#PitchWars, All the Words, and HELLO

HELLO BLOG. YOU LOOK SO PRETTY. A little dusty and creaky in the joints and I--stop looking at me like that--I know I've neglected you, but that shall all be rectified. Look, I brought presents!

I got into on Twitter why I've been mostly absent from the interwebs this year (go HERE if you want to read a v personal thread full of OPTIMISM and POORLY TIMED JOKES) but needless to say, I have very much missed the book blogging community and yammering on about books--and about myself. (We are the solipsistic millenial generation, embrace it and keep talking about yourself because you are FASCINATING and there is seriously no sarcasm here, I for one am fully interested in exactly what you had for breakfast). Because, speaking of myself, very exciting things are going on in Gillianland!

Happy Birthday, Harry: Thoughts and Feelings and Glasses Raised

“…there will be books written about Harry—every child in our world will know his name!”

--Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 1

Let the record show that in the book, Hagrid spelled everthing correctly

(Fun story: I own thirteen copies of this book, and all the covers in this post are from the editions I own. Yes, I have a problem, and by problem I mean not a problem at all)

Happy birthday, Harry, my eternal bae (as the kids say, aka the people who, unlike me, weren't alive when the Muggle world was first blessed by the arrival of one Harry James Potter). I reread this whole book today in your honor. It's about my eleventy billionth reread, but it's been years since I treated myself to a full Potter readthrough.



All my life, the Wizarding World has been my refuge. I used to sink into the whimsy and bustle and peril of Hogwarts regularly as a kid and as a teen for comfort, for entertainment, for nostalgia, to hunt for clues (because, of course, I am an ancient member of the original generation, and I remember what it was like to WAIT between BOOKS for ANSWERS because <i>we didn't knowww</i> and there was no Tumblr to spoil us). Every excursion into a Harry Potter book is a treat, and every time I submerge I discover more bits and bobs about the world. Every time I hang out with them, the characters carve themselves in my soul a little more deeply. Trite as it is (and this is already a disgusting amount of sentiment, someone cough up some slugs to kill the mood), reading a Harry Potter book is just pure magic.