Late to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters

Somewhere around seven billion other people got there before me, but I finally read the first few chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone yesterday. The prose isn’t going to challenge Mian Mian or Murakami—it’s a different register entirely, functional and propulsive rather than literary—but following the little nerd through his adventures is genuinely fun in a way I wasn’t expecting. Maybe it helps that I’m in the middle of a UK trip while reading it. Rain, double-decker buses, the whole thing. Hermione and Ron forever.