Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

No cover

J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997, Bloomsbury Publishing)

English language

Published June 26, 1997 by Bloomsbury Publishing.

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4 stars (559 reviews)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling. The first novel in the Harry Potter series and Rowling's debut novel, it follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday, when he receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry makes close friends and a few enemies during his first year at the school, and with the help of his friends, he faces an attempted comeback by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents, but failed to kill Harry when he was just 15 months old. The book was first published in the United Kingdom on 26 June 1997 by Bloomsbury. It was published in the United States the following year by Scholastic Corporation under the title Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It won most of the …

222 editions

Heaps of charm and a rich setting

5 stars

I had heard of Harry Potter shortly before the fifth book came out, and by that time it was a love-or-hate situation. I had chosen to ignore it for the time being, but probably give young Potter a chance in a couple of years. So when I came by this book (the beautiful American paperback edition) in a charity store in New York, I thought that maybe now the time had come.

I felt that much of the hype was well-deserved: this is a well written children's book with heaps of charm and a rich setting. The plot unfolds with an admirable precision (though it's not quite as breath-takingly perfect as in the second book), and there is indeed a foreshadowing of a grander scheme that is yet to be revealed.

By the end I was sufficiently fascinated that I had to order the next two books at once.

Registro di scrittura un po' fuori target

4 stars

Sebbene sia dichiaratamente un libro per bambini, il registro di scrittura risulta inizialmente altalenante (a metà tra un romanzo per adolescenti e un libro per bambini, cambiando registro repentinamente) per poi stabilirsi su un registro da romanzo adolescenziale, quasi troppo complicato per un pubblico di 10/11 anni.

Review of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

It is necessary to preface this review (as well as all the others I’ll do for this series) with a brief demographic overview of myself. I am a late-20’s gay transgender man who did not grow up with these books. I am reading them for the first time to essentially see what all the fuss is about and what’s there that folk are so keen on.

The first installment of this franchise is… okay. It’s middle of the road YA boarding school fantasy. Rowling’s sense of humor has a real mean streak to it that I often found extremely off-putting, particularly in the narrative’s treatment of Neville and the awful descriptions of Dudley and Uncle Vernan’s statures. I often see people describe these books as being sources of comfort - I can only hope that the others aren’t as rude as this.

Dumbledore is a stand-out character and I enjoyed …

Can be engaging, but it is infuriating.

1 star

It'd been so long since I'd last read it, and that's taking into consideration that I read the books after the movies had come out (as an experiment of sorts that showed only two movies in the entire series made sense as stand-alone projects).

Most of what I remember enjoying about the series is what I could imagine in my own head, and I liked the initial attempt at promoting friendship as a solution... Though there have often been things that really grated my nerves and were easier to find on a re-read.

So in reading them again after having been a teacher for a while, I feel like I should be very concerned over aspects of things that were done with regards to what we term "duty of care." Though I could initially read Severus Snape from the perspective of a child who was generally afraid of some of …

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Subjects

  • fictional magician
  • magic in Harry Potter
  • Harry Potter universe

Places

  • London in fiction
  • Privet Drive
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