I’ve tried to read the Harry Potter books several times. I got about halfway through the first book, but I just couldn’t sustain enough interest in it to read the whole thing. And I am not the kind of person to give up on a book without a fight. Yet, everyone I talk to, of any age, seems to love the Harry Potter books and movies. Now, that’s normally okay. I’m used to hating things that other people love, and loving things that other people hate. But whenever I tell someone I hate the Harry Potter books, I’m treated like a snob. “Oh, you just don’t like this because you think it’s for children!” or “You just don’t like fantasy!”
Truth is, I love SF/fantasy (though I’m much more into SF), so it’s not an aversion to all stories about wizards. I don’t think J.K. Rowling’s a great writer (compare her to a great juvenile fantasy writer like Madeleine L’Engle, there’s no contest), but I like a lot of SF pulp writers that are way worse writers than her. I tried getting into it before it was really popular (my mom bought the whole set for my sister when the third book came out; it was just starting to get popular then), so I don’t think it’s because I don’t want to be associated with “popular” writing. My bookshelf is mostly comprised of pop fiction, although some of it is older and not too popular anymore. I’m not averse to stories about kids. But I just hate these books.
My main complaint was that I found the book to be too concerned with the minutiae of the wizard world than on overall story arc. I don’t like setting-based stories. Is this why I can’t stand Harry Potter? I also found the writing really slow, and the characters weren’t very convincing; they didn’t act like “real” kids or adults to me. It’s been years since I tried to read Harry Potter, so I forget all that I didn’t like about it, but it’s one of only a handful of times that I haven’t been able to finish a book. I have seen the first movie, which was better than the book, but I still didn’t think it was anything to call home about.
What am I missing? Am I just totally insane for not liking these books? An elitist? What?
(I also can’t stand Lord of the Rings or Terry Pratchett, but those are topics for another thread.)
I’m not nuts about them either. Part of it is Rowling’s writing, and her fondness for adverbs (especially in dialogue).
Also, the characters never came alive for me. With the best books, the characters seem real, or at least possible, and when I’m done with the book, I like to wonder where they are, what they’re doing. Didn’t happen with the first four Potters, and the fifth was so meandering and unfocused, I didn’t bother to finish it.
I read the first book and started the second but never finished it and probably never will. The movies are ok escapism but I find the books slow going.
I think you are onto something with the preocupation with the tedium of the wizard world rather than the story arc. Also I kind of guessed large chunks of the first book before I got to the end. And they follow a similar pattern, where the kids find out something strange is going on at school, they don’t tell any of their teachers or Dumbledore, they break a million rules, in the end Dumbledore finds out anyway and fixes everything, and they don’t get in trouble for breaking the rules.
To be fair though I don’t read fantasy except for Tolkien and in fact I am not a big fan of fiction writing in general. I probably wouldn’t even read Tolkien if I hadn’t first read it as a kid. I probably would have loved the Harry Potter books if they had been around when I was, say, ten.
Well I read several Potter books aloud to my nephew + niece.
I didn’t think they were that good, although JK Rowling has certainly planned her school details. I also found them much harder to recite than ‘The Hobbit’.
But they are popular with youngsters, who thus discover the delights of reading.
I’m not a fan but then, I’m not much of a fantasy reader to begin with. I love science-fiction – it’s my favorite genre – but if wizards or dragons or long lost swords of ultimate power are involved, I automatically zone out.
I need blasters and aliens and super-duper weapons of mass destruction.
I admit to being puzzled by the popular and critical support of Harry Potter, as well. I was underwhelmed by the first book and never bothered reading any of the others. I would probably have enjoyed it as a young Fantasy and SF fan but I didn’t find much to hold my attention as an adult.
In comparison to other so-called children’s literature also enjoyed by adults such as the Narnia series, His Dark Materials, The Hobbit or Madeleine L’Engle, I’ve found Harry Potter to come up woefully short.
As for the movies, I’ve found them to be turgid and perfunctory. The third installment was slightly better for the absence of hack Christopher Columbus but I still found it bloated and poorly paced.
Nope I don’t like them much. Poorly plotted, poorly written and mediocre.
It’s all about the hype. And I don’t believe they encourage children into wider reading at all. Come across too many kids who read HP and went no further.
I’m not sure what it is I don’t like about them. Maybe it’s just the magic. I’ve never been into magic. On the other hand, I don’t find myself warm to the characters either. There is something about Harry Potter that makes me say “who cares?”
I love Lemony Snicket. I feel like Lemony Snicket is Elvis and Harry Potter is the Beatles. The Series of Unfortunate Events is the darker, sexier kids’ lit series.
I’m a voracious fantasy reader, but I’ve never even been tempted to pick up one of the Harry Potter books, although I’ve seen the first movie and about half of the second. And I’ve always had a soft spot for the “young protagonist discovers he/she has magic powers” plot, too.
As I’ve said too many times in Harry Potter threads, I think that at best they’re minor books. I like children’s fantasy, but they aren’t a very good example of it. I’ve forced myself to read everything so far (because otherwise somebody’s going to claim, “Oh, you missed the best part, which is on the last page of the last book”). In the early books, Rowling just didn’t know many story-telling tricks, so I found them rather boring. As time has gone on, she’s learned more literary tricks, but now she’s badly edited. There’s no reason for the later books to be so long.
I avoided the books for years, and laughed at adults who read them, but eventually I was stuck somewhere with nothing else to read. I was hooked almost immediately. I think they are very well written (way better than Michael Crichton for example), but not “literature”.
Well, I tried the first ten pages or so of a couple of books; I was so unimpressed, and I’m not kidding about this: I turned to technical manuals for entertainment. Granted, I fell asleep after reading (which is half the intent anyway), but even after reading her stuff, I had a bad taste in my mouth.
I picked up one in a bookstore recently. I found the font and punctuation (single quotes and nearly every sentence, it seemed, ended with a dash instead of a paragraph) made the text quite hard to read.
I’ve heard nothing about the books that makes me want to give them a try, and I’ve found the movies quite dull in every aspect.
I hate the fact that she rips off mythical creatures and uses them like her own creation. Now, half the kids today think **Cerberus ** originates from Harry Potter.
:mad:
I doubt that any idea she has is original.
She just seems like the poor man’s Roald Dahl.
Oh come on now. I can understand not liking Rowling, but that’s just petty. Do you also hate it that almost every other fantasy writer ever to put pen to paper “ripped off” mythical creatures to use in their stories?
Rowling’s been quite upfront in her interviews about the mythical origins of the fantastic creatures in her novels, so it’s not like she’s trying to trick people. She probably has some hope that her books will encourage kids to read about myths and legends from around the world, and in some cases I’m sure they will. In many others they won’t, and some kids may then think that Rowling invented the idea of a monstrous three-headed dog herself. But so what? If they were never going to come across any other reference to Cerberus anyway, how is that any worse than if they’d simply never heard of Cerberus at all?
Hmm… do you like any British fantasy authors? I couldn’t help noticing that you mentioned two Brits who write fantasy who you don’t like as well.
The HP books aren’t for everyone. Personally, I LOVE them, and just can’t get enough, but I don’t need to force that on everyone else. I kind of know how you feel though. I keep saying I find the LOTR to be severly overrated and I get wierd looks for saying so.