Hello, my name is Mike Schubert. I'm 24 years old and my mom has always told me that I'm

a special and unique little snowflake. This has never been more true in an area that

has caused concern amongst most of my peers throughout the better part of my life. I

have never read a single page of a Harry Potter novel. Blasphemy, right? The amount of

shocked, confused, and disgusted faces I've seen as a response to me revealing that I've

never read a lick of JK Rowling is innumerable. I tell them not to worry, though, because I've

seen the movies, well, four and a half of them, the first Harry Potter book became a phenomenon

in America in late 1999. I was seven years old at that time, and I had a poor relationship

with fantasy novels. I was fresh off reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe after

my older sister Megan suggested it to me. I absolutely hated it. Now, in retrospect,

this is probably due to the fact that it was released in 1950, but to me at the time,

it was because of the subject matter. I preferred books I could relate to more, like Sportsbooks

or Holes by Lewis Satchar, because who hasn't found themselves digging six-foot deep holes

in the middle of the desert after being framed for stealing shoes from a charity event

before? So I said no thanks to the thought of reading Harry Potter. Fantasy novels just

didn't peak my interest. Compound that with the fact that my sister got instantly engrossed

in the series, and you have a cut and dry case against ever-opening a cover of those books.

As the books really started sweeping the nation a few years later, the hype surrounding

them further dissuaded me from reading them. Maybe I was just a nine-year-old hipster,

but I didn't want to hop on the bandwagon of a book series I didn't think I would like

when I was perfectly fine breezing through the Treehouse Adventure series at a rapid pace.

Let's be honest, those Treehouse Adventure novels were incredible. Then, in 2001, the first

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