Take a Look. It's In a Book.

This post is inspired by my dear friend Amber, otherwise known as The Bookwench.  If you'd like to read her consistently hilarious, salty musings on her time working in bookstores, head on over to http://bookwench42.blogspot.com/ and find her thoughts on everything from stupid people who can't count to her overwhelming need for a herd of attack ponies.  Oh yes.  Attack ponies.

But back to my point.  This is about people who say the following statement:

"I'm SO EXCITED for the final Harry Potter movie!!  I can't wait to see how it ends!!"

Really?  Can you not wait?  Are you SO EXCITED???  Here's an idea: read the books.  The ending of Harry Potter has been spoiled since the final book was published in 2007.  For those of you keeping track, that's four years ago.  FOUR YEARS in which you could have borrowed them from a friend (because every person on the planet has a friend who owns the complete series) and read them.  You are not that busy.

And the thing is, it's not like it's a chore to read the things.  They're almost universally adored by everyone who takes the time; they fly by.  It's not like I'm demanding you slog your way through Atlas Shrugged before going to see the movie, or insisting that you read Moby Dick before catching it on AMC one Saturday afternoon (side note: I haven't read either of these books, though I was supposed to read Moby Dick in high school and didn't...still aced the test, because my teacher wasn't the brightest).  The Harry Potter novels are modern classics, written for a modern audience, at a low enough comprehension level that 10 year-olds can read them, understand them and love them.

I'd like to point out that I don't care if you don't want to have anything to do with the entire Harry Potter phenomenon.  I mean, I think you're missing out and you're judging a book by it's cover, which is really not okay when dealing with an actual book (incidentally, it's totally fine when dealing with people). But whatever, you hate fantasy novels, you hate children's literature, you hate all things bright and beautiful...that's your affair.

I also don't care if you enjoy the movies and don't really feel like reading the books.  And I happen to think the movies are excellent adaptations of the books.  But seriously, people...you are not super-fan if you haven't ever bothered to look at the source material. And if you continue to insist on squealing as if you know what the hell you're talking about, I'm going to have to recommend you get punched in the neck.

Let's round this out with a haiku:

Not illiterate?
Fantastic! Now suck it up
And read the damn books.