Harry Potter: Classic Or Dud?

Also, Pynchon, in the intro to Slow Learner, discussed how an author's approach to mortality is revealing. The way mortality is dealt with in #4 is, as far as I'm concerned, scads more mature than most adult fiction.

As far as the books go, and speaking as someone who reads very few books, I find them captivating. So far I've enjoyed each installment more than the last, so long may they run. I've never met anyone who has read them and not enjoyed them, either.

So I suppose I'm just a big kid. Oh well.

Look ma, literary comparisons! I'll be reading James Joyce next. PFFFFFFFF.

The smacking of infantilism argument is absolute nonsense. To avoid this they've published copies of the book with more subtle designs to make sure that adults can read the book in public without being laughed at for reading "a childrens book". The FluffyGoths reading Miffy books on the tube is infantilism.

Speaking of which, can you still get Topsy and Tim books? There was a great one where they went swimming, and another one where they had an Indian neighbour move in next door and they went all multicultural and learned how to make chapati or something. Gr8!

This ties in a little with the nostalgia thread, as there is a massive market for products which should be for kids, but which are actually aimed at adults. Leaving aside the Simpsons, which is a different argument, sales of retro kids videos, eg Bagpuss, Clangers, etc have gone through the roof in recent years. A decade ago, I'm not sure it would have been socially acceptable for adults to read HP - but the times they have a'changed. And the world is surely a nicer place when we're all a little less hung up about how others perceive us.

This actually answers Andrew W's point to Andrew L (incidentally PEOPLE WITH THE SAME FIRST NAME SHOULD ALWAYS AGREE GRRR)

People reading kids editions of HP on tube - annoying because they are reading a book I don't like and I'm intolerant.

People reading adult editions of HP on tube - annoying because they are a) obviously ashamed of reading a kids book and b) are fools because it costs £2 more. AND because it's a book I don't like and I'm intolerant.

I like lots of kids' things. I just don't like this 'phenomenon'.

Okay maybe more than a few years. I do rate Harry Potter that highly though.

2. I left Bloomsbury Publishing, burning all bridges, just before massive historically unprecedented windfall of HP profits distributed around employees.

3. I am an ass

I suspect that for many people in the world, reading Harry Potter was the first book that they've read and found entertaining/easy since they were in school. Then everyone sees all these people reading it and everybody wonders why and picks up a copy for themselves.

So I wonder if 200 adults were paid to sit on the Tube/train and other public places reading (or pretending to read for that matter) a new childrens book, if that book would start getting raves?

I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I really can't find a good reason to explain why they are so popular. I don't think they do anything "new" be it w/ characters morals monsters magic.

Having said all that, I'm really looking forward to the Movie, and also the Lord of The Rings movie.

In light of this, I absolutely hate Harry Potter. I have nothing against anyone who enjoys it, it just is not my thing. But I don't even like adult books with fantasy/magic angles anyhow, so I'm really a horrible judge of the merits of a children-oriented fantasy series ;)

Despite having not read a word of Harry Potter, I decided to be the biggest fan and see the movie opening night (Nov 16 for the States). On the other hand, I love the Pokemon game yet refuse to see the movies. Must settle this dichotomy...

Ash nazg [something]tuluk

Ash nazg gimbatul

Ash nazg thrakatuluk

[something] burzum krimpatul!

Not perfect, but I think close. I'll stick with Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima, thanks.

I'm re-reading the series now, and it's a bit of a disappoinment, which makes me think the discovery of what happens to the characters as they progress is the key to it all. Without the feeling of discovery, it's fairly charmless.

Coincidentally, I am also rereading the books at the moment, in fact I'm about 40 pages from the end of Goblet of Fire. I'd say I enjoyed them just as much second time around, though this may be cos a) the film's just come out, b) it's a while since I read them first or c) cos I'm just a big kid.

It's feel-good nostalgia for people who almost certainly never shared the experiences to begin with

what - people who never went to wizard school?

I saw the damn movie. It was dire. Harry lets everyone else do the magic.

Immortal scene 1: Harry and friends sitting at long dinner table...broom stick shaped parcel arrives..."what could it be Harry? Open it up"..."Wow it's a broom stick!!!"

Immortal scene 2: Harry gets a cloak of invisibility for X-mas, puts it on and his body disappears. Harry's friend: "You know what, I think that's a cloak of invisibility"

We dragged one of my friends to the movie because he bears a resemblance to Harry (round face, round glasses) and we wanted to pick on him for that afterwards, but we decided his little brother looks more like Harry. The little brother, unfortunately, doesn't wear glasses. I had to borrow someone else's glasses and get him to put them on, and it was just wonderful!

http://www.barrytrotter.com/BarryTrotterChapter1.pdf

is the actor from harry potter...

i. i thought it wz tightly written and effectively conjured up its own world
ii. i do not much share jkr's sense of humour as evidenced in book one
iii. this may not be a fair judgment — the world is fat with HP spoilers — but i wzn't much convinced by the attempts to set up suspense: HP himself has WAY too much deus-ex-machina on tap for you ever to be nervous on his behalf, beginning middle or end
iv. hogwarts is a failure so far, i think: upthread edna welthorpe mrs's says "faux nostalgia for blytonesque midnight dormie feasts" — i think this is on the nose... the realm of magic (so far) shares a distinct cosiness with the suburban blandness HP is portrayed as being in flight from (room obviously in later books for this to expand into a more interesting, subtle dialectic between the TALENTED and the ORDINARY => by the end of book one all we have established is the ultra-niceness of meritocracy which is pro forma as geeky compensation but weak when you push it at all) (exception: snape, but we don't go there, yet...)
v. what is magic FOR? evil it's RULING THE WORLD AND LIVING FOREVER BWAHAHA, good it's like kid's birthday-party stuff, so weak-tea lame that surely the more easily bored wizards/witches wd end up on the dark side (just to keep themselves interested) (or give up magic altogether, like the Dogme 95 of Necromancy)
vi. once inside her sphere of approval, characters are rounding a bit slowly but nicely enough
vii. WHAT IS AT STAKE? i don't get it yet (bcz actually i think rowling changed her mind during the book: it WAS going to be a knock-about cartoon slapstick revenge on potter's unconvincingly horrible relatives but jkr made this too easy to be fun and switched in a new quest and a new evil late in the book)
viii: potentially REALLY interesting nub of a topic for the future, contained in an aside of hermione's: "many of the greatest wizards have been complete strangers to logic"

the great children's books abt the teaching of magic as a school subject are A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA and THE SWORD AND THE STONE: hogwarts isn't even slightly a match here in its treatment of what it is potter is supposed to be good at (there's also a puffin book, illustrated by quentin blake, called "the ________ mr ________" [haha sorry = i forget what it's called] which i recall as being good on the gap between actual magic and party conjuring w/o being serious especially....)

I was going to change my mind on the phenomenon and actually give it a chance when... we were visiting Laycock House (she said Lay Cock, hunh hunh hunh < /Beavis & Butthead > and were followed through by these extremely loud Americans who made me cringe as they loudly decried "You'd think they have MORE HARRY POTTER STUFF here, wouldn't ya?"

Excuse me, this is LAYCOCK ABBEY - this is the BIRTHPLACE OF MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY, not to mention an extremely interesting study in Tudor History, what with the dissolution of the monastaries, and the ways in which Tudor aristocracy utilised former Abbeys for their own ill-gotten ends, and 13th Century archicture and oh so interesting and whatnot, and all they can do is rabbit on about HARRY BLOODY POTTER?!?!?!?

Christ.

I hate hearing Americans in public these days, it makes me so self conscious, wondering "Do I sound that loud and annoying to other people?"

But I suppose if Harry Potter makes fat American tourists visit country houses they otherwise would ignore, at least their entrace fees keep the National Trust going so that I can enjoy the houses. Or something. Grrrrrr. I am turning into a curmudgeon, lord help me.

why oh why cd the movies not have been filmed in POUNDBURY?

yeah, The Sword and the Stone is a fantastic book, I've been meaning to read that one again. also very funny (which JKR def isn't).

My three year old daughter insists that I am Hagrid. This has been going on for three weeks. My throat is beginning to hurt.

Sarah-Jane: "Hagwid, are we going to Hogwart's now?

Daddy (gruffly): "That's right, Harry, better bring your owl, what's her name again?"

My three year old daughter insists that I am Hagrid. This has been going on for three weeks. My throat is beginning to hurt.

Sarah-Jane: "Hagwid, are we going to Hogwart's now?

Daddy (gruffly): "That's right, Harry, better bring your owl, what's her name again?"

(I also think yr. way overreading this meritocracy thang tho that may only be apparent in the next few books. A recent article in some alt-weekly actually had a somewhat dubious "queer" reading of potter.)

i think rowling's attitude to harry's adoptive relatives (in this book) IS a bit momusoid though: talentocracy maybe a clearer word than meritocracy? there are hints that things could be developed differently BUT they're really not in book one

Harry Potter and the Childish Adult

July 7, 2003
By A.S. BYATT

What is the secret of the explosive and worldwide success
of the Harry Potter books? Why do they satisfy children and
- a much harder question - why do so many adults read them?
I think part of the answer to the first question is that
they are written from inside a child's-eye view, with a
sure instinct for childish psychology. But then how do we
answer the second question? Surely one precludes the other.

The easy question first. Freud described what he called the
"family romance," in which a young child, dissatisfied with
its ordinary home and parents, invents a fairy tale in
which it is secretly of noble origin, and may even be
marked out as a hero who is destined to save the world. In
J. K. Rowling's books, Harry is the orphaned child of
wizards who were murdered trying to save his life. He
lives, for unconvincingly explained reasons, with his aunt
and uncle, the truly dreadful Dursleys, who represent, I
believe, his real "real" family, and are depicted with a
relentless, gleeful, overdone venom. The Dursleys are his
true enemy. When he arrives at wizarding school, he moves
into a world where everyone, good and evil, recognizes his
importance, and tries either to protect or destroy him.

The family romance is a latency-period fantasy, belonging
to the drowsy years between 7 and adolescence. In "Order of
the Phoenix," Harry, now 15, is meant to be adolescent. He
spends a lot of the book becoming excessively angry with
his protectors and tormentors alike. He discovers that his
late (and "real") father was not a perfect magical role
model, but someone who went in for fits of nasty playground
bullying. He also discovers that his mind is linked to the
evil Lord Voldemort, thereby making him responsible in some
measure for acts of violence his nemesis commits.

