Read All the Things: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

It's finally here - with only a three month delay, no less. Oh well, better late than never, right? Without further ado, let us finally venture into the pages of Book 2 of our challenge.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Before getting into the story proper, I'd like to take a brief walk down memory lane.

It's the Christmas holidays of 1999 and I've just received the first three Harry Potter books as presents from a family friend. While I remember pretty clearly reading the first book late at night in our little cabin in the mountains of Norway, I can't remember reading Book 2. This is strange, because I know I read it that winter. Indeed, I read all three books back to back and would continue to re-read them all they way until July 2000, when I would finally sink my teeth into Goblet of Fire.

The clearest memory of Book 2 comes from, I think, June of that same year when my parents and I were on holiday in the Slovak mountains. This must have been at least my second, if not third, iteration of the same story but I clearly remember reaching the scene in the actual chamber of secrets where Tom Riddle rearranges the letters in his name to spell 'I am Lord Voldemort'.

Up until that point I had never questioned this as fact, but this time I got out a piece of pen and paper and actually wrote it out myself, just to see if it was, indeed, true. And wouldn't you know it - it was. I was simply amazed by this and it remains, to this day, probably my favorite part of the book.

That being said, I have to admit that Chamber of Secrets has, almost consistently, been my least favorite book of the series. I can't really put my finger on the exact reason why, because it has a lot of really great stuff - Polyjuice Potion, the Deathday Party, the mystery of who the Heir of Slytherin is, the introduction of Myrtle, our first meeting with young Voldemort...

On the other hand, it has a bunch of bad stuff - the characters of Lockhart and Dobby being the most prominent.

But I will get into all of that in due course. For now, I leave you with some details:

This time I read the 1998 Bloomsbury Children's Edition (paperback), with cover illustrations by Cliff Wright. I like the scene that is depicted, however I am not a huge fan of the character drawings. Harry's face is, I think, too chubby to be canonical.