Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling

After my then 9 year old read his first Harry Potter book, he was sooo fascinated and  definitely caught the Harry Potter bug. "Mum," he kept pleading, "you just have to read these books". After my normally football-crazy son starting wishing for bookshop vouchers from his friends for his birthday and started getting panicky when a book neared it's end after bookshop opening hours, I started getting curious. Even his teacher was thrilled with the sudden interest the boy was having with reading...

My son was really excited to finally hand me over Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Wikipedia Link I will refrain from summarizing the contents due to the book's immense popularity)-  in German. First of all, I was quite sceptical, as books in German tend to not really get the point across after translation from a foreign language. However, this first book in the series managed to get me through a flight from Frankfurt to Krakow with almost forgetting I was sitting in a plane (and for me, that is definitely saying something!!)

I used to love stories like this when I was a child and reading this book managed to revive the feeling of these times quite vividly. It was really surprising to see how a completely fictional and far-from-the-truth story could have me just as 'caught on' as my 9 year old son! Seeing as I have quite high expectations on the storyline as well, it was a welcome change to have a read over 300 pages and not really experiencing a single "drag" reading section throughout the whole book.

This was the first read of the Harry Potter series for me, it will definitely not be the last.
No-one was more surprised about this than I was...