In psychoanalytic terms, having projected his childish rage
onto the caricature Dursleys, and retained his innocent
goodness, Harry now experiences that rage as capable of
spilling outward, imperiling his friends. But does this
mean Harry is growing up? Not really. The perspective is
still child's-eye. There are no insights that reflect
someone on the verge of adulthood. Harry's first date with
a female wizard is unbelievably limp, filled with an
8-year-old's conversational maneuvers.

Auden and Tolkien wrote about the skills of inventing
"secondary worlds." Ms. Rowling's world is a secondary
secondary world, made up of intelligently patchworked
derivative motifs from all sorts of children's literature -
from the jolly hockey-sticks school story to Roald Dahl,
from value="46636">"Star Wars" to Diana Wynne
Jones and Susan Cooper. Toni Morrison pointed out that
clichs endure because they represent truths. Derivative
narrative clichs work with children because they are
comfortingly recognizable and immediately available to the
child's own power of fantasizing.

The important thing about this particular secondary world
is that it is symbiotic with the real modern world. Magic,
in myth and fairy tales, is about contacts with the inhuman
- trees and creatures, unseen forces. Most fairy story
writers hate and fear machines. Ms. Rowling's wizards shun
them and use magic instead, but their world is a caricature
of the real world and has trains, hospitals, newspapers and
competitive sport. Much of the real evil in the later books
is caused by newspaper gossip columnists who make Harry
into a dubious celebrity, which is the modern word for the
chosen hero. Most of the rest of the evil (apart from
Voldemort) is caused by bureaucratic interference in
educational affairs.

Ms. Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It
is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined
to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not
threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and
celebrity gossip. Its values, and everything in it, are, as
Gatsby said of his own world when the light had gone out of
his dream, "only personal." Nobody is trying to save or
destroy anything beyond Harry Potter and his friends and
family.

So, yes, the attraction for children can be explained by
the powerful working of the fantasy of escape and
empowerment, combined with the fact that the stories are
comfortable, funny, just frightening enough.

They comfort against childhood fears as Georgette Heyer
once comforted us against the truths of the relations
between men and women, her detective stories domesticating
and blanket-wrapping death. These are good books of their
kind. But why would grown-up men and women become obsessed
by jokey latency fantasies?

Comfort, I think, is part of the reason. Childhood reading
remains potent for most of us. In a recent BBC survey of
the top 100 "best reads," more than a quarter were
children's books. We like to regress. I know that part of
the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an
almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is
restful.

But in the case of the great children's writers of the
recent past, there was a compensating seriousness. There
was - and is - a real sense of mystery, powerful forces,
dangerous creatures in dark forests. Susan Cooper's teenage
wizard discovers his magic powers and discovers
simultaneously that he is in a cosmic battle between good
and evil forces. Every bush and cloud glitters with secret
significance. Alan Garner peoples real landscapes with
malign, inhuman elvish beings that hunt humans.

Reading writers like these, we feel we are being put back
in touch with earlier parts of our culture, when
supernatural and inhuman creatures - from whom we thought
we learned our sense of good and evil - inhabited a world
we did not feel we controlled. If we regress, we regress to
a lost sense of significance we mourn for. Ursula K. Le
Guin's wizards inhabit an anthropologically coherent world
where magic really does act as a force. Ms. Rowling's magic
wood has nothing in common with these lost worlds. It is
small, and on the school grounds, and dangerous only
because she says it is.

In this regard, it is magic for our time. Ms. Rowling, I
think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and
doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban
jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills
to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children
they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they
had.

Similarly, some of Ms. Rowling's adult readers are simply
reverting to the child they were when they read the Billy
Bunter books, or invested Enid Blyton's pasteboard kids
with their own childish desires and hopes. A surprising
number of people - including many students of literature -
will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since
they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often
destroys the life of the books. But in the days before
dumbing down and cultural studies no one reviewed Enid
Blyton or Georgette Heyer - as they do not now review the
great Terry Pratchett, whose wit is metaphysical, who
creates an energetic and lively secondary world, who has a
multifarious genius for strong parody as opposed to
derivative manipulation of past motifs, who deals with
death with startling originality. Who writes amazing
sentences.

It is the substitution of celebrity for heroism that has
fed this phenomenon. And it is the leveling effect of
cultural studies, which are as interested in hype and
popularity as they are in literary merit, which they don't
really believe exists. It's fine to compare the Bronts
with bodice-rippers. It's become respectable to read and
discuss what Roland Barthes called "consumable" books.
There is nothing wrong with this, but it has little to do
with the shiver of awe we feel looking through Keats's
"magic casements, opening on the foam/Of perilous seas, in
faery lands forlorn."

A.S. Byatt is author, most recently, of the novel "A
Whistling Woman."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/07/opinion/07BYAT.html?ex=1058586460&ei=1&en=2630c074ae8b4120

(also i watched the alt.tv documentary abt that poor japanese girl who turned up in fargo frozen in the snow, and the world thought she wz a mentalist fan looking for unreal treasure and actually — says this doc — the real story was not that at ALL... anyway the doc wz done as an hommage to la jetee, all in colour stills w.an actress playing the girl, and wz very tremendously sad in its a.m.homes-ish way...)

Basically - to hell with them! H.P. is getting more and more peopel to read, it's beautiful escapism, it addresses some (well, few) difficult issues, R*wling is amazingly talented with her imagination, and I love the darn things. All of them. Did I mention how many more people are reading these days as a result of having picked-up H.P. and then gone seeking more books in similar veins?

GRRR. Maybe Byatt is just jealous.

This is a debatable point. In the UK at least the size of the market for kids lit is at the same level it was pre Pottermania. No more books are being bought, which sort of suggests there's no more reading going on. Of course, this doesn't take into account public library lending which might well have gone through the roof. Still, I'd expect *some* increase in book buying if that many more people were reading,

i decided more of a l. george.

I assume they meant 'commented,' but you never know.

"And now, 'Little Girl with the Blue Eyes.'"

Seriously brilliant. Where did Chris Morris get his ideas from, eh?

If Scott, Dan and Nicole have been talking about how much they love Left Behind on that thread, sanity has finally departed This Sad World.

The Hogwarts/Poudlard one has me stumped the most, I don't see why it wasn't kept the same.

"I didn't set out to offend. I'm a priest and I'm very careful about not offending people."

Rather.

Order of the Phoenix (movie) didn't even get its own thread?

kind of dud except for the crazy albino girl

best one to date, easily

I think it's good not great, about on par with the last one. The best is still Prisoner of Azkaban. As far as adaptations go, I'd say it's pretty well done - OOTP was so damn long and uneven, I'm glad they managed to make a fairly coherent and well-paced movie out of it.

Order of the Phoenix (movie) didn't even get its own thread?

We were talking about it on the Goblet of Fire thread. Lack of interest didn't make me feel like starting a new one.

Answering original question: CLASSIC BEYOND BELIEF!!!!!!!!

I'm currently embroidering an "I <3 Tonks" t-shirt to wear to the book release on Friday and my second viewing of OOTP next weekend.

I think it's good not great, about on par with the last one. The best is still Prisoner of Azkaban.

Completely OTM.

I need to re-watch POA. Haven't seen it in awhile.

I'm currently embroidering an "I <3 Tonks" t-shirt

That's awesome. Tonks was way hawt.

Favourite scene - the whole sequence in the Department of Mysteries because for once, something in the films looks exactly like it does in my head.

I haven't seen POA for so long that I can't really remember it. I liked the OOTP movie, but I liked Goblet of Fire better.

Also - Harry Potter very CLASSIC. Friday night they are transforming part of downtown Northfield into "Diagon Alley," and of course I'm taking my 9 year old to that.

Tonks was way hawt.

Absolutely. I have her as my desktop now.

I was disappointed by the Dept of Mysteries as they didn't depict all the rooms. Brains! Oh well, I know it's impossible to fit everything in.

True. But the Hall of Prophecy and the Death Chamber and the entire battle scene in there was pretty amazing. I wanted it to go on forever. Plus, Helena Bonham Carter!

HBC and Tonks made me love this movie 100X more. I'm looking forward to more Bellatrix next movie. Although sadly I don't think there's a ton more Tonks.

I'm going to have to re-read HBP now cause I can't remember a single thing from that book, other than the early scenes and who dies in the end.

I don't think less Tonks is totally a bad thing, since she just becomes JKR Trying to Make Lupin a Little Less Pitiful.

I just re-read it recently but my memory is crap. Here's what I remember of Tonks:

-Brief bits about her infatuation with Remus which would probably be cut
-Forgettable presence in the final battle
-Scene where she finds Harry on the train and walks him back to the castle

Bellatrix not much more really:
-last battle
-Great beginning scene where she and Narcissa visit Snape.

Prisoner of Azkaban is the Alfonso Cuaron-directed one, right? Definitely the best (of the three I've seen - that and the last two), the only one that felt like a movie rather than just fitting in all the plot points of a book.

This one had some great stuff (ministry intrigue, the pen that hurts students, etc.) but it all got swept up in the too-large story.

Puberty has not been kind to Harry Potter.

Puberty has not been kind to any of Harry Potter's friends. Except for Hermione who gets impossibly more gorgeous with each movie.

Daniel Radcliffe has gotten much better looking. I agree that Emma Watson looks good although I'm a little bummed they keep making her blonder. The Weasly twins are good-looking but not so much Ron or Ginny.

Radcliffe is acting much better too. even when he's saying crap like "I just feel so angry. All the time." Ngggh.

The Weasley twins looked like slightly uglier Ewan McGregors in OOTP which freaked me out a little.

even when he's saying crap like "I just feel so angry. All the time." Ngggh.

Classic teen angst.

I think the twins looked best in POA though. Ugly Ewan McGregor?? You are nuts.

http://www.phelps-twins.com/Gallery/albums/userpics/10001/normal_OotP_(74).jpg

http://www.totalformat.com/gallery/data/4139/Ewan_Mcgregor_Picture_0038.jpg

Ok fine so they look just like Ewan McGregor. Which is still kinda freaky.

I thought you were implying Ewan McGregor was ugly. Maybe they are his illegitimate children.

