The series that brought my family together - you'll be surprised.

This is a slightly surprising fact to me.

Last night we were settling in to watch "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and I realized that, apart from the Bible and some select childrens books, there is no book that all five members of my immediate family have read.

And there is no series that even four of us have read.

Four of us have read "The Robe" and four of us have read/listened to "The Chronicles of Narnia", but four of us have not actually read a series (my brother only ever listened to Narnia).

Well, that is about to change. As soon as my Dad gets through 1 and 2/3rds more volumes, four of us will have read ever single book in the Harry Potter series.

Considering that three years ago we were pretty anti-Harry, I find it crazy and vastly amusing as well as pretty cool. My brother rarely reads (even though he's now an adult) and he read all seven of them in record time during his first semester of college. My father never reads fantasy or even childrens books on his own and he is now up to book six and starting to crack jokes about "Pensieves" and the like. And he will do the adult version of "lalala-not-listening" if we even hint that we're going to mention a spoiler from a later book.

And this is no new trend. I've known other families in which Harry has been read and loved by all or most of the family members. This is not something I see with other books. Movies, yes, but not books.

Jo Rowlings has gotten a lot of credit for improving literacy among children. But I think she now deserves kudos for creating something that has such a powerful effect on drawing families closer together.