Regina Langó's story about Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

At school, I was not keen on reading any books. I’d rather watch films or DVD’s. I’d rather make things with paper and glue and paint pictures, or do origami. When I was younger, my family was in a book club. My sister enjoyed romantic books. We ordered dictionaries, history books, geographic books – which was very useful for me for school.

Reading books, however didn’t fill me with enthusiasm, I preferred to read newspapers, reading articles about famous stars, for instance. When I was about 17 or 18, suddenly a new book was published. At my school, everyone was excited about this new book. First time I borrowed it from my friend. It was an easy book to read. I couldn’t stop. What a change. I read and read. Sometimes I wakened up in the middle of the night – I didn’t care – I just wanted to continue the story. I wanted to find out what happened next.

I couldn’t wait to get home from school to read the next chapter. Most of my friends were like me, they really liked reading this book. However there was also the other extreme – the people who just hated it. It was a popular topic of conversation. I remember that I entered a competition: I had to phone the local radio station and answer a simple question. I got it right. I was lucky – the prize was 2 tickets for the premier of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This was at a cinema near my house is Budapest. I was screaming with delight. I invited one of my friends to come with me. We went for a meal first, than we went to watch the movie. I was very proud of myself.

It was a good film, but the book was much better. It had more detail. It was a very thick book with lots of pages. I had an image in my mind when I read he book and I was surprised and a little disappointed with some bits of the film. The second book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I actually read twice, while I was waiting for the next book to appear. I thonk J.K. Rowling is a very good and popular author. I did try to read another magical, mystery novel after I had finished all her books, but it wasn’t as good as J.K. Rowling’s books. The characters, the stories in her books were much, much better than any other stories. In these few months, I had totally changed: sometimes I didn’t care about my friends, about my life, just the book was important for me.