Mark Reads ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’: Chapter 1

In the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we are introduced to the mundanely boring Dursley family. Largely overweight and hideously ugly (on the inside obviously), we watch as their world slowly starts to split at the seams. And it’s at this time that a bunch of wizards show up and everything is nonsensical and yet 80 billion times better than a single moment of the Twilight series. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Harry Potter.

Let’s get a few things out of the way.

By and large, from here on out I’ll avoid comparing Harry Potter to Twilight. They are two separate series that have virtually nothing to do with each other aside from their popularity and that they were both written by females who hasn’t written before. Oh, and the first page of Harry Potter is actually well-written, which is hard to say for any page in Twilight.

So don’t expect that.

Additionally, I only know a few things about this series, which I will now list so that no one will ever ask me again:

• Harry Potter is some magical wizard boy and he flies on brooms, which here in American means that he is a witch OMG BURN HIM AT THE STAKE FOR HE IS UNCHRISTIAN.
• There are four houses in the schools? Slytherin, Gryffindor…..Muggles? Something? what are these made-up words
• Sirius Black is EVIL because his last name is black and black things are really really bad
• Voldemort is bad because the actor who plays him in the movies makes him look that way. Look stop judging me.
• SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE because Dumbledore is a BIG GAY and probably wouldn’t let Snape bum him or something I don’t know these things

So. There we have it. Ready guys?

I have the Scholastic paperback editions of these books. This is the cover. What the fuck is going on here?

Unicorns? Cerebus? A castle? Why is flying on a broom about to catch a golden egg with wings? Also someone get this boy some better glasses they are about to fall off his face.

Sigh. What have I gotten myself into?

CHAPTER 1: THE BOY WHO LIVED

I can’t imagine a dumber title. Seriously.

But it’s ok. Because Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone has mustaches. Lots of ’em.

• He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache.

This is just seconds away from becoming gay porn. Pretty sure J.K. Rowling just described Henry Rollins if he became a bear.

Well…ok, now that I’ve ruined a children’s book for an entire generation in the first 10 minutes of my review, let’s just move on. The Dursley’s are ordinary people with ordinary lives except no they are not normal at all. Because they have a son. And that son, Dudley, is a monster straight out of a Cronenberg film.

Dudley is…special. And by special I mean HOW ON EARTH COULD THIS CARICATURE OF AN EVIL HUMAN BEING BE EVEN MORE HYPERBOLIC.

But more on that in the next review. As we’re introduced to more of the life of the Dursley’s and I’m wondering what in the world this has to do with anything, I ran across this sentence:

• At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs. Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. “Little tyke,” chortled Mr. Dursley as he left the house.

Two things. First, I thought J.K. Rowling had typed “little dyke” and became instantly horrified at such rampant homophobia and also a great misuse of a slur because Dudley is a dude. I R DUM

Secondly, though, who is this child and who are his parents. Because, as we’ll learn, Dudley can literally commit acts of treason and extreme violence and his parents think it is absolutely wonderful.

What.

And then the weird shit starts to happen. Mr. Dursley sees owls flying everywhere on his way to work. Oh, and a cat is reading a map. Shenanigans. And then he sees people wearing cloaks and this is deeply disturbing to his soul. And then this:

• He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passerby stare [sic], “Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy day.

What. What the FUCK is a Muggle and WHY ARE YOU CALLING PEOPLE THIS. Somehow I feel this is super racist but I have no basis for this but I will continue judging you, violet-cloaked old man.

The day gets weirder. Mr. Dursley gets home from work and the local news is reporting of the strange events of the past 12 hours, including the out-of-the-ordinary owl sightings. However, this isn’t enough for J.K. Rowling, who gives us this:

• “Well, Ted,” said the weatherman, “I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars!”

what in the everliving hell is this. Now, does she mean to infer that there are lots of shooting stars or that STARS ARE LITERALLY FALLING DOWN TO EARTH AS IF THEY WERE RAINDROPS? Because seriously that sounds catastrophically tragic and how are entire cities not reduced to dust by now?

Moving on. Night falls. And then some dude shows up named Dumbledore and the cat is totally interested in him because he is clearly a wizard. How do we know he is a wizard? Well, besides being really old and really white and wearing a cloak, he does magic.

• He found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air, and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again–the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelves times he clicked the Put-Outer, until until the only lights left on the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs. Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement.

A “Put-Outer”? Is this Dr. Seuss poetry? That’s the best you could do? And I hope that the Put-Outer also TURNS OFF THE MOON because that would also cast light on the street. So either Dumbledore has excellent timing or he is an utter fraud.

The cat MORPHS into someone named Professor McGonagall and she and Dumbledore have a conversation about the strange events of the day. Why they needed to do this RIGHT THEN and in THAT SPECIFIC MANNER is fucking beyond me, but this is a children’s book, so I should stop asking for real logic.

Apparently, some evil dude named Voldemort (SEE I TOLD YOU HE WAS EVIL) “left” (where to?) because he tried to kill some baby named Harry Potter but failed and lost his powers and in the process gave the kid a scar that looks like a lightning bolt, which totally won’t ostracize the kid from anyone ever, and because he was so distraught over being unable to kill an infant, he disappears, meaning all these wizards and owls and shooting stars celebrate.

Oh by the way VOLDEMORT MURDERED HARRY POTTER’S PARENTS but that is not a big deal and just a mere plot requirement to set up the real story: Harry Potter is going to move in with his shit-tastic aunt and uncle, who happen to be the Dursley’s.

And since this is a fantasy and nothing really needs to happen for any logical reason, another wizard, named Hagrid, arrives with baby Harry Potter. And in this scene, miles and miles away, Rob Halford masturbates to the thought of the events that transpire:

• A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around them. It grew steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight; it swelled to a roar as they both looked up at the sky–and a huge motorcycle fell out of the air and landed on the road in front of them.

NO SERIOUSLY. This is some leather daddy erotica right here, guys. And it only gets better:

• If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild–long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets.

Did Lemmy from Motorhead just drop out of the sky? What the hell is this? I’m pretty sure this dude was in J.K. Rowling’s head when she wrote this scene:

This is a children’s book, J.K. Rowling, what are you doing?

They decide the best thing for Harry Potter at this point is to leave him with his aunt and uncle and their terrible amoeba blob of a child. I don’t know why. So they leave him on the stoop.

• Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours’ time by Mrs. Dursley’s scream as…

HOLD ON A SECOND. A few hours’ time? Look, Dumbledore, you could time your visit to when the moon wasn’t out, but you couldn’t time it so you wouldn’t have to leave an INFANT HANGING OUT ON A STOOP UNTIL DAYTIME? What if Harry Potter woke up and wandered out to the street and got run over and then you didn’t have a job being Dumbledore anymore? Huh? Huh?

Well, I’m off to a good start. Have I ruined this series for you yet? It’s all I have to live for anymore.