Like many other people I absolutely love reading and the opportunity it gives you to immerse yourself in a totally different world. The Harry Potter books are some of my favourites as I quite literally grew up reading them and could identify with the main characters as they left childhood behind and became adults. I read the first book when I was 13, the last when I was 23, excitedly attended midnight openings at bookshops (when I was old enough ofc) and set a personal best for reading the 5th book in under nine hours straight. (It’s 766 pages long and the longest in the series so that’s quite an accomplishment.)

As you may have gathered by now these books hold a special place in my heart, something which is not echoed by my partner for whom these books passed by completely. It may be because he’s not much of an avid reader that he missed so much of the hype, but he’s also never seen any of the movies either. So putting it frankly he knows absolutely nothing about Harry Potter other than he’s a wizard and Dumbledore dies. (He happened to witness me first hand crying my eyes out as I read that part of the 6th book.) Interestingly he’s recently expressed a small glimmer of interest in the series for unknown reasons, perhaps because the last 2 movies are due to come out in the next year. I think now could be the time to properly introduce him to the franchise but I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to do it.

Normally I’d hand him the books and encourage him to the read them however I don’t think he’s interested enough yet to invest that amount of time. (He admits he does read more now than before we met but that’s possibly because his incredibly annoying girlfriend keeps buying him books as gifts.) I could sit him down and make him watch the movie adaptations but whilst they are good they aren’t as compelling or have half of the magic the books do. (I’m pretty notorious for hating movies adapted from films if I’ve already read the book as they’re never as good as they were in my head.) I’ve been thinking a compromise might be to purchase an audiobook of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkabahn as its my favourite book and has a lot of elements that could hook him in but it’s a risky strategy as the audiobooks cost an absolute fortune.

Has anyone else had any experience of trying this before? Perhaps with Lord of the Rings? Admittedly I did unsuccessfully try and introduce my niece to the Lord of the Rings series. She responded by trying to eat my book…though she was only a year old at the time so I’ll let her off…perhaps this is why she developed a habit of throwing my books down the stairs?