The Other Harry

This Harry isn't British. Nor has he been to a real school. Actually, he never finished high school. He's American, and he's a stickler for rescuing damsels in distress. He puts his foot in ditches he could've steered the hell clear of, except that he's got an irrational desire to protect mankind from forces beyond their control.

This Harry is a Messy. But he's got sprites and house elves doing the cleaning and exterminating in his basement flat currently untouched by electricity. He makes appliances go awry and he doesn't own a cellphone. He doesn't have a piece of wood with phoenix feathers as core, he lugs around a hockey stick as a staff. This Harry isn't adolescent angsty. He's just angsty, but with a brilliant sense of humor and wit.

This Harry describes mortals as ostriches with our heads in the sand. He says we don't know magic even if we sense it because we believe that seeing is believing. And since vision is just one of the functioning senses, we miss out on the other senses which tells we are living in a dangerous world. We choose not to see. That way we can live.

He's just the only advertised wizard in the Chicago phone directory. Well, he's got to earn a living, right? And most importantly (at least for me), he isn't wizard jailbait. :)

Hay. Call it the geek in me, but I still can't shake off my tendency to fall in love with book characters. In fairness, I never had a crush on Austen's Mr. Darby ( a pansy) or Bronte's Heathcliff (a lunatic). But I wanted to meet Lucy Montogomery's Gilbert and Walter. I wanted to be swept off my feet by Aragorn. And now, I want to marry Harry Dresden.

This moony-eyed post is brought about my sheer luck of finding an e-book of Jim Butcher's latest Dresden book entitled "Small Favor" yesterday. I have bought every one of the first 9 books, and I have been scouring bookstores the last 2months for the latest in the series. And just like magic, it drops on my lap, just like that. I still intend to buy the hard copy, but that's probably going to reach the Philippines months from now. For now though, my heart is sated.

Now, I need to get back to reality where real (but un-Harry like) men must be found. In reality, I don't think I can stand the stubborn types anyway. But in my dreams, they can always make me smile.... :)

Taken from the novel Dead Beat, when Harry re-animated the T-Rex bones found in a Chicago Museum. I found this to be one of the more memorable and funniest moments in the book.

TV's Harry Dresden is a little too clean for the Harry I imagined. But to be fair, Paul Blackthorner (the actor) is almost as dark handsome as I expected. Except for the hair. Harry in the book has long curling hair, and was not prematurely balding. :) Oh, and the hockey stick is the staff, you know, for doing "wingardium leviosa" stuff.