Several years ago, my mother gave me the boxed set of Harry Potter paperbacks she had just completed reading. It was only years 1-6, so that tells you how long ago this was — year 7 didn’t even exist yet except in J.K. Rowling’s head.

I wasn’t a Harry Potter fan, so the volumes sat atop my already over-crowded bookshelves, collecting dust. When I finally felt drawn one spring to climb up on a chair and fetch the set down, it was not because I suddenly became a Harry Potter fan or realized I was the last person on the planet to read the international best-selling series. I’m not, I’m sure my husband will never read them, nor has he ever seen even one of the movies. He prefers nonfiction.

No, my interest in the tomes was more personal than mere literary interest or boredom. I felt, in some way, that it would be a chance to reconnect with my mother, who had passed away from cancer the previous October.

Reading was always one of Mom’s passions. As long as I can remember, Mom had been a member of some book club that sent a new book every month. She also was a member of the Columbia Records music club and got new 8-tracks every month, but that’s a story for another day. Even up until her death, I think she subscribed to every single popular woman’s magazine and then some.

She shared her love of reading with my brother and me from an early age. Mom taught me to read before I even entered school; I can remember taking Little Golden Books to kindergarten with me and reading them to the other children. We also had our own magazine subscriptions — Highlights for Kids and later Smithsonian magazine, just to name a couple.

As soon as school was out every summer, Mom would take us to the tiny little library in Trenton, Ga., that was housed in a former train depot — tracks still in place. I checked out stacks and stacks of books every week to make sure that I would get a gold sticker on my completion certificate for the summer reading program.

It took only a few summers for me to read everything in the children’s section at my local public library; it took even less time to devour the entire young adult section. Before I even hit my teenage years, the librarian started letting me check books out of the adult section — promising Mom, of course, that she’d carefully screen the books so I didn’t check out anything inappropriate. Obviously, the librarian hadn’t read Peter Benchley’s “Jaws” and was poorly acquainted with some of Judy Blume’s later works.

Needless to say, my speed slowed down quite a bit once I started reading novels. Consequently, I stopped getting gold stickers on my summer reading program certificates. I gave up the summer reading program but not the reading. Sadly, I was never able to read everything in the adult section before I graduated from high school.

So I stood with the Harry Potter series in hand and realized I couldn’t remember the last time I had sat down with a good book. The last book I had even opened was Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.”

Every year at the university where I work, we celebrate banned books week and staff, faculty and students in previous years were invited to take part by reading aloud from their favorite book that had been threatened or banned. My choice that August was “A Wrinkle in Time,” one of my favorite books.

Around that same time, my mother was in the hospital for several days and I went to stay with her for a while. On impulse, I tossed the battered paperback into my suitcase, thinking I’d have something to read at night when I found it impossible to sleep. Instead, I ended up reading chapters aloud to Mom each night while she tried to sleep. We both found L’Engle’s words about love and finding a light in the darkness comforting during those nights. The role reversal wasn’t lost on me then and it is one of the fondest memories I have of our last months together. 

So it seemed logical that when I finally decided to once again squeeze in some time for reading in my busy life that it should be a book from my mother.

I was skeptical that I would get very engrossed in the series; I had seen a couple of the later movies but wasn’t just blown away by the story. But the first book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” started out as pretty easy reading and I was able to complete it fairly quickly.

Those of you who have read the books may not be surprised that I ended up reading the entire series, back-to-back, in less than two weeks. And I’m including the year 7 book “HP and the Deathly Hallows,” too. I ordered it from Amazon even before finishing “Half Blood Prince” so that I wouldn’t have that awful waiting to find out what happens next. Don’t worry, if you haven’t read the final book nor seen the movie, you won’t find any spoilers here. I’ll let you discover the ending for yourself, as I did.

Reading the series was thoroughly enjoyable, but it also made me smile every time I happened upon a dog-eared page that had marked Mom’s place. And I bet that she read the series back-to-back as I did — she often would obsessively read a good book until it was completed.

My power reading session also served to remind me that my love of reading and, as a result, my love of writing were inspired by Mom. I owe her a debt of gratitude for this and so many other countless things that make me who I am.

Now that I’ve had time to wind down from the obsessive reading binge, I think I’ll pick up another book she gave me — “Mustard Seeds: Thoughts on the Nature of God and Faith.”

Perhaps from this book I’ll be able to glean just an iota of the strength and faith that Mom had the past two years in fighting her cancer. And I know that she would have liked for me to read it. Regardless, I know that continuing my reading hobby and taking up my writing again will be just one way that I can continue to feel close with her.