It took me more than a week to go through the first chapter in the first Harry Potter book.
It took me 4 days to finish the rest. This is because the pacing was wrong - the first chapter should have been the last.
It took me 4 days to finish the rest. This is because the pacing was wrong - the first chapter should have been the last.
The start is so cold, and weird. You can only feel the warmth and beauty that is coming on your second read, and part 1 takes some time to pay-off. What I like about Harry Potter is that many things are not what they seem when later looking back. It's clever like that.
On my own, 20 years ago, I couldn’t stop after starting. Sure the first chapters are a bit boring and different from the body of the books, but I have always given books about 100 pages to grab me, never consciously though about a Volta though, just almost always started to enjoy books after some time.
The follow-ups in a series can be enticing because of part one, but sometimes, as I had with 3 body problem, they disappoint so much or are so different that I just stop.
Super cool, but absolutely meaningless the first time you read the book because you don't know it yet.
I think chapters one—sorry, chapters two and three is mostly Harry getting his letter and the various hi-jinx that Uncle Vernon goes through to avoid the owls finding Harry at increasingly improbable addresses where somehow the owls still find Harry.
Then Hagrid shows up and explains to Harry that you are a wizard. And for 13-year-old me, that was off to the races.