Twenty Years of the Cupboard under the Stairs

[starfishstar]

I just had cause to look up the original publication date for the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and discovered that it was June 26, 1997. Yes, Harry Potter – the book, the series, the phenomenon, the life – is going to be twenty years old next month.

Fandom, I hope we're going to celebrate??


(And not only that, but we can do a double anniversary celebration, because also Deathly Hallows will be ten years old this summer, since it was published in July 2007 – which I'll never forget, because rabbitica was traveling with me in Europe that summer, endlessly debating whether she should buy the book in Europe and read it on the plane back or wait until she got back to the US; which meant neither of us had read the book yet while we were traveling, and we were in a hostel in Istanbul and had to run out of the room when anyone started talking about Deathly Hallows spoilers... She did buy the book and read it on the plane all in the one sitting; I waited until I'd moved to Berlin and borrowed it from my roommate's friend and read it in my little room with the sloping attic ceiling. I'm actually surprised that was only ten years ago. It feels like another life. Whereas HP#1 being twenty whopping years ago...that makes me feel old!)


Also, whenever I think of that full title, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, I have to go listen to Van Morrison's song "Philosopher's Stone."

Even my best friends, even my best friends they don't know
That my job is turning lead into gold...

Comments

[indybaggins]

Has it really been TEN YEARS since Deadly Hallows? My god. It does seem like it was forever ago, but a decade? I remember waiting in the crowd by the book store at like, 2am to get a copy. It was so much fun :)

[starfishstar]

You're the second person to react more to the "ten years since the end of the series" part than "twenty years since the beginning of it"! :-)

I guess for me it feels different since I didn't even get active in fandom until well after the books had finished publishing, yet it feels like I've been in fandom a million years. (In reality only 6 or 7 years, though, I guess? Ha, my concept of "a million" could use a little work. ;-) )

[indybaggins]

I think it's because I didn't consciously know the beginning of it - I wasn't able to speak or read English 20 years ago. They did translate the books into Dutch a while later though, that's how I read the first three books.

And I'm still surprised that you joined fandom so late! We're glad to have you now, of course *g*

[starfishstar]

Okay, now THAT blows my mind. Because you are SUCH a fluent speaker of English, you write such massive, complex stories with such range of expression in English, that the thought that there was a time when you were a child and didn't speak English (even though obviously I know there was), let alone that the start of the Harry Potter series fell with that time, actually boggles my mind!

Especially because, though there's so little difference in our ages now on the scale of adulthood, when HP started I was already a teenager... And the earlier books were pretty much marketed only as children's books, so I only even picked them up because my dad's an elementary school teacher and happened to have them lying around the house. I didn't become an actual fan until much later. (And didn't discover the existence of fanfic or any kind of online fan interactions until long, long after that.)

[indybaggins]

I'm 30 now, and I started English in school at age 13. I wish I could go back to myself when she was trying to get the "My name is ... and I am ... years old" and tell her that really, it'll all be okay *laughs* My French sucks these days though. I barely ever need it so I just forgot so much of it. Boo.

Harry Potter was a big thing in Belgium, too. I didn't read them straight away, I think back then I felt I was too old for the books, too? But then once I did I was a huge fan. I remember buying the 5th book right before a family vacation and then spending the whole time reading (to the great annoyance of my relatives) *g* These were the books that shaped a generation! I miss them, really. I wish there was something like it coming out now.

[starfishstar]

You didn't start English until you were 13...that *almost* makes the US' language education sound not so bad! (I started German around the same age.) *Except* English was probably your second foreign language, after French, right? Argggh, US. :-(

It's true, there've been lots of other big, popular series since then, but nothing, nothing has been on the scale of Harry Potter, catching up the imagination of a whole generation like that. Harry Potter generation!

[indybaggins]

*laughs* 5th language! I grew up speaking Dutch, then French at age 9, Latin and Greek at 11, English at 13, and then at 15 I could choose between German and Spanish so I picked Spanish. I think most students in English-speaking countries would weep in horror at that curriculum, but it's fairly normal here *g*

And yes, I loved the scale of Harry Potter, the way EVERYONE would be into reading the new book, they're all great memories. I hope there will be something like it again!

[starfishstar]

English was your 4th foreign language! And then a 5th after that!! That's right up there with the best of them (Netherlands and Scandinavian countries and such – now I'll add Belgium to my honor roll of countries that do language education right.) :-) In Germany I think it's still standard to do 2 or 3 (say: English, then French, then maybe Spanish or Latin). I did take quite a few languages in the US, but I had to seek them out myself. Standard is to take 1 foreign language, for somewhere around 3–5 years, and still barely be able to speak it by the end. I mean, it's understandable why (we're big, most of the world learns at least a bit of our language, and most other countries are really far away), but still, booooo. It's such a loss on all sides.

[rabbitica]

And I cried and cried on the plane across the Atlantic!!

[starfishstar]

I have such a strong memory of that, too, of you telling that! (I just didn't feel like it was my story to share... My friend got on a plane and read all of Deathly Hallows and cried in front of strangers!)

[shimotsuki]

Wow -- big anniversaries indeed. I've been almost completely out of fandom for this whole (baby-centered) year, but, this may be a good impetus for getting back into things again. (That, and the fact that it's summer vacation?)

[starfishstar]

Isn't it amazing to think about?? I feel like I should do something fun in honor of the anniversary, but I have no idea what. Or we should all do drabbles on that day. Something! HMMMM, drabbles might actually be manageable. Hm, hm. Let me know if you're interested...?

[shimotsuki]

I am totally interested. A drabble might be all I could manage, but I should be able to do that much!

This also gives me a deadline for figuring out how to port my LJ over and get my DW all set up, heh. (I have the links for how to do it; I just have to sit down and read through everything.)

[starfishstar]

Ooh! Yay! I'm unfortunately really not in a place right now where I could offer to organize/coordinate/host an event, but if we wanted to do something like "a few of us all post drabbles on that day" or even "we low-key put out the word to others about doing something of the sort," I'd be down. If you wanted to brainstorm a tiny bit about that, I'm up for it, or I can just put the idea in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks and come back to it later (and see if I feel a little more up for coordinating then...? Heh. Heh.)

For what it's worth, I found importing to DW beyond easy – and I say this as a technologically inept person! I basically went to the import page and clicked "import."