Another Harry Potter book completed.
My husband and I continue our quest to read the Harry Potter books, finishing The Prisoner of Azkaban. We were pretty proud of ourselves because now that we’ve finished, we’re basically at the halfway mark.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione are back at Hogwarts for their third year with a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin. They also have to deal with the presence of dementors who are on the hunt for some guy named Sirius Black who escaped from Azkaban, a prison for the wizarding world that is inescapable… or not, and for some reason may be interested in Harry. There’s also Malfoy being Malfoy, and the introduction of Crookshanks, Hermione’s cat who really hates Ron’s rat Scabbers. Oh, and Buckbeak; I love Buckbeak.
As always, when we’ve been reading there’s always the comparisons to the movie and making pro-book comments about details that were left out. One of my husband’s notes was how much more is talked about on Hermione’s time turner necklace in the book. As we move along, he’s noticing how much more condensed the movie is from the book. We get it, though; there’s only so much time in a movie.
I appreciate how much world building is taking place as we continue on. This is the year where the three get to go to Hogsmeade, or I should say just Ron and Hermione get to go because Harry never got his permission slip signed by a guardian, those darn Dursleys. This is also where we get new permanent characters [Spoiler]. I will say, when Lupin is in the scene, I do picture David Thewlis. It wasn’t so much the physical description, but the demeanor. It seems that Thewlis tends to play characters that are 90-95% good, but also carry flaws; that good is the noble and wanting to help others however they can kind.
This is also about the point where we start to notice that the students that we’ve known since The Sorcerer’s Stone are beginning to change because they’re growing up. It’s small things that I think the movie very much exaggerated. When reading, I never pictured them switching over to wearing anything outside their robes as they start doing in the movie.
As for the story itself, I thought it was interesting how there is an underlying example of convictions of innocent people that we saw in Sirius. Granted, it adds drama and depth to the big good vs evil story. I have a feeling that there will be more subplots of social issues in the books to follow.
Now that we’re getting into the meat and potatoes of the series, I think it’s just gonna keep getting better. You can feel the build up and it creates excitement. I would encourage you to keep reading Harry Potter as well, and try The Prisoner of Azkaban. You can find it here.
8/10
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