Harry Potter 30 Day Challenge - Days 3-5

Apologies for missing a couple of days. Life got busy so I had to postpone. So, I will be doing three days today and then three tomorrow and after that, fingers crossed, I'll be able to stay on track!

Day 3 - Least Favorite Book
This is a hard one for me because I love all the books so much. So understand that when I say Chamber of Secrets is my least favorite, I still love it. I don't have any hugely specific reasons of why it's my least favorite other than it's just never been one to hold my attention as much as the others. Probably the only real specific reason I have is that this book contains the character of Gilderoy Lockhart. He is without a doubt the most annoying character in all of the books and not always in a good way. He has his moments where is obnoxiousness is comedic and it works well with the story but there are a lot of other moments where I just want to smother him with a pillow and have done with it. So while there are aspects of the book that I really, he kills other parts for me. Still a wonderful book though!

Harry Potter 30 Day Challenge - Day 2

The Hogwarts Express has come and gone, the newest witches and wizards have been sorted into their respective houses so it's on to day two of the challenge!

Day 2 - Favorite Book
Choosing a favorite book is hard, I'm honestly the worst when it comes to having to choose my favorite anything and I love every single book. But if I absolutely had to choose, it would be the 3rd

book in the series: The Prisoner of Azkaban. It's always been one of my favorites but it took me a while to really pinpoint why I loved it so much. One reason is that it's such a pivotal book in the series, in my opinion. You have some very important characters introduced that play some major rules both in Harry's life and in the other books. And one of those characters introduced happens to be one of my favorite adult characters: Remus Lupin. His kindness, sincerity, and just overall goodness make him an amazing character and I really love how his relationship with Harry develops throughout the book. The book also introduces us to Hippogriffs which happen to be one of my favorite magical creatures. But probably the aspect that took me longest to figure out is that this is the last book where we see our main characters happy. Obviously there are some serious ups and downs and it's not all sunshine and daisies, but the following books take a much darker turn. Here we have Harry discovering that Sirius and Lupin were best friends with his father. We see his joy at not only having

that connection to his parents, but also finding out that Sirius is his godfather and he know has people who care about him. It's that tangible link to his parents that he's longed for. And finally, I love this book because it introduces the Patronus charm. Rowling has stated multiple times that the Dementors that first appear in this book represented her depression. As someone who has now struggled with serious depression for years, I really liked the idea of using happiness, a happy memory, to combat the soul sucking darkness that threatens to obliterate everything positive. I found it to be an encouraging reminder that depression can be defeated or at least held at bay.

Harry Potter 30 Day Challenge - Day 1

Since I am once again doing a dismal job of keeping up with this blog, I figured I would do something fun to get me back into the habit. If you have been following my blog for any length of time, you will recall that I did something very similar back in 2014 with Lord of the Rings prior to the final Hobbit movie premiere. Yes, it's actually been almost four years since then. I can't quite wrap my head around that. In any case, while the Lord of the Rings trilogy remains both my favorite movies and favorite books, the Harry Potter books have long ranked as a second favorite. Since it's the first of September, this seemed an appropriate way to kick off the month. If you have never read Harry Potter, you seriously should because the series is truly amazing and there is far more to it than just magic, but if you are disinclined just be aware that there will be spoilers. So without further ado, here is the beginning of the Harry Potter 30 Day Challenge.

Day 1 - How Did You First Get Into Harry Potter
Ironically, my parents are the ones who actually got me into Harry Potter, ironic because I grew up going to church and what not and most Christians have an issue with the Harry Potter books. That

still puzzles me because I've read a fair number of Christian books in the past that also included magic and yet those were somehow acceptable. But I won't get into that. So my parents got me the first three books for Christmas one year shortly after the third book came out, if memory serves. I remember not being entirely thrilled with the gift because even then if something was super popular, I tended to avoid it. Although I was a bit young for them when the first book came out, I was old enough when my parent's gave them to me to relate to the characters and really connect with them. Plus, it also introduced me to a totally different culture and country which was more than a little awesome. And, obviously, once I actually read the books, I fell completely in love with them and though they're more than a tad worn, I still have the copies my parents gave me.

A Sneak Peak

Soooo, as I have mentioned before I am slowly, and I do mean slowly, working on writing a book.  While I enjoy working on it, it is something that takes a lot of time and energy.  And with my schedule becoming more hectic due to work and looking at going back to school sometime in the near future, I have sometimes considered whether it was worth continuing.  So, just for the heck of it, I decided to share the prologue for my book.  If you know me, you should not be at all surprised to find that its filled with magical creatures and heroes and such.  Feel free to read and give your opinions and thoughts about it.  So, without further ado, I now present to the prologue of my book.  Enjoy!

