Book shame

Reader, what you are about to read may shock you. It is a confession; and it may rock you to the core. I have a literary secret that has haunted me since childhood. Prepare yourself. I, reader, have never read a Harry Potter book cover to cover. Born in 1994, I am now 19, and I never took part in the Potter craze that swept through my generation. I am an outsider from the fictional world that so many of my peers claim 'shaped' their youth.

Now, I understand this may come as a shock to you. This is my 'book shame'. We all do this, don't we? Pretending we have read something when we haven't. We all avoid interrupting a culture-driven conversation because we are too embarrassed to admit that, no, we haven't read Bleak House or Wuthering Heights in its entirety. We know it's a classic, and yes we've really tried to read it (promise) but it just never happened. We are so convinced that whoever we are talking to might turn their nose up in disgust of our ignorance that we nod along religiously and throw in a couple of cliché statements like, 'It's so touching' or 'gripping' or 'a real page-turner'. You hope the trailer of the film adaptation you watched once or the review you read long ago will help you get through this awkward situation.

My Harry-Potter-shame has haunted me my entire life. There were the Potter-themed birthday parties I would attend as a child, where I would dress in the best costume I could copy from studying the film posters outside the town cinema. The Quidditch party games I would have to partake in, running around with a mop between my legs pretending I knew the rules. Past childhood, the book shame followed me into my teenage years. There were the jokes about life at Hogwarts, and all of my peers would laugh but me. It was like everyone I knew was in on an inside joke the scale of a generation, and I was the only one not told the punch line. Even now, at university studying English, I have been subject to being excluded from the Potter references in some of my lectures. I've even mastered a special fake-Potter-laugh for these occasions.

I know what you're going to say. Why don't you just read it? It's not that hard. Just pick it up. Well, reader, I do have my reasons. I have a memory of a time before I read to myself,  sitting in my bed whilst my mother read to me Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Mum reached a point in the book when she claimed it was too scary to read to me. She said we would stop reading the books, and even though part of me wanted her to continue, a bigger cowardly and submissive part of me agreed. I said an obliging, 'Yes, mummy'. And that was the end of my relationship with the Potter world.

Even though my classmates devoured the Potter books, I was hungry for the Roald Dahl world. Whilst my friends fantasized about learning spells and magic, I would imagine I was an elegant spider in a giant flying peach or an additional child with a golden ticket whom Charlie wanted to share his fortune with. I read the Sammy Keyes novels, and because of Harry Potter I had no one to discuss them with. Rowling seemed to have a literary monopoly over my generation, and I was a lone guerilla warrior sticking it to 'the man'. But despite my determination to remain removed, I still carry my book shame with me to this day.


DEAR READER: Do you have 'book shame'? What do you pretend you have read?