I think I remember Harry and Ron opening their presents in their bedroom, and Ginny and Hermione and the twins coming in to show them what they got, and everyone else discussing it at the kitchen table.

I believe you're right

Oh my. I think I need to read all those Chinese Harry Potter knockoffs now. Snurk.

Also I've realized why, when I first read HP&tSS, I felt fiercely protective towards lil Harry and thought I'd be a far better parent for him than the Dursleys ever could. This surprised me, especially because this thought required quite a leap of imagination for a child-free person, but there ya go, the power of fiction strikes again. It turns out that I share James and Lily's birth year, so I'm exactly the right age to be Harry's mum. It feels like the author was aiming right at me all along.

So,I have now re-reread Azkaban and GoF. Azkaban was a much better book than I remember. Victor is right, it's really where the story takes off. And GoF...well rereading goblet of fire was like reading it anew.There was so much I didn't remember. Mostly of mymemories of what happened in that book were from the movie (and those memories are dim) It seems to me that Rowling does really good endings. The last half of the GoF was quite good, but there seemed to be a lot in the the first half that could have been edited out. Did we really need the first chapter with Voldemort in his familyhome? Did we really need all that stuff about Bertha Jonkins? Sure it was a important point in theplot mechanism, but it took a lot of time to lay out one that one point.

Azkaban was a much better book than I remember.

I think PoA is the best in the series. It's so beautifully and tightly plotted. Lots happens, but it has little fluff. And it's genuinely suspenseful.

I love the end of PoA, when Harry gleefully tells the Dursleys that his godfather is a wanted killer who cares deeply about his welfare.

connie, I know! It's so perfect.

PoA was my fav until ORDER. I need to reread them all to figure out which is my overall fav

I just caught up with the last ten days of posting here and want to give Nilly a big virtual hug for making me love her more every single time she posts.

:: piles on making it a group hug! ::

She made me appreciate what I read, all the more!

And yet there are special wizarding fairy tales. You'd think that there would be wizarding kids adventure stories

Isn't there some reference to a book called something like The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle? Or have I imagined that? (Possibly lying around Ron's room at the burrow? ...or is it a comic strip in The Prophet ?) I just remember being delighted with the notion - up there with all Mr Weasley's gleeful misunderstanding of Muggle ingenuity, and that exchange between Ron and Harry when they first meet on the train, which I'll paraphrase here:

Harry: Wow! So all your family are wizards?

Ron: Well, I think my Mum's got a cousin who's an accountant, but we never mention him.

Loved that.

So then does each person open presents in his or her bedroom, or do they bring them to a common area so everyone can open them together? I'm trying to remember how they did it at the Burrow during the Christmas scenes we've seen there -- I think I remember Harry and Ron opening their presents in their bedroom, and Ginny and Hermione and the twins coming in to show them what they got, and everyone else discussing it at the kitchen table.

It's not like there's a hard and fast rule.

When I was little, I used to get some presents at the bottom of the bed which were from Santa, and which I'd open gleefully as soon as I was conscious. And then there were other presents under the tree that were from people to each other. And we'd open those in the afternoon, after we'd had Christmas Dinner (which is to say, lunch).

As nobody in my family believes in Santa these days, we just pile our pressies under the tree and open them after lunch.