Complete Only In Him

Update:  Rereading this has made me think that I really need to be more active about trying to find a Bible Study I can regularly attend because I haven't thought about any of this in a very long time.  On a semi-plus side though, I have gotten to the point where I don't look at every Christian guy about my age as a potential boyfriend.  The way I've gotten to that point isn't so great since the main reason is that since moving and having to leave my church where I was surround by very godly young men, I've discovered that there are many young men who say they are Christian and don't act at all like that and can in fact be just as mean and cruel as any non-Christian guy.  As I mentioned in my post the other day, I've gotten to be very wary of men which means that I'm not going to be jumping into a relationship with anyone until I know them pretty well.  That doesn't mean that I don't occasionally look at a nice guy that I've met and have a passing thought of, maybe he's the one.  What I don't do is see a guy, have a conversation with him where he's nice to me and everything, and basically fall head over heels and analyze his every word and movement and consider whether it means he might like me too.  Yes, I used to do that.  The biggest disappointment to me is that with not being involved in a church, I have done zero mission or service work other than occasionally volunteering.  That is something I would definitely like to work on.

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Last week, I had the incredible opportunity to attend a camp called Regeneration in Glorieta, New Mexico.  I'd heard of the camp before, but it was the first time that my youth group had decided to go.  All I can say, is wow!  Everything about that week was amazing.  The preaching, the games, the preaching, the people, the preaching, the worship, the preaching...  Okay, you get the picture.

The Journey Begins

As many people know, last month was National Novel Writing Month.  I'd heard about for a couple years but never participated mostly because I was a bit daunted by the idea of having to write 50,000 words in one month.  On top of that, I usually didn't have the time to just sit down and write or when I did have some free time, writing was not what I wanted to do.  This year, however, I decided to give it a go.  Years ago, back when I was still in high school, my two best friends at the time and I decided that we should each write a book.  In some ways they were similar because we were really into dragons and fairies and Japan at that time so they had those elements in it and then they also all revolved around three girls we based off of ourselves and our friendship.  I never got far with mine.  I would get a couple chapters in, give it to my friends to critique and then re-write parts of it with their suggestions.  I think the whole concept of the story changed at least three times.  It had been years since I'd even glanced at the manuscripts I had so I honestly didn't remember a whole lot other than the very general idea, which I still liked.  I had just never been able to find a way to go with it and write what I wanted to.

A Heavy Heart

It is 2:30 in the morning and I have to be up by 5 am so I can be to work by 6:30.  By all rights, I should be in bed asleep, but I'm not because something has been weighing on my heart since yesterday afternoon.  As I mentioned in my post last night, I read a blog about someone's views on The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and the like.  I'm not going to name names or anything, but I really struggled with what was said.  In the post, the author stated that these books and the movies based off of them are of Satan, that there is nothing good about them.  Anyone who knows me can probably imagine that I immediately had an issue with this.  I've always known people who didn't want to watch or didn't want their kids watching Harry Potter or even Lord of the Rings, though to a much lesser extent, because of the magic involved.  I could understand that.  I didn't think any less of them and the fact that I did read and watch them didn't seem to affect them either.  But as I read this article I felt like I was being attacked, felt that I was less of a Christian because I did enjoy them and that if I didn't do away with them then I was serving Satan, not Christ.  It hurt, it still hurts and as I said, my heart feels heavy.  I have to admit, my first instinct was to lash out at this unknown person.  How dare they make me feel this way.  You know how people talk about hitting non-Christians over the head with the Bible won't turn them to Christ?  Well, that's how I felt, like I had just been hit over the head and I didn't like it.

Innocent or Not?

Update:

So, just a very quick update here about this post.  This will probably be the only post that I publish out of chronological order, but due to another blog post I read earlier today about someone's views on The Hobbit and other similar movies/books, mine and others opinions about said post, and the fact that several of us mentioned that this person should have targeted other films (I mentioned Twilight), we were all challenged go write our own piece about the films we mentioned.  Since I already wrote mine, I decided that I would re-upload it at this time.  So here it is again and for now, just ignore the beginning part about Harry Potter since I will publish that post in due time.

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Alright, so I did a Harry Potter blog post, now I'm going to do a Twilight one, mostly because I've had several friends recently ask me why I dislike Twilight so much.  Now I'm just going to talk about the books.  If I did the books and movies, it would be a novel, seriously.  I do want to state right now that I'm not trying to judge anyone or make anyone feel bad about liking the books or movies, but I think there are some very real issues here that need to be addressed that are cleverly hidden in what most would consider a typical teenage romance series.