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!

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.

its
it's
its'

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.