Kindle, 6 pages
English language
Published Dec. 8, 2015 by Pottermore Publishing.
Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter 'H'.
Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!
I enjoyed this more on the re-read and appreciated the little nuggets of foreshadowing or "you will find out later" moments between Dumbledore and Harry. The Harry Potter series was my gateway in to fantasy novels and this was where it began.
April 26, 2013
It's tempting to rate this lower. In comparison to the later books in the series this is really only a two or a three. Rowling's prose style is juvenile, the characterization is broad for the supporting characters and thin for the main characters, and the pacing is really quite awkward.
But it's really not fair to evaluate this book in terms of the much more ambitious, dense and polished novels that followed it. On its own terms, Sorcerer's (or Philosopher's) stone is quite good for what it is: the whimsical adventures of a Dickensian downtrodden orphan in a magic school. For all its faults, there's some real intelligence going on here and that's what excited me so much when I read this at age eleven. Which is the target age group for the first couple books of the series.
So. Four stars, in the abstract sense that I appreciate it …
It's tempting to rate this lower. In comparison to the later books in the series this is really only a two or a three. Rowling's prose style is juvenile, the characterization is broad for the supporting characters and thin for the main characters, and the pacing is really quite awkward.
But it's really not fair to evaluate this book in terms of the much more ambitious, dense and polished novels that followed it. On its own terms, Sorcerer's (or Philosopher's) stone is quite good for what it is: the whimsical adventures of a Dickensian downtrodden orphan in a magic school. For all its faults, there's some real intelligence going on here and that's what excited me so much when I read this at age eleven. Which is the target age group for the first couple books of the series.
So. Four stars, in the abstract sense that I appreciate it for what it is, but it's still a bit of a chore to get through in my overall re-read. If when I first read this book I were a 23-year-old who had heard the hype and was curious to see what it was all about, I don't think I would have enjoyed this enough to want to read a second book.
Perfect book to be read during school days
Somewhere around my 10th-15th reading of this book and it's every bit as magical as the very first time. <3