I loved the first two Harry Potter movies, but the next two were so unbelievably awful that I will never even THINK about watching the last three. Michael Gambon as Dumbledore = WORST CASTING DECISION EVER!!!

Oh hey another movie.

oh hey
dude

o hey it was pretty good but a bit anticlimactic

Half the student workers here are in 'seeing it tonight OMG' mode. (So is my aunt Cheryl, doubtless.)

yeah this was pretty good w/ a terrible ending

the scene where harry & ginny run after the dark wizards in the field was great i thought

ya

i liked teh way it looked a lot... good cinematography, even the quidditch stuff looked good

but what a weird tone... death doom and dating

also the "oh btw" reveal of the half-blood prince's identity was a bit... uhhhh

x-post -- How is that not most teens' angst ridden lives?

it's true!

it defly suffered from the whole--how can we cram as many major plot points into this amnt of time... so instead of any kind of padding btw ron & hermione/harry & ginny and all the scary shit, its just one right after the other

half-blood prince search in the book is a lot more involved

another killer scene--when harry is getting dragged down in the water and you see those huge underwater mountains made of bodies, and then come back up and dumbledore is being badass w/ the fire

i saw it on imax so i was wondering if the cinematography really was that impressive or if i was just O_O at how big and high-qual it was

no it really was good, i saw it on a relatively small screen but with really good projection. same dude who did amelie.

the whole... half blood stuff... it seems like it was way more of an obsession in the book. here it's just a very minor thing that comes back in the end. seemed a BIT weird.

getting harder and harder to believe that hermione is head over heels for ron but wv

yeah i got the feeling they would have dropped the whole subplot abt the hbp if it hadnt been, like, the title of the whole gd movie

btw pretty lucky that this series is set in britain where 1 out of every 3 people is an amazing character actor

broadbent, gambon, rickman, smith, across the board a+ even when they only had like 6 lines

lol also malfoy looks a lot like jw

totally

i mean
the actor thing

TEENAGE HORMONES

lol also malfoy looks a lot like jw

Whenever I would look at the actor who played Draco I thought he looked like somebody familiar, but I figured I was just thinking of another actor.

i thought this was pretty awful. it looked really amazing mind and most of the individual scenes were great (funny scenes were funny, scary scenes were scary) but the pacing was soooo awkward. whole thing felt like it was just "this happened and then this happened and then this happened" without really explaining the significance of any of it.

the half-blood thing was one... like snape didn't even get mad that harry used sectumsempra on draco (which was how snape even knew that harry was looking for the prince). in the book, harry got into a shitload of trouble for almost killing a kid but in this one, slashing up draco means he gets to run into secret room and snog ginny? wtf? really i am okay with them leaving out massive chunks of the books but why include stuff if it's not going to make any sense on a basic storytelling level?

haha yeah i was annoyed that he basically attempts to murder draco and theres no punishment at all but at some point its kind of hard to judge these "as movies" anymore as opposed to companion pieces to the books, sort of?

yeah true and to be fair, most of the movies have been pretty much like this anyway. i just thought that the change in tone from one scene to another was really bizarre and awkward in this one and would make absolutely no sense to people who either haven't read the books or forgotten most of it.

I mostly liked this but thought they completely botched the ending. The assault force on the castle just comes in, wreaks havoc, leaves. At least the kids got to fight back in the book.

Is it just me or is there a _whole_ lot of drug use/subtext in this flick? Multiple characters are visibly high or stoned, every other character downs a potion for some reason(knowingly or not), etc

Also, movie was great, shot beautifully, my fave since the 3rd, which was the last one I saw in the theater.

xpost definitely. There was a fairly nuanced approach to that and sexuality in this movie that managed to give it a bit of depth. The Felix Felicis scene was about my favorite in the film.

If Harry Potter has much literary merit (see: start of this thread) seems utterly beside the point to any kid who likes the books/movies. Harry captures their imagination. Maybe their imaginations are rather childish. Um. Duh.

Frankly, I can't recall why troll dolls were so fascinating to my peers in fifth grade, except I recall they were and the fact that they were apparently ugly useless senseless bits of plastic and garish nylon hair never really mattered a damn to me or any of my fellows. We liked them.

am i the only person who thinks that making the bankers in the first film disagreeable, short, hook-nosed trolls seemed a bit anti-semitic?

i've never seen anyone else write or say that, but it jumped out at me when i was watching the first film.

also, it seems unduly biased against short, ugly people.

yes that too

classic. the writing is dull and boring and, even in my elementary days reading these (obv being of the younger generation here on ilx) i grew annoyed that j.k. introduced characters like one had never before already been familiar with them. but it's an unbelievably imagined and well-thought out series. they're very fun and while the latter half of the series doesn't do so much for me as it approaches adult themes (with assumption that the reader has never been before initiated in these things, which is true for the majority of it's readers) the first and 3rd books are stellar works of story-telling.

movies are meh; dan radcliffe seems like a fun guy in real lyfe but is incredibly cardboard actor. granger and the guy who plays weasley are ace.

ok, maybe not "boring", but there is little frazzle in the actual literary aspect. maybe i mean more "plain" and "purely functional".

agree with all of the above^

30% of each book being either boring repetitive mcguffin or synopsis doesnt help. dumbledore basically wrong bout everything til he dies, too.

the starting each and every novel reminding the reader of the woes of living with the dudley family absolutely killed it as well. i really saw zero benefit or reason to consistently keep doing so, as they play an abysmally minuscule role in the potter-mythology nor do they even cross one's mind in the subsequent 5-7hundred pages.

in truth tho, i've thought about other ways to approach this and haven't really been able to come up with much. it would've made the 6th book a lot more emotionally rousing if harry had lived possibly with dumbledore or even his godfather instead but i almost feel rowling was fully aware of the incestuous implications she'd be ridiculed for by going w/ such a move.

I really wanted part of one of the books to be set during an exchange programme to one of the other cool European magic schools.

truth tho, i've thought about other ways to approach this and haven't really been able to come up with much

approach what, the overall series? oh, i think there would have been multiple approaches that would have been more interesting. focusing on ron as the central character, for example, with him having to balance friendship with, and jealousies of, harry (the "chosen one"). or making harry struggle instead of being a superhero, with him having to overcome feelings of inadequacy about being -- or even objectively failing in being -- the "chosen one."

not having them argue about the same thing (jealousy/mistrust of each other) in the middle of books 2-5 would actually have been an improvement, so tbh I disagree there daniel

i guess i didn't pay enough attention about the series. i still think ron would be a more interesting central character than dull-as-dishwater harry.

movie prob acting as an influence there

Neither books 5 or 6 have a particularly strong central mcguffin to focus the plot, so as a result feel somewhat like meandering backstory infodumps.

movie prob acting as an influence there

i'm sure it was. i can't read.

annoy fosters, get stolen away to hogwarts, new teachers are shit, grave danger reveal, harry unpopular cos of potter issues dumbledore senile enough, happy to let it work itself out, hagrid's a bit dim somwhere, omg snogs, the obviously evil adults were the bad guys, ok tho defeated them with the one spell we learnt this year, ere's a bit about voldemort, exams passed and quidditch one, several billion pounds please

your summary reads like billy joel's we didn't start the fire

he's a constant influence

he can't read, either.

not gettin the reference tbh

Would've been great to see Ron play more a role of being central character than Harry - that he'd have an actual character arc! Harry basically starts off with the courage of a lion from book 1 to 7, and seems to possess this purely because of genetics or the fact that he clearly is the book's namesake/protagonist and entirely discounting the fact that the kid had no social contact for the first 10 years or so of his life secluded to the life of a closet beneath the stairs.

That his perception of reality - magic exists! science is wrong! there are two worlds, completely unaware of each other!- at the age of 10 was given radical change and the eventual encounter with a society of people actively trying to murder him seemed due process for at least a scene/chapter in which Harry has a nervous breakdown. But this never really seemed to be given thought and it largely irked me that Harry adopts so well - I felt there couldn't been so much greater a sense of connection with him had he displayed actual emotions in day to day life versus when he becomes a teenager, whereas he's hugely annoying but ultimately identifiable at the least.

reading these for the 1st time

i liked the 1st book quite a bit & its probably insufferable to whine about world-building & narrative arcs & w/e but theres a real sense of diminishing returns by the end of the fourth. the biggest problem is that the first book is really funny & each book is less so, until long streches of the 4th are this sort of dour slog.

http://www.youtube.com/JKRowlingAnnounces

people who slag off HP remind me of people who slag off the beatles - i have the strong suspicion they're being contrarian, pretentious, hipper-than-thou types just for the sake of looking cool. if you didn't even try reading a single one of the books cause "everyone else loves it so it must suck" you're missing out. to extend the beatles analogy - yeah, there was a bit of filler in maybe half the beatles albums, but hell one person's filler is another person's favorite deep cut, and there's more than enough brilliance in any given album to make it worth your time to check it out. so: some of the books are better than the others, and i guess there might be a clunky moment or two here and there if you want to get all lit crit and look for them, but basically the books are all awesome and fun and well worth a read.

as for the movies, you can argue they occasionally suffer from having to condense Xhundred pages into 2 hours and 15 minutes, but frankly i think they did an great job of getting to the heart of the material and turning it into good cinema each and every time. whichever one is your most/least favorite, they're all clearly quality - there's good chemistry between the leads, excellent character actors abound, the sets and costumes are fantastic, they clearly didn't skimp on the writing just to blow the whole budget on 10 minutes of cgi splosions, etc etc

ps. fuckin classic, obv

"You're what?" Snape hissed out between clenched teeth.

"I'm pregnant, Sev," Harry repeated patiently, sitting down on a nearby chair.

"B-but how could this have happened?" Severus sputtered, all thoughts of the tests he'd been grading flying from his mind.

A twinkle in his eye, Harry said, "Well, when two people love each other very much..."

"I *know* that part, Potter. What I meant was, how could *you* be pregnant? You're a man."

"I am quite aware of that fact, Severus," Harry returned drolly. "But surely you must realize that while I *am* a man, I am also a wizard. A very powerful wizard, in fact, and sometimes very powerful wizards use their magic unconsciously. Remember how I beat Voldemort? He cast the killing curse, and even though I was almost unconscious, and didn't have my wand, I still managed to reflect it so it hit him instead?"

