Last week the publishers of The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy kindly sent me a copy of their soon to be released book for me to read and review.  I read half of it on Saturday, then life took its toll so I wasn’t able to finish until tonight.  This book explores many of the themes that are present in the Harry Potter books, such as morality, choice, freedom, racism, love and the soul in a fun way by relating them to Harry Potter.

I pretty much enjoyed the whole book. There were, however, a few chapters that I did not enjoy that much only because I felt like the author was trying to make a whole chapter out of something that did not really need explanation. For example, the chapter entitled Sirius Black: Man or Dog?” seemed a bit unnecessary, but I will let other readers decide that for themselves. On the other side of the spectrum there were a few chapters that I absolutely LOVED.  One of these such chapters was “Choosing Love: The Redemption of Severus Snape.” Snape is definitely a favorite character of mine and this chapter did a great way of showing all that he did for Harry and the reasons why he did it.  Another chapter I enjoyed was “Dumbledore, Plato, and The Lust for Power” because it shows us how Harry has qualities that even Dumbledore didn’t have.  I won’t say much more than this because I want you all to be able to enjoy the book for yourselves, but I definitely recommend it.  It has earned its place in my Harry Potter collection.

I will point out that if you don’t like philosophy, religion and other political issues then this book is not for you.  But if you don’t mind reading about other peoples views on controversial topics you will definitely enjoy this book.

The book even pointed out a few things that I, a Harry Potter encyclopedia as some friends call me, had never noticed before.  So that is definitely a bonus!  Most of the contributors for this book definitely know their Potter and it shows in their understanding and love of JK Rowling’s wonderful world. There are a lot of Harry Potter companion books out there and a lot of them don’t know a hippogriff from a flobberworm, but these authors (for the most part) know what they’re talking about.

The book will be released this September and you can pre-order it over at Amazon.com, and I recommend that you do!