let me see what else I think the stuff with the dynamics between Ron and Hermione as
friends and even like Fred and George and Percy to some extent and then Jenny comes along in book
two like the Weasley family is a great surrogate family for Harry and they're just they're marvelous
they're very lovely people and they're a lot of fun and it's it's interesting because they're you
know these pureblood wizards and Hermione's muggle born and Harry is I don't know I don't know if
he'd be called a mix or not because his mother is muggle born like Hermione was but his father is
we don't know he could be a pureblood wizard or he could be whatever so it's interesting like you
get basically it's this coming-of-age story but it's also like this it's not only a coming-of-age
story it's like a coming-of-worth story like Harry doesn't know why he's treated so shabbily by his
by the Dursleys and he hates it and it's the worst and he has learned to be like subservient
and he's learned to get by and he's actually kind of as a mistreated person been given a lot of the
tools that he needs to succeed in the wizarding world he's been given the ability to like I don't
know kind of like being an independent thinker kind of be a rebel to know to question authority
like the Dursleys are authority figures in his life but there are corrupt evil authority figures
in his life who if he just listened to blindly to everything that they said he would end up
in a very bad way but there's something resilient in Harry there's something rebellious in him that
endures and bucks against them and that ability to persist in the face of hardship and to buck
authority and to say I know they told me to do this but I'm not going to do that and what they're
saying is wrong so I'm going to do the right thing I'm going to do what I know is right even if it
costs me that that definitely that's like a crucial that's like a crucible for some of his
character development and it pushes him to do the things and to defy Voldemort and whoever else he
needs to in you know in book one and then also in book two and that's pretty interesting I mean I
guess in that way it is just a coming-of-age story it's just in the context of this wizarding world
and I don't know it's really curious and again I don't think I finished my thought on this earlier
this isn't a pure fantasy series it's like a coming-of-age story through this academy you
know sub genre or whatever and I think it's really interesting in an interesting way it
in an interesting way it neuters the magic and I I grew up hearing you know the Harry Potter fear
and like you know I was I was around people who were saying it's evil but then again I heard
people who were saying that Lord of the Rings is evil and Star Wars is evil and
like the force is a replacement for God and wizards are you know wizards are just evil even
though like Tolkien was a Catholic and I don't know about Rowling but she comes from a you know
Anglican or you know Catholic probably background being in in the UK and you know she has Halloween
and Christmas and like all these different seasons are touched on in the school they are all
celebrated in the school and they give Harry like a sense of normal life and they're kind of like
broadly speaking I don't know how big of a deal Halloween is or how it's celebrated in the UK
but in America I know what it's like and I almost wonder if she left those like muggle holidays in
to add some familiarity with the kids and see oh well this is how they do Halloween at Hogwarts
this is how they do Christmas at Hogwarts this is how they do whatever at Hogwarts and similar to my
life even though it's you know fantastical and different and special in its own way
and I think the fact that it's in a school the fact that it's a young hero the fact that he feels
you know trot upon basically like all of those things make the character relatable to kids and
relatable to people who've gone through a school system and I think probably the success of these
academy type stories is that so many people go through the Prussian school model and they
hear that familiarity with them and it's like an instant like they can commiserate with Harry
with over how much his life sucks in these different ways and the bullies he deals with
and the persons of you know Malfoy and his cronies and you know even the home life being not so great
some kids are gonna have that experience and some aren't and everybody always imagines they have it
worse than they do so I've gone from talking about how interesting it was how Rowling you know seeded
all this cool stuff for later on in the series and now I'm talking about how it's interesting
how like the formula and the format of the story make Harry and his friends more relatable and
endearing to young readers and I think that's good I think you really need both and I think Rowling
did a good job at making these characters sympathetic putting them in a familiar background and setting
and then adding in this splash of wonder and awe with all the fantastical elements that she
