Sunday, January 04, 2009

The Boy Who Lived

For the past couple of weeks, I have been listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on my iPod. It is the Jim Dale version. It has been such an experience! When I got the book, I stayed up all night reading it. There was no savoring. The goal of reading the book was simply to find out what happens in the end! My goals for listening to the book were very different: 1. to knit (and do other things) while enjoying Harry's adventures, 2. really understand what the whole Elder wand thing was about (around 4AM, my logic turned off), and 3. really savor the story and enjoy the little details. Up until today, I was enjoying the book like I enjoy any other audio book or podcast. Today, however, was a different story. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy the story, but today I heard all the painful bits like Severus Snape's sad tale and Fred Weasley dying right after Percy tells a joke. It was gut wrenching to listen to it, because I could not speed ahead. I had to stay with Jim Dale's slow (but not too slow) reading. Jim Dale was not horribly upset and didn't need to read faster, he just kept reading at the same pace. Listening to the book affected me much more than reading the book. All the sad bits seemed so much sadder hearing them, because I could not ignore them, I could not read over them. This was a great experience.

I will post some of my exciting FOs from my break tomorrow. The Harry Potter experience was just too much for me today. ;)

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