For ages I resisted, insisted they�re unbearably trendy and childish and incapable of surpassing the mammoth Hype, a Buzz so palpable and omnipresent and pushy that it�s a proper noun in its own right.

But I was bored, see. And he had the first two books. And how pretty were they, with pristine spines and shrouds of dreamy colors, wistful drawings, glittering titles. So I curled up on the couch, cracked open the first, and never looked back.

I love the Harry Potter books.

I polished off all four in less than a month, and saw the movie on its opening weekend. The books are lovely, gentle, funny, and ever more intelligent and creative as the series progresses. The prose grows up as Harry does.

Still, my ardent affections have made me an apologist. I�ve hung my head while confessing my love to others, following the admission with a rushed litany of the tomes� merits -- how grip me not because I�m wide-eyed and enchanted with magic and wizards and flying and whiz-bang-whee fantasy, but rather with special characters and involving stories, and an immense rooting value inherent in all the protagonists. People seem as mocking, disdainful and actively disinterested as I was before that fateful March afternoon in Los Angeles, when my own Chamber of Cardboard sat unpacked while the wizards whisked me into a world of a lonely and unloved orphan struggling to find himself.

That said, I don�t recommend the movie to anyone who hasn�t seen the book. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer�s Stone is a delight, and it�s brilliantly cast � perhaps more so than any other movie out there, right down to the two-second cameos. But it�s definitely not a movie in its own right � it�s a book turned into a movie, and it plays very much like chapters strung together under the watchful eye of a paranoid author (J.K. Rowling supervised the entire process). Transitional bits, though fun to watch, drag a bit long, but in the book they�re the way from A to B to an important reveal in C, and the filmmakers obviously were terrified to take any creative licenses with those transitions, even when experimentation might shorten things or punch them up.

To a Harry Potter neophyte, the movie won�t be as engaging as reading the four-book series � another thing hampering the movie is the fact that Book One is by far the least interesting. It�s mostly expository, with a decent final challenge but one that pales compared to a lot of the cool revelations in books two, three, and especially four.

I cherish the books, so I had no issues whatsoever with the film. I kept waiting for my favorite parts to happen, sat there rapt because I knew something nifty would come up in a matter of seconds. The Quidditch pitch defied my imagination; the golden snitch mirrored the one I dreamed up. And the doleful but sweet performance from Daniel Radcliffe tugged at my heart, because in the human world, Harry�s a forgotten child � but in the wizard realm, he�s an tragic hero, and the parentless boy has trouble dealing with the two.

So, I�m out of the Potter closet. I love the books. I shouldn�t have to apologize for being enchanted by fiction � after all, that�s why it exists. I shouldn�t have a problem forming my own preferences, and no one should place such a premium on originality that there�s an almost conformist pressure to break away and Be Unique, or Be Funky, or Be Different.

Maybe I�m unoriginal, and maybe that�s fine. Sometimes, the bandwagon is a pleasant place to be.

reading harry potter and the sorcerer�s stone, just for fun watching gilmore girls and buffy snacking on christmas candy, specifically those devilish butterfinger bells counting down until friday evening, when big d shows up what it all means "hold on, hold on to yourself, �cause this is gonna hurt like hell" � sarah mclachlan