Snape looked at him skeptically. "So you're saying that unconsciously you *wanted* to get pregnant? For Merlin's sake, *why*?!"

Blushing Harry said, "Well, it was after we'd gone to see Ron and 'Mione's new twins. I was thinking that you'd make such a good father, and when you pounced me that evening, I must've focused in on that."

Severus looked surprised at Harry's words -- him, a good father? -- but thought for a moment about their situation.

"Well," he said finally. "I suppose it could happen. But in all cases where male pregnancy has happened, it was a planned event. It had to be, because both parties had to use their magic to make it happen..." He trailed off, his face draining of all color, as he realized what he was implying.

Harry grinned. "I guess it was meant to happen, then."

Severus was at a loss. "But I don't understand -- neither of us knew what the other was thinking, and without joint focus, it *still* shouldn't have happened..."

"Since both of us are powerful wizards, maybe we didn't need to know in order to focus," Harry suggested. "I'm more concerned about the numbers."

"Numbers?" Severus asked, floundering for understanding.

Taking a deep breath, Harry broached the topic cautiously. "Well, we each have at least twice as much magic as most Wizards, and we'd gone to see the twins that evening...and I'm definitely showing more than normal for not being even three months pregnant. My larger stomach was the first clue I had that I *was* pregnant."

"You think we're having twins?" Severus squeaked.

Harry nodded. "I'm not sure, though. But it's possible."

"Oh, wonderful," Severus snarked. "I never planned on us having children to begin with, and now you tell me we're most likely having *two*?"

"Well, Sev, as you pointed out, it takes two to make this spell work. You can't blame all of this on me," Harry said, voice hard.

Sighing, Severus put his head in his hands and said, "I know. But I wish I could."

"Whyever would you want to do that?" Harry demanded, exasperated.

Directing a glare at his husband, Severus said, "Because if I recall, your dog-father still doesn't even know we're married. How in the world are you planning to explain *this* to him?"

Harry gulped. "I-I hadn't thought of that."

Nodding, Severus said, "I thought not."

Practically hyperventilating, Harry summed their situation up in two words: "Oh, shit."

lol, and eeewwwww.

did you make that up yourself, or repost it from some terrifyingly creepy potterforum?

transcribed an actual overheard conversation between Snape and Harry Potter

hmmm. if you're trying to make harry potter fans look creepy and weird, it's kinda backfiring. if you're a homosexual fanboy who's just that into it, well done! someone somewhere is probably rubbing one out to your fanfic RIGHT NOW

awesome!

anything i can do to bring happiness to others.

damn, i was trying to think of something snarky to reply with but that last line just kinda took the wind out of my sails.

starting w/ the movies now for time purposes, going to the books next...these are fun

so I'm about halfway through reading the first book to my daughter (she loves it) and... it's kind of boring? It feels very formulaic in the sense that for every normal thing in the "muggles" world there's an equivalent in the magic world that is the same, but with magic! They don't have football, they have quidditch etc. There seems to be some attempts at Roald Dahl-style wackiness but it's wholly lacking in both strangeness and nastiness, which were key to Dahl's appeal.

Not really looking forward to 9,000 more pages of this

I only read the first four aaaaages ago but the first was definitely the most boring and they definitely got better. But, yes, Rowling's whole thing (and probably the key to HP's enormous success) is throwing every cliched magical/fantasy element into the same pot. It's fairly LCD but, to the extent that you're able to shut your critical faculties pretty much all the way down, also fun.

And if you're generally unaware of the overall plot, prepare for things to get way, way darker starting around book four.

every cliched magical/fantasy element into the same pot

yeah this is definitely my feeling. oh look there's a nerd beset by adversity but the nerd is really actually very special! and get this, he's an orphan! and he has mysterious magical benefactors! oh you don't say

preferred reading Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang tbh

dud

rowling has a pretty terrible sense of humor, i can't really think of a genuinely funny or witty moment in the whole series.

harry's awful relatives do seem like a nod to dahl, except that dahl would have made them sincerely nasty and monstrous and scary, not just bumbling fools.

yes exactly! Dahl would have included some unusual, disgusting details, something to make them grotesque

to be fair rowling did hit upon the vivid idea of making them fat

Also, setting the entire sixth book in a magical candy factory strikes me as somewhat Dahl-esque.

I'm half way through the fourth - reading the whole thing out aloud to my children - still a fuck of a lot to go. First book completely failed to grab me and I more or less felt the same as Οὖτις. Kind of got more into it since then and think she improved a lot as a writer/storyteller after that. It still bugs me that she just HAS to put adjectives on everything. There's no "he picked up the envelope", it's "he carefully picked up the limp, brown envelope". The books would be 20% shorter without all that. The children love everything about it and that's what's important. The fanatical adult fandom still bemuses me though even that seems really low key now the whole thing's over.

my favorite thing in the whole series (that i've seen -- i was just the right age for the bandwagon when it first started rolling but stopped reading at book 5; i still haven't seen the last two movies) is the time machine hermione uses to overschedule her classes. there's some wit in that i think. even if it is just another iteration of the mundane-uses-for-magic joke shakey identifies, the discrepancy between the potential of this technology and the use to which it's actually put is simultaneously so big and (to certain kids) so relatable it's one of my favorite YA ideas. in fact in general the third book is the best thing to come out of the empire, wizard people dear reader aside; you might enjoy it a lil more, shakes, when its time inevitably comes. btw, wow do a lot of women my age feel strongly about this franchise.

It still bugs me that she just HAS to put adjectives on everything. There's no "he picked up the envelope", it's "he carefully picked up the limp, brown envelope".

iirc the cliche-per-page rate (that snobbiest of metrics) is pretty monstrously high in these. a lot of adjective-noun readymades.

don't want to get specific bcz spoilers, but in retrospect the one-dimensional portrayal of voldemort is prob the most disappointing thing about the series for me. you get so much info about him -- entire books, it feels like, are dedicated to the quest for background knowledge about him -- and it never really pays off, he never really becomes interesting or complex or even really that scary, he's ultimately not much more than a plot device. (compare this to, say, the white witch in narnia, who is absolutely terrifying in a very specific, memorable way.)

god this book is a slog. ok I wasn't expecting the drinking-unicorn's-blood bit but still

Do they slit the unicorn's throat to get the blood?

it's voldemort afaict

some kind of vampire thing

it's voldemort afaict

sure, sure, blame voldemort. that's Rowling's answer to everything innit?

Not exactly - after all one quarter of the school is given over to training asshole wizards!

i never quite understood why they didn't just abolish that house

For me the worst inconsistency is that Quidditch sounds like a really shitty sport - apart from the pointlessness of all of the scoring and various balls when only the snitch matters, it's all about having the best broom - like if the player with the most expensive boots was always the centre-forward. And what kind of sport cancels a match because one player has a sore arm but not when there's a goddam hurricane blowing and a bunch of evil ghosts invading the pitch?

iirc when I read it the thing that made no sense at all was the magic system. You concentrate and say some quasi-Latin words and spells happen. And every so often someone invents a new spell and now if you say those quasi-Latin words you can cast it. There's no idea of harnessing supernatural forces just a cosmic rulebook that some authority (who is never mentioned in any capacity) keeps updated.

spoilers: a hall of fame moment, and by moment i mean 800-page book, is when, iirc, voldemort replaces one of harry's confidants and mentors, with whom he is often alone and vulnerable, with an evil voldemort-loyal doppelgänger totally indistinguishable from the real person; then decides against having this guy hit harry over the head, lock him in the trunk of a car, and take him up to the manor at Evilshire in favor of rigging an enormous media-drenched international sporting event from beginning to end so that harry potter, who at plan's inception is not actually qualified to compete, may not only battle but defeat the world's most promising wizarding students in a series of matches of wits and magical power, whereupon he will be presented with a trophy that has been replaced with an identical-looking trophy that is actually a teleportation gate up the road to Evilshire. goldfinger was more chillingly pragmatic.

yeah but because ancient magical laws

Quidditch is the worst thing about HP yeah

good god what is this blatantly racist house elf allegory bullshit

house elf slave allegory

I meant to say

I mean I am embarrassed to read things like "ah sir, meaning no disrespect, sir, but I is not sure you did Dobby a favor, sir, when you is setting him free" to my daughter, Mark Twain she is not

J. K. Rowling that is

I am aware that my daughter is not Mark Twain

yeah it's weird & not good

marginally less awkward if you read it with the kind of olde backwarde Englishe accents they used in the movies but ffs Hogwarts is the whitest school in the world what would you expectorate?

good fucking god the number of adults I know who do nothing but talk about harry potter is irritating

white adults in their 20s sure love harry potter

Eh, the original Harry Potter readers are just reaching the point that the original (and next several generations of Star Wars fans reached years ago: this is the shit they grew up on, and they don't feel like letting it go.

(I'm all for powerful connections to the things you loved as children, by the way--and how many of us who hang out here aren't like that with a lot of our favourite music. But when one thing forms the sole parameters around one's engagement with art, well, I don't know if that's a *problem* necessarily, but it sure is annoying.)

the best part of harry potter is the half-assed, under-edited quality of books 4-7.

culminating in harry's resurrection

the series is like the drunk history retelling of itself

The ponderous hyper-complicated nonsense in this series is extremely tiring. Everything is resolved w the most convoluted deus ex machina shit imaginable.

yeah because all the books are first drafts

But see there was this magic thingamajigger but voldemort put a curse on it when he was doublecrossed by his henchman who's actually a werewolf that Dumbledore saved from giants when he was a pup so first harry has to figure out how to cast a charm w his magical phallus to win a raffle where the prize is the key to a secret chamber that no one had ever been able to get into where the thingamajigger is supposedly kept but once he gets there its actually just some shit his parents left him which makes harry sad and also voldemort gets away

Pad w dialogue and quidditch matches for extra 500 pages

Which seems preferable to you other ilxors:

...continuing forever to enjoy the stories and other entertainments that gave you delight when your mind and experience of life were that of a twelve year old, because you effectively did not develop much beyond the capacities of your twelve year old self, or

...losing forever your sense of delight in those juvenile stories and entertainments, because you have since grown up, experienced more, thought more deeply, and matured in your knowledge of life, although none of the stories or entertainments you currently enjoy ever give you the same level of innocent delight you experienced back then?

