[First read: December 2001. 3 stars. 
 Second read: 18th January, 2016. 3 stars.] 
 Read as part of The Infinite Variety Reading Challenge, based on the BBC's Big Read Poll of 2003. 
 This was my first read of Harry Potter since 2001. I'm fairly certain I only read it because of the film, which makes me feel neither better or worse for it. and The Philosopher's Stone is a relatively quick read with either very good, wonderful writing or some of the worst writing imaginable. Thankfully, most of the time it was simple children's story writing, which made me feel at home with the book right away. 
 I'll say that the world was rather more lacklustre than I ever really remembered it being. It's quite a small world, really, in this first book and there's not an awful lot of world-building, but such a short book I think that's fair enough. The plot felt a little badly-stitched together in some places, as if they'd be written separately and then threaded together later. There were a few eye-roll moments, and some really ridiculous moments, but there were also some lovely moments, great characters I'd forgotten about and overall a nice flow to how it all panned out. 
 The thing I'm most looking forward to is the development of Hermione. I don't really like Harry all that much, and Ron is just one of those "oh, you're here" characters to me, and my favourite Luna won't be turning up for another four books or so, although I didn't remember that Hermione had been purposefully described as Bossy and I'm so excited to see how she changes in the books. Honestly, she was always my favourite. 
 I'm glad I'm re-reading the series. I'm so glad I'm not going to become obsessed: I'm so glad I'm not going to remove it from my heart altogether, too. It's taken a while, and I needn't have been scared to do this, but that's what happens with Harry Potter, I suppose. 
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