In light of yesterday’s quote of the night, I thought I’d share a secret interest of mine.

Throughout my childhood and high school days, I was never much into books and reading. In fact, I don’t think I read any of my setwork books completely, from cover to cover.
However, since the first Harry Potter movie came out and my niece started reading the books and was carrying on about it and the movie and they missed out so many details, etc, I decided to read the book she had and see what all the fuss was about.

It was the first book I couldn’t put down, and so from there I read the other books my niece had up till book 3, and then she got book 4 and I read that one also, and then there were no more, so I read them all over again, and then I couldn’t wait any longer for the rest to be published, so I went a searching.

I went a searching on Kazaa, and found a fanfiction book and was naiive enough to think it was the next one in the series, but justifiably so, it was brilliant. And so I came to find out about the huge world of fanfiction that surrounds the Harry Potter series. I dove right in.

I stop staving them to my PC after about 40 books from 25 authors, so I must have probably read about 80+ full length fanfiction novels and about 50 smaller, incomplete books to date and I’m still reading them, not at the fervency and I once used to, but once in a while I’ll browse around and read something from the fanfiction community.

This not only got me enjoying reading other “more senior” novels (usually suggestions from my sister), but also got me interested in writing. As yet, I haven’t written any books or anything, but it’s something I’m interested in. At the moment the only writing I do is blogging, but, hey, it’s a start.

Some of my friends and family know I’ve read Harry Potter and they know I really like it, but I don’t think they realize how deep my interest went as a result of community of fanfictions. It’s a bit embarrassing, as I’m 24 and these are seen as kids books, even though the fanfictions generally aren’t. They include themes and go to places the original books can’t due to them being targeted to kids.

Anyways, so that’s my secret. Comments welcome.