There's something about Harry
July 9, 2003 at 2:07 PM ET
Cheeser
The Leaky Cauldron (via State News)
From Michigan State University's student newspaper
(I used to work for them!):
Let me tell you what kind of ditzy idiot comes to her math final without a calculator: One who was 200 pages away from the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I'll admit it. Had I not spent the last three days before my final at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I would have been well-prepared for my math exam at boring ol' MSU.
... all I did was think about him and his little wizard friends. The problem was not that I didn't care about my exam, I just cared about Harry more. Once they've begun, reading these books is not a desire, it is a need.
It's really an obsession with a certain formula: There is a chosen one, there are supernatural powers, there is an enemy with a deep connection to the hero, there's a huge war and for some reason the hero's best friends seem to be a guy and girl who end up together. Frodo Baggins of "Lord of the Rings." John Conner of "The Terminator" series, and Neo (it pains me to add a Keanu Reeves character to such a list) of "The Matrix" are all hugely successful, endearing characters who fit closely to the same mold.
Read the rest of Natalie Burg's column at the top link. Go MSU! :)