I've never been a big fan of the Harry Potter stories. They seemed like childrens' stories, and I gave them a chance by watching the movies, but I never felt up to investing the time to read the books. Not when I'd been so uninterested in the movies' plotlines.
But since I've been commuting, I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks. Some of them are bad. So when I found a Harry Potter audiobook that was 20 hours long on WinMX, I downloaded it and put it into my mp3 player for the commute. I'd heard that the latest Harry Potter book was dark, and I wanted to find out what about it was dark.
As it turned out, I'd downloaded Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was book 4 of the 5 that are currently out. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story. I enjoyed it so much that after listening to it, I went back to WinMX and downloaded Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was released as a movie just a few months later. (A few months ago, now)
After that, I downloaded and listened to Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I can't say that I liked them as much as volumes 3 and 4, and I'm not sure as to whether my dislike comes from the fact that I'd already seen the movies beforehand or the fact that the stories seem to mature as the volumes progress, but the fact remains that I like the more recent stories somewhat better. I plan to rewatch the first two movies soon, and see whether they strike me more favorably now that I've read listened to the (audio)books.
Currently, I'm listening to the most recent book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The story is over 24 hours long, so I expect that I might not even finish by the end of this week. So far, I like it. I'm waiting for lots of major characters to get killed off though - I hear that this story was dark. :-)