I'll take my answers off the air.

every line of dialogue in harry potter books: "it's the blahblahblah, isn't it?" "it's the whatfuckywha, isn't it?" goddamnit

i like how they didn't abolish the "slytherin" house even after the monster that salazar slytherin hid in the school to kill muggle-born children got loose and nearly killed a bunch of people

there's a lot to love if you free your mind of preconceptions about books needing to have internal consistency or logic

yeah I think modern schools would banish the greek system for lesser issues

Every school has its Sigma Chi

I assume most of Hogwarts' endowment comes from Slytherin alums

One of the (perhaps unfortunte although I don't mind too much) its the after-life of this series on twitter. At points people just scream at others to "read other books".

Anyway, this thread post-Rowling/Depp thingy. It then makes the charge that this book is in line with world pol shifting rightwards, which is more rhethoric that I suspect cannot be mapped out.

This isn’t a liberal/left fantasy! This is a racist, sexist, homosphobic, classist, ableist, imperial, slavery apologia. It’s Etonand Oxbridge with magic!

— Sunny Singh (@sunnysingh_n6) December 7, 2017

I assume most of Hogwarts' endowment comes from Slytherin alums

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 26 April 2017 12:57 (seven months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol

Moral cred proven by liberating a favourite elf? Check

Btw note that the rest are HAPPY being slaves, miserable when freed!

— Sunny Singh (@sunnysingh_n6) December 7, 2017

didn't know DJ Martian got woke, let alone was into Harry Potter

the series is pretty reactionary/right wing tbf, Rowlings attempts to PC it up almost all take place in the media rather than in the books, Hogwarts is straight Enid Blyton

Yeah, given the day and those tweets they have made me mildly interested in right-wing brexity children's lit. I am just not reading however many vols of HP there are.

i read them all a couple of summers ago for complex psychosocial reasons and my main conclusions are that Hogwarts is the whitest school in the universe and whatever Rowlings imaginative gifts may or may not be she isn't much of a writer.

the whole thing just gets too much attention

It's a Harry potter series have some words lads

xp

well yeah, and it's grown so big that even suggesting it's a triumph of marketing above all else will get accused of challopry in some quarters but i'm pretty sure it's a triumph of marketing above its actual merits

i have no major problem with it but the milking of the brand for cash and the associated copycats in hollywood are p depressing.

Why

It was popular but pretty hacky there's nothing to get invested in here unless it's the opportunity cost of what kids would have read besides (imo nett kids probably read more overall after being swept up in the phenomenon) or what Hollywood would have made besides (just different shit)

The big crime here is Daniel Radcliffe obv

they're still churning out plays as well, and there'll be more movies. she should just end it, it's run its course and she's rich enough. it's crass.

i don't lie awake thinking about it.

Stalin should've stopped after year X an all but that's not our world is it

It's probably helping to keep me in a job at the minute tbh.

once again, i'll point out that if we were to limit ourselves to expressing opinions that changed things on ilx we wouldn't have a board

we should prob give that a go tho, perhaps you're right

I'm all for changing things on ilx but I hear ya I hear ya

it's made Rowling so ridiculously rich that she's got money to throw at politics and that's bad enough

on the other hand it winds up Dawkins so maybe there's an up side

Harry Potter among books burned by priests in Poland https://t.co/tN3KID0Tsh

— The Guardian (@guardian) April 1, 2019

Critical support for the priests

Kids Against The Sorcerers, a 2016 cartoon film promoted by a number of Russian government agencies, featured a nefarious western plot backed by Nato and Harry Potter to subvert and corrupt Russian schoolchildren.

read this as to subvert corrupt Russian schoolchildren, the best kind of Russian schoolchildren IMO

BURN
ANOTHER
BOOK

Glad to see the Russian government has taken decisive steps toward preventing their youth from forming underground Quidditch leagues and fraternizing with owls. Would that someone had done likewise before the West crumbled beneath J.K. Rowling's magic wand.

I read a couple of these when I was a kid and they were shite

I read them all when I was in college and thought they were fucking amazing, for the most part. Maybe I should read them again to see if they still hold up.

Too many adjectives my dear Rowlingz.

starting to think that the ppl who wanted to burn these books had the right idea

I read these 10-15 years after the age where I would have been proper into them. Pleasant enough reading, but the plot was distractingly bad.

take that JK Rowling

Harry Potter books are bad, although I stalled out after the first 3 or 4, and have been told I haven't read the "good" ones. I strongly doubt this to be true.

JK Rowling is a pisspoor prose stylist, with the defense being it's a kids book. But who cares? Lots of adults read it, and shouldn't kids also be exposed to decent quality writing?

The world and rituals of Hogwarts always seemed so slapdash and illogical that I just couldn't bring myself to care about it because Rowling didn't put much care into it either.

And I say this all without having yet bothered to find out what stupid thing she said this time.

I am reading them with my kids now, and no, they do not get better, I'm reading Order of the Phoenix right now and it's painful, the plot is meandering and uneventful, the new characters do not have any personality at all, once again everything hinges on how Harry has apparently misunderstood the (stupid) actions of adults, but neither the adults nor Harry are doing anything to address this, over hundreds and hundreds of pages. The first three books were ok, especially the first one, but this one is fucking awful. I have never read a book so in need of a good editor, but JK was shitting gold at this point.

Harry Potter books are bad, although I stalled out after the first 3 or 4, and have been told I haven't read the "good" ones. I strongly doubt this to be true.

i know really deep fans who think the series went really off the rails after the third one

I'm sure this is a thing, but it's odd to me that really deep fans hate most of the series.

i mean it's like only loving a band's early shit, i guess. one of my friends wrote the hp fanfic and she's talked a lot about how the series bent toward sucking hard after the third one

I was the right age for these coming out to be caught up in them, and I definitely thought the fourth was a massive drop in quality and didn't bother with any of them afterwards.

Rowling has been a massive massive disappointment to me as an adult, nothing to do with the books but as a public figure who was always so vocally in favour of the welfare state and how the support it provides allows people to recover from hardship, it's been really grim to see her descend into full TERF insanity.

The thing I always wanted to know - maybe it's explained somewhere but pretty sure it's not in the books - was how people are supposed to have "invented" spells. Like, does someone just try out thousands of combinations of pseudo-Latin words until something happens? Or is there some sort of cosmic computer programming where you work out how to do something and then you save it with a catchy shortcut phrase in the ethereal database?

I don't really know anything about Rowling, but I enjoyed reading the books (which I read after iirc seeing all the movies, and after at least one of my kids read all the books). Honestly not sure why anyone would call them *bad* or awful, which is obviously anyone's preogative, but if these books are bad then pretty much all books of its ilk are unreadable. In fact, one of the biggest (small) problems we had as parents was finding a series for the kids to follow Harry Potter, as in our opinion the next in line (Percy Jackson et al.) were several steps down in quality. Like, if Harry Potter is bad, what are the *good* ones?

This is what happens if you start trying to write down everything that doesn't make sense in Harry Potter - https://www.hpmor.com/

lol I haven’t heard about that thing in years. Isn’t that guy a neoreactionary or an accelerationist think tank guy now

thought it was written by a woman? anyway as you can surely tell, I have no idea.

I'm reading the books now with my daughter, we're up to the third one now. Agree that the prose is awfully leaden & turgid, but I don't think kids mind about that too much.

when i was a kid the harry potter series was introduced to me as being roald dahl-ish and i'd say whoever told me that was full of shit

i was intending to make a point with this post but forgot what it was

For all their prodigious length, the last three Harry Potter books are as vapor in my mind

https://twitter.com/i/events/1269428759297265664

i mean it's like only loving a band's early shit, i guess. one of my friends wrote /the/ hp fanfic and she's talked a lot about how the series bent toward sucking hard after the third one

i am referring to the shoebox project

! I love that one and your friend is great, one of my few fond memories of the series

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/2020/06/08/daniel-radcliffe-responds-to-j-k-rowlings-tweets-on-gender-identity/

Daniel Radcliffe: Classic

yeah that was a very decent response from radcliffe

Feels like a surprisingly hard divide with these - they weren't a thing at all when I was in school, never saw or heard of them until the movies started coming out, but friends 2-3 years younger the books were their adolescence.

same here, I was managing a group of teachers who were 5-12 years younger than me and they were always referring to it

In fact, one of the biggest (small) problems we had as parents was finding a series for the kids to follow Harry Potter, as in our opinion the next in line (Percy Jackson et al.) were several steps down in quality. Like, if Harry Potter is bad, what are the *good* ones?

Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series, about, er, a boy who goes to wizard school.
Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series, about, er, well you get the picture.

The Worst Witch is also way better, though probably for a younger readership

Yeah I was a bit too old for these when they came out and remain so, I did read the first three and thought they were bad and quite unmagical.

I was the right age, ppl I knew loved them, but I was never remotely intrigued for some reason. Never seen any of the movies either. Some younger and some slightly older ppl I know worship them.

i was at the exact right age for these and could never finish the first book

FORTUNATIS

I tried to read these to my kids and they're interminable: endless exposition with the odd spell attached.

Good to see Daniel Radcliffe has turned out to be a decent fellow.

I always figured that the key to HP's popular appeal is its evocation of the familiar by hitting every single cliched magical trope with a sledgehammer over and over and over.

The movies are fun, the few books I read were fine, it's all utter froth and possibly not worthy of the attention its received or the lofty space it occupies in the popular consciousness.

my roommate is finally moving out in may, which means I no longer have to live in a house decorated with an ever-increasing amount of terf shit

I'm finding that at age 31, Harry Potter is still pretty present in my life, mostly because of the sheer amount of HP merch I still have. I haven't watched any of the Fantastic Beasts movies, but people still remember me as the Harry Potter chick.

Who is still even buying merch? I love the series proper, but all the merch is starting to get repetitive. I can get a house logo shirt now on a crop top instead of a regular t-shirt? Come on.

I re-read the books a few years ago, and it really solidified this, perhaps, unpopular opinion of mine: the writing is not great, but some of the characters are. But...they're meant for kids, so what can we really expect? My opinions of the movies have softened over time, since I care much less about exactly replicating the books and an more nostalgic for when I first read them with wonder as a kid.