put into the book and there's some ridiculous things too but the ridiculous quirky elements
are like what makes Harry Potter distinct from everything else and the
interesting it's like she niched down by adding in you know the every flavored beans and
you know the Gringotts bank and all these different weird elements that are so quirky
you know they separate it and make it its own individual thing and that's a good thing that's clever
now I'm talking about like as an author and thinking about how to you know brand and
position my fiction so that it you know appeals to the most broad audience possible and in the
deepest way possible and I definitely think that's what Rowling did but yeah I don't want to I don't
want to talk about too much spoilers even though I know it's an older property but I think the
really cool thing at the core of it is like this town family that Harry has in Hogwarts and in these
other you know with his school chumps with Hermione and Ron and you know the
Weasleys generally but in the you know in the first book you don't get as much of the rest of
Weasleys as you do later on so it is interesting how there's like you know the home life with the
Dursleys and then there's the school life at Hogwarts and how the two are separate and really
kids do have their own life at school because they spend so much time with those people and
they really do exist in these two realms and it's interesting how sharp the relief is or how sharp
the contrast is in that as you see Harry you see you know everything with his life in the beginning
with the Dursleys and then you see how different is the Hogwarts and like he doesn't want to go
back for Christmas or anything like that and they probably don't want him back and if he was back
they would treat him badly and he would be like you know he's not going to be able to go back to
and they probably don't want him back and if he was back they would treat him badly again.
So that's all really interesting I don't feel like it's a you know negative thing it's about
you know rebelling against your home family or the people who've taking you in or taking care of you
because the Dursleys are terrible people and Lily and James Potter, Harry's parents, sounded like
they were wonderful people and the way that you learn by the end of book one that they
they well they died protecting him is really interesting and it adds like a very sweet
it adds a very sweet and touching
aspect I guess to the tragedy of him being orphaned as a one-year-old baby and it's really
interesting how I think the movie did a little bit of a better job like showing this I think
because they did flashbacks like showing Lily protecting her baby and in the book it's a little
drier it's a little colder it I was expecting it to be this big emotional thing because I still
remember that's like one of the things I remember most is that you know the love of this mother
protected her son and like empowered him to overcome you know the most powerful you know
death-dealing spell of this you know super dark super evil dark wizard guy and the book didn't
quite do it as good of a job of that I think but it still it still did it I'm gonna wrap up now
because I've been going on for too long I don't think I'm doing a very good job with book one I
think I need to do each of these books one after the other or well I need to do the book chat after
I finish each book so I'm not muddling them together like I have in books one and two so
um it's funny to me that at the end of book one Harry passes out wakes up in hospital the final
the final battle is over without him being 100 involved even though he was involved like
uh like in the hobbit uh how Bilbo gets knocked out in the final battle like in
oh what was it we talked about this in Tarn Wanderer that happens uh not in Tarn Wanderer in uh
is it the first book anyway I think it's the first predane book Tarn the main character gets
knocked out and gets out of a battle that's by Lloyd Alexander and then C.S. Lewis in A Horse and
His Boy uh Shasta uh or Prince Cor gets knocked out and misses out on the battle and this is a
really weird thing that my daughter and I noticed that these fantasy type authors keep doing to
their young innocent uh you know sweet male hero protagonist guys and it's an odd quirk it's an odd
thing to keep doing and uh that happens in book one of Harry Potter as well and then it's like
explained to him how he had the victory over Voldemort and it's just it's it's an odd thing
to do I don't quite understand why uh why you would choose that I can understand why Rowling as a
you know fantasy reader probably you know absorbed that trope and was like oh I'll do this it'll be so
funny it'll be so sweet just like those books I loved when I was like last and uh anyway it's
just it's kind of odd so anyway that ends my casual weird book chat about mostly the Flosser Stone but
a little bit of Chamber of Secrets and I'll be back for another one uh talking about Trident
and another one uh talking about Chamber of Secrets alone I hope you enjoyed that go to
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