>What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.
What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling...
Isaac White
Bentley Sanchez
TLDR
Christopher Cruz
"No!"
Jose Clark
boring copypasta 3/10 for effort
Asher Reed
Authors repeat themselves.
Robert Cox
Sometimes people just want to read an engaging story, not to be patronised by prose. This is why she's currently worth £250 million more that Stephen King, despite only first getting published in 97. She would be worth more, but she gave £160 million away to charities
Joshua Robinson
10/10 copypasta for 0% coom
Joseph Flores
I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King. No one wants to face that fact. Now, thankfully, I no longer have to.
Christopher Perez
Harry Potter wasn't engaging. the first 4 were somewhat interesting. After that they were some of the most boring books I've read, but I kept reading because everyone says Harry Potter is great so it has to be good right? No. Wrong. Idiot. Harry potter is shit and Jk Rowling is a hack. The only reason people love harry potter is because it's the only book they've read. Just kidding, its because they've watched the movies and they think that counts as reading.
Samuel Nguyen
And here's the person who's only ever seen the movies yet feels qualified to comment on the whole series.
I have all seven books in first editions. I was reading the books when Jo was saying in interviews that she probably wouldn't be all that happy with the idea of them being made into movies. I was reading the books when Jo told Speilberg to fuck off because he wanted to make the movies set in America, in a modern high school, with Haley Joel Osment playing Harry.
I'm currently reading the books to my nine year old at bedtime and he prefers them to the movies as the books tell a greater story.
I will agree, however, that the first few aren't as good as the last 4. This is purely the fault of Bloomsbury & Scholastic pressuring Jo to get a book out a year, as per the agreement she signed. One she managed that (albeit begrudgingly - Azkaban was supposed to be half as long again - she told the publishers to back the fuck off and let her take her time to do the following books so she could tell the stories she wanted to tell.
Aaron Clark
>The first 4 were somewhat interesting. After that they were some of the most boring books I've read, but I kept reading because everyone says Harry Potter is great so it has to be good right?
This isn't specific to HP.
LOTR has the same problem. The first book is somewhat interesting, it starts losing you in the second, and ROTK is one of the most insanely boring books you'll read, but at that point you have to finish it. (It's worth noting btw that LOTR is really more like six books in three volumes, the comparison gets clearer when you do that).
And Tolkien was a far, far better writer, technically, than Rowling.
Long running epic fantasy can easily get boring, nature of the beast
Joshua Myers
Yes, perhaps the die was cast when Rowling vetoed the idea of Spielberg directing the series; she made sure the series would never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody? just ridiculously profitable cross-promotion for her books. The Harry Potter series might be anti-Christian (or not), but it’s certainly the anti-Lord of the Rings series in its refusal of wonder, beauty and excitement
Isaac Mitchell
meant for
Nathaniel Williams
>never be mistaken for a work of art that meant anything to anybody?
And honestly believe Speilberg woud have acheived that with Osment?
You're entitled to your opinion, but don;t expect anyone else to respect it
Caleb Perez
The whole series was pedestrian and mediocre until Dumbledore was gay, moaning myrtle was trans, neville had a thing for midgets, animagi are necessarily otherkin, and the nimbus 2000 is a power bottom
Elijah Turner
well it's books for kids or young teenagers
Hunter Brooks
You'd have that opinion too if you were stuck in the dullest franchise in the history of book franchises? Seriously each episode following the boy wizard and his pals from Hogwarts Academy as they fight assorted villains has been indistinguishable from the others. Aside from the gloomy imagery, the series’ only consistency has been its lack of excitement and the constant stretching of legs, all to make magic unmagical, to make action seem inert.
Gabriel Allen
snape was an allocurious grey-ace, flitwick had a black daddy, it is never directly stated in the book that lily *isnt* the child of a Canadian First Nations BBW and Nelson Mandela,
Jayden Wilson
Best thread on Sup Forums in a while.
Harry Potter's a little boring, but I understand if kids like it. It's simple, easily readable, and intended for the younger audience. I read the first and third books but was never a fan, by that time I was reading more and more advanced stuff.