The JKR terf-ness is disappointing, and honestly, shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did, but I never really cared about anything she said that wasn't related to a Weasley, so...

my kids got wands for Xmas (top of their present lists) so guess I technically I am a recent buyer of HP merch

not really "merch" per se, more like:

me: (complaining about the live love laugh-esque quote prints that have scabbed over the walls)
complainee: it's even worse than you think, those are harry potter quotes

Were those wands specifically Harry Potter trademarked? Then fair enough. I always forget that there are still kids discovering it for the first time and enjoying them. If it brings them joy, then that is awesome! The wand I got from the theme park broke, but the wands that I made or that were made for me by friends have all survived, though.

And please tell me that one of the quotes is the Dumbledore "happiness can be found..." one. That's some quintessential HP stuff that can at least feasibly pass for general. Though, if I were going with HP decoration, I would pick the most ridiculous, obnoxious stuff. Gotta go hard.

I was too old for the books but my girls are into them now - older one has read all the books already, and I'm slowly making my way through the books out loud with the other (into the fourth one now). They've also seen all the movies and I've watched all with them but 7 part 2.

I can't say that I *love* them but they are miles better than anything else my kids have ever asked me to read/watch with them. I thought the films were mostly quite well done. The second one felt a little strained plot-wise, and also the whole search-for-horcrux thing got a bit repetitive and video-game-like.

Visually the films are often excellent and have some of the best CGI effects I've ever seen. Found it interesting how much they loved the dark parts even at ages 9 and 5, and both named Bellatrix as their favorite character and said she was "cool," (which I find funny because I think she has a bit of a 90s alt-rock vibe). The fourth movie has some very sharp and realistic portrayals of adolescence imo.

The fourth book has been a bit of a slog. There are definitely times when I find the film handles things better than the books.

the first three books are acceptable, it's the last four which are a complete slog, you can pinpoint the exact moment she got too big for an editor to tell her to cut anything. The films are fine, the only one I actively liked was the third one.

Just for example, the world cup segment of the fourth book feels interminable. In the film it was almost given too short shrift but it's still preferable that way. Films are helped a lot by largely being done by workhorse hollywood directors and having great casts -- Snape especially is a great character onscreen while not particularly memorable in print.

I'm sure this has been said in a million internet discussions already, but Quidditch is a maddeningly poorly designed sport and it bothers me every time there's a Quidditch segment.

I’m pretty sure i skimmed every quidditch segment in the books after the first one.

Finally got through book 4 - I found that one to be rough going. Got better from the maze through the graveyard scene, and the graveyard scene itself is one of the best scenes in the books so far I think. At the same time, the plot is positively tortured - the whole thing about entering harry into the tournament just so he can do the third task just so he can touch a portkey to a graveyard which doesn't even seem like it should work at Hogwarts and in spite of how tortured the plan is it doesn't even work out the way it's supposed to because cedric comes along (and the whole thing relies on Harry winning but they fail to actually guarantee he wins). And the whole circumstances of Harry's entry in the first place. There's a lot of annoying stuff in the writing where the book just sidesteps having any rules about magic whatsoever and winds up breaking them even when it half-heartedly tries to set them up.

(tbc, finally got through reading it aloud a little at a time to a six-year-old, wouldn't have taken since the spring otherwise).

reading these for the 1st time

i liked the 1st book quite a bit & its probably insufferable to whine about world-building & narrative arcs & w/e but theres a real sense of diminishing returns by the end of the fourth. the biggest problem is that the first book is really funny & each book is less so, until long streches of the 4th are this sort of dour slog.

― Kabutt (Lamp), Wednesday, February 16, 2011 1:29 PM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Also this is completely OTM. The first one is legit laugh out loud funny and hooked me. By the end of the fourth it's the rise of Nazi Germany. I found starting the 800-plus-page 5th book depressing, especially thinking about how many more bedtimes it's going to take us to finish that one, let alone three more doorstops. Even Uncle Vernon--one of the comic highlights of the first couple books--falls flat at the beginning of 5 (hahaha he is getting the name of dementors wrong for the seventeenth time hoho)

yeah by the final book it’s like she’s punishing you for ever enjoying the characters, it’s so grim

You can do a funny-and-light to dark plot arc in the course of a book or movie. It's very hard to sustain in a series of 8 long novels where the dark part takes up thousands of pages without much relief.

Oh boy, can't wait to hear your thoughts on OotP, which is the longest in the series, and the most frustrating.

I've always thought that the oversight on Cedric was reflective of how many of the Hufflepuff characters are disregarded. Cedric, especially, is made to seem kind of dopey (though we are meant to see him as a romantic rival for Harry when it comes to his crush on Cho).

I appreciate, though, how it really starts to shift focus away from Hogwarts, and gives more of a picture of the Wizarding World outside of school, which I think is kind of the right age for the "students" to start to look outward at the world around them. The introduction of The Order of the Phoenix, the OWL Exams, and their exploration of the Ministry are nice bits of world-building and perspective broadening.

*seven long novels - forgot that only the 7th movie is split into two

I appreciate, though, how it really starts to shift focus away from Hogwarts, and gives more of a picture of the Wizarding World outside of school, which I think is kind of the right age for the "students" to start to look outward at the world around them. The introduction of The Order of the Phoenix, the OWL Exams, and their exploration of the Ministry are nice bits of world-building and perspective broadening.

― hourspass, Sunday, November 28, 2021 6:07 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

I did find this aspect of it interesting in the movies -- the way it kind of mirrors development from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood. I thought that was pretty effective in the films and not something I've seen done a lot. But in the books it takes so freaking long to go through that process.

i became aware of this series in seventh grade, and it should've been catnip for me—i was a huge roald dahl fan and the matilda-esque framing of the first book immediately pulled me in—but as soon as the scene shifted to hogwarts i lost interest and never finished it, and thus never read the rest of the series, even though my peers swarmed bookstores on every release date

my girlfriend is making me watch the movies (bc i made her watch all of the resident evil movies, turnabout's fair play) and we just finished the third; the first two movies were exceedingly fine, boring in a comforting way, and definitely the only chris columbus movies i rate on any level at all bc they successfully instill a basic visual astonishment at this world of wonders. but cuarón's film is in a league of its own, a marvel of sustained atmosphere and camera movement, and between it and a little princess i kind of long for more children's book adaptations from him

two things though:

1. the spell names are like almost marvelously stupid, like "oculus repairo," lmfao
2. for a guy who wasn't born a werewolf "remus lupin" is the most werewolf-ass name of all time

cuaron’s is the one i most enjoy rewatching, it’s so goddamn beautiful

i love the first movie because the kids are SO little! i read somewhere that onset all three of them were shitscared of Rickman because they thought he was ~actually~ Snape irl <3

another thing i love about the third movie is hermione does dope shit and is allowed to be dope as hell

second movie suffers greatly from her being petrified for almost half of it

two things though:

1. the spell names are like almost marvelously stupid, like "oculus repairo," lmfao
2. for a guy who wasn't born a werewolf "remus lupin" is the most werewolf-ass name of all time

feel like i’m the only person on earth who likes movie 5, ice blue filter and all

goblet of fire however, more like gob(let of )shite

the tournament sucks and a homecoming dance for magic people should be way fucking cooler

btw i’m sure it’s an entirely unintended misreading of the character according to the author but: tonks is trans

3rd movie has head and shoulders the best film score of the series as well

a homecoming dance

sorry for folding down my american high school experience down over british boarding school

still it's like stiff group dancing and then teens sniping at each other while jarvis cocker "sings"

I'm still mired in the fifth book with my 6yo - she's been slow to get ready for bed so we haven't had much time to read before lights out. It's rough going. I find Umbridge to be one of the most memorable characters from either the movies or the books, and handled in a different way in each. The Umbridge abuse stuff is handled with less pathos in the books than in the films and felt in a way more real to me as a result, like closer to the way a child who had already been through abuse and neglect would endure it.

Meanwhile, just returned from Harry Potter "Wizarding World" at Universal Studios. Some of it was impressively well done - the hogsmeade and diagon alley villages are fairly convincing, beautiful attention to detail in the shop windows, hogwarts castle was incredibly impressive. The rides make an absolutely incoherent hash of things as you might expect, and weren't v enjoyable either. The hybrid real/vr broom flying stuff was nauseating and more or less traumatized my 10yo. Also, predictably, you can't twitch without brushing against something overpriced to buy. We were sports and let our kids buy Harry Potter candy at what must be a 10x markup vs its non-branded equivalent. Some of the experience is just seeing full grown adults excitedly cosplaying the characters.

uhhhh deathly hallows part 1 is an astonishing film? replace the wizard main characters and it's a travelogue art film where nothing happens, include the wizard main characters and every frame aches with a longing for what's been lost. the dance sequence and the unbelievable dramatic tension beneath the surface of it absolutely ruined my life, they're trying to access a shared childhood happiness that is gone forever

(me being mean: of course that shit isn't in the books bc it's way too emotionally complex!!!!)

easily my second favorite after 3, deserves to be as fondly thought of

Interesting. At the time I kind of had the opposite reaction for the same reasons -- i.e. that it's a plotless travelogue built on a thin and repetitive premise. I guess it would be worth rewatching with that lens.

i think it helps that i've never read the books and am not aware of any events that the movie needs to *get* to

just patiently existing in these gorgeous, empty environments where everyone is SO SAD.... movie catnip for me

It's kind of the first film in the series with exclusively high stakes, iirc. No quiddich or exams or other silliness.

I thought the rides at "Harry Potter" were OK. Def. better than most of the other rides at Universal, which are variations of "sit on this bench and put on these glasses and then we'll spit at you" simulators.

the visualizations of magic deathly hallows 1 were really weird and incredible too, cf. hermione transporting them out of the ministry toilets as they're being pursued, which causes everyone to get distended and warped; the animated deathly hallows sequence; ron fighting the enormous black whorl of the horcrux containing all of his insecurities within

On the whole I found a lot of the films visually impressive. I think Deathly Hallows Pt 2 is the only one I haven't watched. Some of them blur for me a bit.

