3 o’clock in the morning and I was still up, sitting on the bed, my head buried in a book. I could hear footsteps coming from the room above mine. It was gramps’, up for his mid-sleep ritual. Halfway through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, night after night I dig into it, getting barely enough sleep, yet not having the slightest concern about being caught dozing off in class, yet again.
I was just 10 when I fell in love with Harry Potter for the first time. But it wasn’t until I finished the last book in the series that I started to feel a constant urge for a dose of J.K. Rowling. 1997 saw the release of the first book, which was seven years after she conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series for the first time. Those seven years marked Rowling’s hardest times, tragedies only women of strength can live through. From writing in trains, on paper napkins to making every childhood magical, Rowling is one of the most influential women in Britain.
Four years after the release of the last Harry Potter book, Rowling’s novel for adult readers, The Casual Vacancy came out. Despite critics’ opinion on it being lousy, the author’s way of making me fall in love with a character that died in the opening chapter of the novel was astonishing.
Rowling quickly followed her previously under received novel with ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’, a highly acclaimed crime fiction, written under the pseudonym- Robert Galbraith. The second installment to her crime series, ‘The Silkworm’ came out later last month. She said during a crime-writing festival that she wrote it under a fake name to see if she could “get a book published on the merits of the book”.
And as if my admiration wasn’t enough, she also got my respect.
With her birthday today, why not, give this creator of the-boy-who-lived, the author of the un-put-down-able stories, another tribute.
–Greta Khawbung
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