You guys ever read American Gods? I fucking hate the TV adaptation but the books are a good for around ages 13-16, depending on the kid of course.
Wolf Hall and it's sequel are magnificently written, still waiting on the third book.
Jeremiah Hernandez
I read new children's literature, when I can find some of any value, but had not tried Rowling until now. I have just concluded the 300 pages of the first book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," purportedly the best of the lot. Though the book is not well written, that is not in itself a crucial liability. It is much better to see the movie, "The Wizard of Oz," than to read the book upon which it was based, but even the book possessed an authentic imaginative vision. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" does not, so that one needs to look elsewhere for the book's (and its sequels') remarkable success. Such speculation should follow an account of how and why Harry Potter asks to be read.
Nathaniel Ross
what would OP recommend reading as a young adult man ?
Jack Garcia
Is anyone surprised at the lack of originality or nuance in Rowling's work? I can bring up it's intended audience all day long, and I understand why nuance in literature aimed at all demographics is important, but one must bare in mind the origin of these novels. Critiquing a children's book written by someone who can't write and got famous off a fluke while telling the same story as has been told a hundred times before is akin to critiquing hypocrisies; it makes one feel good, but achieves nothing.
Andrew Reyes
The ultimate model for Harry Potter is "Tom Brown's School Days" by Thomas Hughes, published in 1857. The book depicts the Rugby School presided over by the formidable Thomas Arnold, remembered now primarily as the father of Matthew Arnold, the Victorian critic-poet. But Hughes's book, still quite readable, was realism, not fantasy. Rowling has taken "Tom Brown's School Days" and re-seen it in the magical mirror of Tolkien. The resultant blend of a schoolboy ethos with a liberation from the constraints of reality-testing may read oddly to me, but is exactly what millions of children and their parents desire and welcome at this time.
In what follows, I may at times indicate some of the inadequacies of "Harry Potter." But I will keep in mind that a host are reading it who simply will not read superior fare, such as Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" or the "Alice" books of Lewis Carroll. Is it better that they read Rowling than not read at all? Will they advance from Rowling to more difficult pleasures?
Liam Nguyen
Not OP; Wolf Hall. Just do it, it's really fucking good. It's about Thomas Cromwell.
Nicholas Moore
I liked Dragonriders of Pern or The Inheritance Cycle more than Harry Potter series.
Brody Peterson
That is truly the trap of Rowling, is it not. They become sedated with her works and see them as the be all and end all, rather than an introduction, to literature. Comparing Rowling to Tolkien has its faults, initially as one is good, the other deluded, especially since their views on their own works are stark in contrast.
Both "The Wind..." and "Alice...", to me, remain still as an entry level course. As one divides flick, from film, from kino, on the silver screen, one must separate the wheat from the chaff in literature. Perhaps something like "story-tale-literature" to roughly divide up works.
Zachary Nguyen
bump
Carter Anderson
William Faulkner "As I Lay Dying"
Herman Melville "Moby Dick"
Kayden Williams
Rowling presents two Englands, mundane and magical, divided not by social classes, but by the distinction between the "perfectly normal" (mean and selfish) and the adherents of sorcery. The sorcerers indeed seem as middle-class as the Muggles, the name the witches and wizards give to the common sort, since those addicted to magic send their sons and daughters off to Hogwarts, a Rugby School where only witchcraft and wizardry are taught. Hogwarts is presided over by Albus Dumbledore as Headmaster, he being Rowling's version of Tolkien's Gandalf. The young future sorcerers are just like any other budding Britons, only more so, sports and food being primary preoccupations. (Sex barely enters into Rowling's cosmos, at least in the first volume.)
Nathaniel Peterson
I feel a discomfort with the Harry Potter mania, and I hope that my discontent is not merely a highbrow snobbery, or a nostalgia for a more literate fantasy to beguile (shall we say) intelligent children of all ages. Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? Yes, they have been, and will continue to be so for as long as they persevere with Potter.