I've read a couple of defenses of Chris Columbus, mainly that while his installments aren't that strong, they did definitively set the visual tone for the rest of the series. The sets and costumes and stuff. Cuaron added more stylized gloom and menace.

i think i referred to the columbus films as "fine" upthread but the first movie would rank somewhere in the middle for me still, it does exactly what it's supposed to do

The first one worked well overall. My biggest problem was the way the first film rushed through pre-Hogwarts to get to Hogwarts. I get that the films aren't going to cover everything in the books (thankfully in a lot of cases), but the setup in the first book is so critical to the entire series, to who Harry is, to what Hogwarts means etc.

hairy pooper more like it!

whew, I am in so deep. Took the kids to see Cursed Child as a consolation for our whole winter break trip getting cancelled. It was...fine. Heavy on the fan service, sort of a Force Awakens of the Potterverse. I felt like it couldn't make up its mind whether it was a gay love story or not (apparently this is hotly debated online so I wasn't the only person who picked up on it). I think I would have liked it better if it just allowed itself to be one, even if not overt.

Some very nice visual effects, cast was decent, some funny lines. Could not in a million years have imagined ten years ago that I'd be shelling out to see it.

Meanwhile reading the seventh book with my younger one. I actually enjoyed the sixth book a lot - it was probably my favorite since the third. And then she has them all on audible and listens to them all the frickin' time, to a degree I can't understand. She can summon up random parts of the books and quote them in response to questions.

Finally started this with my 7 year old and I'm not hating it. Ok the prose is mostly pedestrian but it's still a zillion times better than all the rainbow princess unicorn garbage. Worst thing so far is maybe the dursley's, straight out of dahl's the twits - pure cardboard villains, and vilified for being fat and ugly.

still a zillion times better than all the rainbow princess unicorn garbage

horrid Adventure Time slander

report back when you're halfway through book 4 and see how you feel then

well yes i am really dreading that.

if I've learned anything from these books it's the importance of a good editor

well, they did cut out the scene in the book where you have to put on the sorting hat every time you need to use the bathroom

"I'm a Hufflepuff but my poops are Slytherin"

Christ, imagine if she started the books now, in the full grip of the brainworms. possibly she is trying to do exactly that and is being carefully told not to by her publisher.

idk, I think she's more interested in the Cormoran Strike series now.

Well someone has to be interested in them

lol otm

finished the second book, what an uninspired retread of the first. an unknown villain, a secret chamber, a useless trip to the forest, harry alone saves the day. oh and as tiresome quidditch match of course. this one though takes over 100 pages to get going, sets things up that never pay off (though I guess they may still) like harry's embarrassment at the weasley's poverty and his own wealth - and dobby, who is strange and entirely pointless. the writing is worse, packed with awful adverbs said ron dully / harry distractedly, and she loves repeating words in the same sentence - "landing in a crumpled heap on the landing", "the clever handsome boy who was once head boy". obviously kids lack all discernment but it's impossible to see why adults ever fell for this.

Well the good news is that the following books are not so much retreads of the first (in fact book 3 might be the best in the series, maybe)

The bad news, well, where to start?

the "Harry not helping out the poor Weasleys with his vault full of gold" thing was discussed in one of the videos above. It is strange that they are poor anyway, considering the family are bringing in three high-level government salaries, own their house and, you know, can just conjour up almost everything they need from thin air. and there is absolutely no reason Harry can't just find a way to gift them some money, he simply can't be bothered to. this all of course reflects JKR's worldview, that trying to change anything important is wrong and dangerous. which book has SPEW? Think that may be the single most objectionable part of the entire series.

Ron ejaculated a lot

Finished the third. Add cruel and unusual prison system to the list of things that need fixing in the potterverse. Felt like a real slog towards the end - in the two chapters where we have to wait ages for the entirely expected sirius black reveal my daughter said 'how long have they been in this room? about 50 hours!?'. The back of my copy has a sunday express review quote: 'jkr has created a world in which anything might happen, yet everything abides by its own tightly constructed, impossibly wonderful rules'. lol wut. They hardly ever use magic to get out of or do anything - e.g. hermione fetching a dustpan and brush to clear up a smashed milk jug, ron writhing around with a broken leg for the aforementioned 50 hours, or the endless references to lugging heavy trunks around long after they've learned the levitation spell - yet snape can effortlessly conjure stretchers out of thin air. When we do get to see magic being performed, half the time it requires the silly latin, half the time they just point their wands silently.

Harry hadn't got to sleep till daybreak. He had awoken to find the dormitory deserted, dressed and gone down the spiral staircase...

I know it's easier to be wrong-footed when reading aloud, and it's not technically wrong and I could be accused of nit-picking, but I was very confused by the idea of a dormitory getting dressed and going down stairs.

It's a magic dormitory, you see

who doesn't love reading action in the past perfect

what I've always found annoying about the series is the insistence that LOVE saved Harry, leaving a mark on him and making him the only person who could defeat Voldemort, and this being the ONLY reason he was able to defeat him really

this just based on casual observation not ironclad statistical evidence but it's suddenly standing out to me in book four that whenever rowling refers to an indeterminate student she always uses "he or she" never "they".

That was standard until very recently, though. I'm pretty sure I used to tell my comp students that "they" was too informal for academic writing. So that could easily have been the work of an editor.

what editor that book is endless

Good point, that book was the one where they stopped bothering to edit her, wasn't it? But I still don't think it means anything in particular except that the book was written 20+ years ago. I'm not denying that Rowling is transphobic; obviously she's awful. But I think most writers in 2000 would have written "he or she" in something intended for publication.

That was standard until very recently, though. I'm pretty sure I used to tell my comp students that "they" was too informal for academic writing. So that could easily have been the work of an editor.

― Lily Dale, Tuesday, September 5, 2023 1:45 AM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was brought up to be clear about gender when writing- pretty sure that was the standard curriculum at the time. i remember people asking why they can't just use "they" or "them"... and it was just laid down as this flat "formalities" sort of thing that it had to be.

My English teachers were adamant about not allowing the singular they, it was a crime on par with y'all, ain't and the passive voice.

Vague memory that we were instructed to default to male as the gender-neutral pronoun but English was a long time ago.

i'm another in the 'book 4 drove me away for good' camp

Feel like there's a hard line around October 1 1983 where no one born before read the Potter books as they released and everyone born after did.

sadly this holds true for my current students. i always suggest other books!

I devoured the entire series twice over in secondary school, and then never engaged with it since (even as I dabbled in fandom, I stayed away from HP for some reason). I found I was trans at around the same time JKR went full mask-off TERF, and understandably my interest in the series totally cratered after that.

People's obsession with the series practically ruined my enthusiasm, like, I'm not even just talking about the dumb FB surveys circa 2010 of "what house are you?", but for some people it felt like being YA Radio Raheem, where their entire personality was filtered through these books. There were some people in my circle whom, if I was at a party, I was real careful not to reference Potter or be subjected to an hour-long discussion at which I'd go back to the bar.

Obviously, my own personal "old man" annoyance aside, I realize what a blow that had to be for all of her trans fans (and fans who weren't hateful TERF assholes) when she did her heel turn, and I'm not making any light of that.

also she liked to write about vomit a lot.

Drove by this place yesterday in Oxnard

https://media-api.xogrp.com/images/15cd13b8-1fe5-4704-92be-8a5ec0c5fd34~cr_139.0.618.479

congrats I just puked in three diff ways

can be hard sometimes, in the UK at least, and just talking about the books, to work out who's the bigger menace out of her and walliams mind

he is certainly vile and his books are vile and shit.

exactly and loads of kids seem to be given his noxious bollocks to read too

walliams is the bigger menace esp when there are 5 of his books in our top 30 kids chart.

Feel like there's a hard line around October 1 1983 where no one born before read the Potter books as they released and everyone born after did.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 5 September 2023 08:35 (eleven hours ago) link

my folks thankfully(?) introduced me to Tolkien a couple of years prior so when I started reading the first HP I found it to be utter garbage.

the saddest thing in the world are harry potter gays imho

i love these kinds of headlines

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/harry-potter-book-auction-jk-rowling-b2405112.html

I feel compelled to keep documenting when we finish each one though I know I'm not adding anything new. The first chapter of GoF, opening seemingly irrelevantly with an old man and an abandoned house and then introducing voldemort, almost felt exciting and readable. Then we went back into the same old dead weight under which she smothers every crumb of intrigue and mystery. I'm a bit mystified by how when cedric dies he falls next to harry, with wormtail standing by a headstone six feet away; then when harry is tied to the same headstone cedric's body is twenty feet away. Never mind, a minor mistake. The ludicrous plan and engine for the whole story is more mystifying; the explanation coming as six pages of near monologue, spoken in a monotone, is disastrous.

Goblet of Fire is ridiculously padded out bullshit with a plot that makes no sense at all (why not just find a way to take him out of the tournament ffs?) and gratuitous killing of minor characters, it also includes the truly disgusting "slaves just want to be enslaved, silly do-gooders!" plot. Joint-shittest in the series with the next three books.

rewatching the movies

question: the gold at Gringott’s that hargid helps Harry get from the vault - supposedly his parents left it to him
if so HOW the hell did a couple of artsy fartsy wizards fighting in the resistance make that much money lmao

magic, iirc.

Harry's parents made a lot of money from corporate speaking gigs in which they secretly advocated for more conservative, anti-Order of the Phoenix, pro-surveillance measures. complete scum, Voldemort just pointed out their hypocrisy. about time we had an outsider telling the truth!

I KNEW IT

harry really is quite dumb

The (-boy-) SMOOTHBRAIN who lived

me watching the harry potter movies, annoying the shit out of my ex: “if they have magic, why is there currency”

lol

i finished rewatching the movies, and think i will end up re-reading the books at some point

mostly bc i resent how the Yates movies are basically blunt objects. i know the later books get insanely unwieldy but watching these yates-machines i miss all the backstory and minor plots, sirius’s family backstory, the rship between tonks & lupin etc, all the godrics hollow stuff etc

Count me in the opposite camp, the films are a sweet relief at how much they leave out and I cannot imagine ever reading these again, if our younger daughter wants them read to her my wife can do it. We're days away from finishing the order of the phoenix and I have been livid with rage throughout the whole thing. There is absolutely no excuse for a children's book to be nearly 800 pages long, there is absolutely no excuse for the exciting sounding order being almost entirely absent for fully three quarters of the book. It was plain from the preceding books that hogwarts was in dire need of inspection but I didn't think I was going to have to read about one, let alone one conducted so cruelly and incompetently. If you forced me to say one good thing about rowling it would be that she has a good range of villains, from the comic book voldemort to school bullies, from the purely sadistic umbridge and the seriously menacing lucius malfoy to useful idiots like fudge. But they're not enjoyable to read about, umbridge especially, for hundreds of pages. And the whole thing is predicated on the good guys being idiots, no-one telling harry anything, there not being a single grown up who thinks it might be a good idea to tell him *why* he has to do these difficult lessons with his most hated teacher.

