Harry Potter Archives

With fall coming, it’s a great time to curl up in a quiet place with a good book. I have some recommendations that I think you will enjoy!

1. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. This is a ghost story and a bit scary, perfect for Halloween! The story is told from the perspective of a local doctor in England following World War II. It has apparently been made into a movie (released just last month) which I have not seen. The story focuses on a mansion, called Hundreds Hall. The narrator reveals his first experience with the mansion when he was a 10-year-old boy and his mother had been employed there as a servant. He later returns and finds the mansion to be in a state of dilapidation and disrepair. He befriends the once well-do-to family living there and observes the ensuing creepy events from a purely scientific perspective. Various bizarre happenings are easily explained away. Yet, he seems to understand that some things cannot be easily explained. He states to his colleague, “The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners. Let’s call it a germ. And let’s say conditions prove right for that germ to develop–to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this little stranger grow into? A sort of shadow-self, perhaps: a Caliban, a Mr. Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away.” Warning: may cause nightmares!

2. The Harry Potter Series is inordinately addicting. Yes, adults can read these too. I didn’t start until my boys were grown and gone and I was going through their old books. Once I started, I was hooked! I finally understood their frenzied quest for each new book in the series. Wonderfully entertaining! I recommend starting with the first book and proceeding sequentially.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter an the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

3. Agatha Christie mysteries. Favorites include The Murder at the Vicarage, The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side, and The Mysterious Affair at Styles. I used to scour rummage sales, book sales, and flea markets for every tattered Agatha Christie novel I could find. I love Miss Marple and Hercules Poirot, the consummate detectives. In the Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot states to his friend assisting with the investigation, “You gave too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.” Fun reading and the British ambiance in each book is addicting.

4. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. If you are a hopeless romantic and like mysterious men in capes and masks you will most likely find this gothic horror mystery appealing. Basically, the Phantom lurks in the opera house, seemingly appearing in places out of nowhere as if by magic. He falls in love with a beautiful young singer and ends up kidnapping her although he later lets her go. Much melodrama ensues. Although creepy, it is definitely sad, beautiful and poignant and you feel sorry for the Phantom, who will live a loveless life alone in the dark depths of the opera house.

5. The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman. In this tale, Susanna Owens has three children. The children, Franny, Jet, and Vincent know that they are different from other people and have special abilities, but feel unsupported by their mother. Finally, the children visit her Aunt Isabelle in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been both feared and sought out for help over the years. Aunt Isabelle, dressed in black, encourages the children to embrace who they are. The children see the help she provides to the local folk, who are invited into her kitchen to sit at the old pine table. “The price for a cure might be as low as half a dozen eggs or as high as a diamond ring, depending on the circumstances. A token payment was fine in exchange for horseradish and cayenne for coughs, dill seeds to disperse hiccoughs, Fever Tea to nip flu in the bud, or Frustration Tea to soothe sleepless nights of the mother of a wayward son.” Monterey is mentioned in this book, as Vincent, a musician, participates in the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Vincent’s two granddaughters, Sally and Gillian, end up being raised by Franny and Jet in Practical Magic after their parents die in a tragic accident.

6. Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. “There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.” You have probably seen this quote morphed in one way or another onto plaques and signs on Etsy. Hoffman’s use of creativity, superstition, and vivid description make her books wonderfully entertaining reads. She also tugs at your heartstrings with the losses and lessons her characters experience. Once you are hooked you will be back for more!

7. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I will be forever awestruck and imprinted by the amazing characters in this book, including the scary convict, sweet Pip, beautiful Estella, and creepy Miss Havisham. Pip assumes his benefactor is Miss Havisham; the discovery that his true benefactor is his convict shocks him. I have to say that Miss Havisham is the weirdest character ever and that is what makes this book so interesting. A wealthy spinster, once jilted at the altar, she insists on wearing her wedding dress for the rest of her life and lives in a ruined mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella. She keeps all the clocks in the mansion set at twenty to nine, the exact moment her fiance ran off, leaving her at the altar. She tries to make Estella jaded towards men and plays sick games with poor Pip. She is one of the most strange and grotesque characters in the story. Pip states “I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out if I could.” In adopting Estella, she seeks to protect the girl from the hurts she herself has suffered and she trains Estella to love no one. Estella ends up not only unable to love men but unable to love Miss Havisham. I love Charles Dickens!

8. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. In this story, a headless horseman wreaks havoc on the townsfolk. He is believed to be a Hessian soldier who lost his head to a cannonball during the Revolutionary War. In the story, he rides forth nightly to the scene of battle in search of his head. Ichabod Crane, a lanky schoolmaster competes with Brom Bones for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel. One autumn night, Crane borrows a horse named Gunpowder to travel to a Halloween party at the Van Tassels’ homestead. The horse is described as “a broken-down plow-horse, that had outlived almost everything but its viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck, and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still, he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master’s, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.” Upon reaching the party, Crane proposes to young Katrina but is spurned. As he rides home, dejected, he encounters a cloaked horseman and realizes that his companion’s head is not on his shoulders, but on his saddle. Ichabod rides for his life, but as he nears the bridge, the horseman rears his horse and hurls his severed head at Ichabod.

I like movies, but honestly, I think books are so much better. Wishing you peace, love happiness, and fun reading!