Reading leisurely has become an art of the past. Besides reading required material for school, many students nowadays neglect newspapers and novels for Netflix. For junior Erin McSkimming, reading each book in the Harry Potter series more than ten times became an enjoyable pastime.

McSkimming’s affinity with the series began in a rather untypical way. Her interest peaked when she saw the movie on TV, before she even laid eyes on the books.

“My dad was watching the movie, and I asked what it was, and it was the scene in the second movie where Harry and Ron are driving that car to Hogwarts, and they get pummeled by this weeping willow, and I loved it,” McSkimming said.

Since then, McSkimming has read the first book more than twenty times, and the forthcoming books between three and twenty times. She began reading the series when she was 8 years old.

Although McSkimming has read other series such as Percy Jackson, no collection captured her heart the way the Harry Potter books did. It takes her anywhere from one day to a couple weeks to finish a book.

“It depends which one we’re talking about, like the first two or three, maybe a day or two, like I said I know most of the words. But if you’re talking the fourth or fifth, maybe a week, because of school and everything,” McSkimming said.

Every time a new book came out, McSkimming would reread all of the preceding books to refresh her memory.

“Well the books didn’t all come out at once, so everytime a new one came out, I reread them, and then sometimes in between,” McSkimming said. “With Harry Potter, you can’t read them too many times.”