The relief I felt in the fourth film when cedric told harry about listening underwater and he just did it in the very next scene, instead of stubbornly refusing for 100 pages.

Just because:

"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully
"I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," said Harry dully.
"How many monsters d'you think this place can hold?" Ron asked dully.
Dully, Harry turned it over
"Madam Pomfrey fixed him best she could," said Hagrid dully
“Balderdash,” said Harry dully.
“Great,” said Harry dully
Well, it might be easier to get past a dragon if he were a ferret, Harry thought dully
“Quidditch,” he said dully
“Fairy lights” he said dully
“I asked her to go with me just now,” Harry said dully
“Dunno,” Harry said dully
“No,” said Sirius dully
“I’ve told you,” Harry repeated dully
They bowed clumsily, muttering dully
And all the while, his scar burned dully
There you go, Sirius, Harry though dully
“Fine” said Harry dully
Some of them had broken windows, glimmering dully
Harry wondered dully
“Well I tried,” she said dully
“Well,” said Angelina dully
“Yeah, I suppose you’d better,” said Harry dully.
They glimmered dully
An ornate letter S, inlaid with many small green stones, glinted dully

(All but the last are from the first five books, maybe one bit of editing advice finally got through)

dully noted

Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he

this phrasing ("it's bleh, isn't it?") absolutely drove me insane when I read these books.

Rowling liked to use "ejaculated" a lot, and as a friend pointed out, likes to write descriptive sections of people vomiting

which is fitting given her late-stage heel turn

What was never satisfyingly explained to me was why parents would be sending their wizkids to a boarding school where it seemed fairly likely that they would be murdered. And then the wizkids grow up and send their own kids there. Just kind of seems like the parents got to chill at home for most of the stories while the students fought a massive proxy cold war on their behalf leading up to the final battle. I did really annoy my son with questions while watching the movies, he read the series five times in the span of about 2 years.

I didn't dislike the movies though, pretty solid entertainment, I'm sure due to sanding off a lot of the Rowlingisms just by nature of not having to read her words.

Order of the Phoenix is miles better than the book

after a few hundred pages of the book you are actively rooting for Harry to get murdered

compared to the movies the book do feel like a bunch of bonus materials, or like when the creators of Lost would put up a website with Kate's dream journal or something.

the Time Turners plot device was the worst part of the whole series. we'll use it to save Hagrid's pet, help Hermione take multiple classes, anything beyond that is IRRESPONSIBLE

Incredibly, I didn't hate The Half Blood Prince. As usual it's a misleading title and as usual surprisingly little happens but it wasn't filled with painful idiocy like The Order of the Phoenix. Obviously the boyfriend/girlfriend stuff was kind of tiresome but the descriptions of Harry's inner turmoil whenever he saw Ginny were pretty hilarious. The ending with the gollum lake and Harry force feeding potion to an increasingly distressed Dumbledore bordered on weird fiction, though it didn't do anything to dispel the thought that in the world of the books all magic is stupid and all wizards are complete idiots (honestly reading with this point of view is one of the few secret pleasures I take from the books).

We've started on the last one, still holding out hope that the book will actually feature a deathly hallows and there might be more than one chapter of actual action.

I remember very little about HBP apart from the ending, not sure whether that's good or bad.

The last book is a bit less predictable and does not follow the school year structure of the other books, that doesn't mean it's an improvement.

Finally finished Harry Potter and the Interminable Camping Trip. One of the worst, the first half feels like an extended metaphor for Rowling not knowing how the fuck to finish this off. When we finally get some action at the end, of course it's interrupted with 25 pages of an incel's tortured memories, and then the obligatory 'the plot is explained at length because otherwise it doesn't make any fucking sense' scene.

Anyway no more will I have to suffer Rowling's prose, where we are always reminded when a staircase is made of marble, where people never go to breakfast but down the marble staircase and through the large wooden doors into the great hall for breakfast, where no-one ever frowns but knits their brows together, where dialog is constantly interrup - (a real pain in the arse when reading aloud).

Also - 'nurmengard' as a prison for german wizard war criminals. lol really.

I'm reading these books to my 8-year-old at bedtime. We're midway through the second.

Prior to this I read her the Narnia books, except The Last Battle. The main difference is that Lewis was actually a good writer and hugely enjoyable to read out loud. I don't find anything redeemable about the HP books: Dumbledore is the only likeable character (and he's not in it enough), Quidditch is confusing, Rowling is mean-spirited, and the only interesting thing is that 'stuff' happens constantly but it's all 'and then...and then...and then'.

I keep asking my daughter if she knows what's going on, because I zone out a lot. She seems to like it, though.

My kid never really caught the Potter bug. We read the first two books and he wanted to switch to something new. We’ve read 12 of the Warrior cats books so far and I think they’re superior to HP actually.

Warrior cats rule! My daughter has read them all (on her own). I've read the first 5 books and loved them. I got stuck in the second series. Maybe I should pick that back up.

We finished the seventh book last year. I think Rowling is a pretty good writer on the whole - compared to a lot of the other YA and kids stuff I’ve tried to get through with my kids, she’s brilliant. At least she can write prose that flows well, describe things without a million cliches, and has some sense of subtlety. Her writing is often funny as well. I think her weakness is much more in plot, tbh, which is very uneven throughout the books.

Maybe not a million cliches but a fair few. I can tell she tries, and the vocabulary gets more complex in each book (which would be effective if the reader aged at the same rate as harry, rather than polishing all the books off in a few months). But she tries too hard, can't just describe things simply (see above re: marble staircases and frowns), frequently relies on repetition (voldemort 'striking and smiting') and sometimes falls into error ('a clear and misty sky').

enjoyed the plot of Warriors, col series, but could not stomach having to constantly make cat noises while reading aloud - that series got moved to the "read on your own" pile after the first one

*cool series

"a clear and misty sky" -- straight up evidence she got the editors to back off lol

on the other hand the complexifying vocab may also have been an editor's suggestion (since such ppl will have had experience of what words land with which age groups)

Clear & Misty = Definitely Maybe ? Throwback to this thread's first post

Reading these to my kid at a current rate of one per year(!), enjoyable and nicely paced as you go along but as mentioned everything has to be explained at length at the end. As a kid who's fairly sheltered from The Real World it's actually a nice introduction to ""politics"" and sneaky tricks and e.g. the vain professor guy (my very earnest kid thought he was a nice character to start with). But can't remember a thing about them once I've finished. I vaguely remember reading them when they came out and not knowing what the fuss was about. Oh yeah and nothing making sense in the movies like whyyyy are the people in charge doing this overblown plan which involves lying to Harry and confusing the hell out of him.

is harry potter a classic in the sense that children still read them, do they watch the movies, i see parents reading them to their children itt but are they considered clutch in kid kulture or was it more of a millennial thing, i gotta think theyre at least somewhat still relevant just cause they were so popular, but are they still huge or just another thing

can't pretend to know if this is a general thing or not, but my kids now have zero interest in Harry Potter.

A lot of stuff came along in the wake of Harry Potter that kids seem just as into now. The trend in kids' books is more multicultural stuff, so books about a bunch of white kids may seem a bit 20th century these days too.

I can tell you that my kid read the series five times in elementary school, but his interest level definitely precipitously declined after awhile. We did watch all the movies once and I think he mostly enjoyed them, but I doubt he'll ever read those books again or watch the movies. He's really into the lore of fantasy and HP for all its confusing digressions and magic and history still seems like paper thin fanfic so he quickly grew bored with trying to explore that. Lord of the Rings it ain't. He wants to watch those movies yearly, and he loves the extraneous approved-as-canon LOTR material.

thank you for the replies parents, its interesting what stuff lasts and what doesnt, harry potter was like star wars for its generation but it doesnt seem like its aging like star wars

in and of itself its not aging like star wars but it's parallel legacy is more the genre/template it popularized. book series that follow the harry potter formula are a massive industry. i think reading hp is still a phase a lot of kids go through but if it's their thing they are likely to move onto others that they like more (and xxp yeah that are a little more culturally progressive). in terms of ubiquity i have noted that our local mom-and-pop candy store where space is at a premium still sells a whole line of harry potter themed stuff.

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book series that follow the harry potter formula are a massive industry.

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Friday, May 31, 2024 2:31 PM (thirty-two seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

whats the formula whatre the other books that follow it sorry i dont know anything about harry potter

My 14 year old and her friends were deep into Potter when she was 7-11. My 9 year old and her friends have no interest. We read the first book to her when she was 6 and she liked it but not enough to want more. Then we realized how shitty Rowling is and we’re collectively done with it all.

xp kid living a normal or crappy life finds out they are magical/special, gets whisked away to a magical school and progresses through the school across several volumes, gets embroiled in a big good v evil battle. variations thereof

ah really that specific interesting

yeah was wondering if rowling being such a high profile pos is influencing parents to leave the books alone, gotta think at least some xxp

Walking around London you could think the royal family tourism industry has been supplanted by the Harry Potter tourism industry - a dubious improvement

Don't think it's mostly kids who're the marks for it tho.

This may revive interest a bit

https://deadline.com/2024/05/harry-potter-tv-series-max-release-date-cast-1235323284/

He's really into the lore of fantasy and HP for all its confusing digressions and magic and history still seems like paper thin fanfic so he quickly grew bored with trying to explore that. Lord of the Rings it ain't. He wants to watch those movies yearly, and he loves the extraneous approved-as-canon LOTR material.

jesus eight movies isnt enough for you sickos xp

ugh I have begrudgingly been reading a David Walliams with my kid and it's soooo bad. oh a large social worker whose clothes all come off! heehee bras and knickers! lots of teehee haha snide asides and absolutely nothing happening!

Cow_Art at 7:36 31 May 24

My 14 year old and her friends were deep into Potter when she was 7-11. My 9 year old and her friends have no interest. We read the first book to her when she was 6 and she liked it but not enough to want more. Then we realized how shitty Rowling is and we’re collectively done with it all.