Reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone After All This Time

I didn’t mean to re-read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone this week. I’m knee-deep in Leviathan Wakes (although I have zero chance of catching up before The Expanse returns in December), and I’ve got several other books I’ve collected in the past few weeks that I’m dying to read. So re-reading Harry Potter, despite it being my all-time favorite, was not on the table.

But several things culminated in me picking up the first book (or rather plugging into the first audio book) last Sunday.

Firstly, as you may have noticed if you’ve scrolled through my backlog of articles, I spent a decent amount of last year re-reading the books and discussing them, minus the first three, which I had read about a year or two prior. However, since last year was when I’d first discovered the audio books and their wonder, I still hadn’t listened to the first three. Ever since I ended the series last year, I meant to go back and listen to them. I really did.

Secondly, up until yesterday, my girlfriend and I had been planning a week-long trip to Florida, where we’d spend multiple days in the Harry Potter parks at Universal, and visit…