How anxious are you for Harry Potter 6 to be published?

Cafe Society
1

For me: not very.

Not if Rowling’s gonna take another 1200 pages to tell 300 pages worth of story.

Not if Harry’s gonna be the same self-centered rageaholic he was in book 5.

Not if I have to wait another 2+ years, just to read about Harry going 'Er…ah…eh…er…" in between breaking every Hogwarts rule and Ministry law, including some that haven’t been thought of yet, and getting away with it, and encountering all the latest technologies, cleverly disguised with pseudo-medieval names.

Now, on that last one, I remember participating in a thread a few years ago in which people were griping about the lag time between books 4 and 5. Someone pointed out that future generations aren’t going to care how much time was between individual publications, because they’ll be reading the series in aggregate.

I don’t remember what I said then, but now I think that’s part of my point. I’m no longer so sure that this is one for the ages. I can see, thirty years from now, kids who aren’t born yet but will by then be in late elementary school, saying, “Well, I started the Harry Potter series like you said. The first three were really good, especially the third one! But I could hardly get through the fourth one, and I started the fifth one a few weeks ago, but some stuff came up and I took it back to the library without finishing it. Is it worth it to keep going?” I wonder what I would tell them if I were the one being asked.

See, another thing is, it’s okay for us adults, because we’re basically the same people we were in 1999 or whenever we started getting into this. But someone who was nine years old at that time is now fourteen, and if book 6 isn’t published until 2006, then they’ll be sixteen, and the series may not have anywhere near the same appeal for them that it once did. And again with the “future generations”, I wonder how much they’ll be inspired to start reading without the influence of hype and toys and waiting for the movies to come out. Who knows if the movies will even continue to be a draw? And some of these FG’ers may end up just watching the movies, and then being turned off by the books because “I already knew what was gonna happen”.

So my point is, are you going to snap up book 6 as soon as it hits the stores? Or do you feel now that you can take or leave it?

2

I’ll probably go out and get it when it hits the stores. No, I won’t be lining up at midnight, but I’ll get it the next day, or the day after. No biggie.

I recall as a child, discovering C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books. Plowed through one after another in the space of a few weeks. Later, as an adult, I got into Ian Fleming’s James Bond series, and promptly plowed through all of those in a few months. Then, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series hooked me from start to finish; it took a few weeks, but I made it.

I guess what I’m saying here is that it doesn’t matter when Rowling finishes the next book, or Book Number Seven; she’s going to have readers for them. Whether they have read each one as it comes out, or “discovers” them as I did with Narnia, Bond, and the Sandman (and reads them all in one go), it doesn;t matter much. What matters is that Rowling has an audience for them, of all ages and inclinations, and I think she does.

3

Yeah, but that’s what I’m really getting at. IMHO, Rowling ain’t no C. S. Lewis. Books 4 and 5 of the HP series are just not that good. Not as good as 1, 2 and 3, especially 3. I’m not convinced that FG’ers will be “hooked from start to finish”; I think it’s entirely possible that this series will be regarded as one that started out great, but then fizzled.

Or, to be optimistic, one that started out great, declined sharply halfway through, but did finish well, at least. “They’re good books…don’t be put off by 4 and 5, because 7 is worth it!”

Sidenote: Spoons, did you like The Horse and His Boy as well as the other Narnia books? That’s the one I could never really get into.

4

Lemme clarify that before anyone else reads this. I don’t just mean that they’re not good enough to justify having waited three years for publication. I mean, they’re not very good, full stop. JMHO.

5

I’ll be buying it the first day it comes out if I have to skip eating for a week to pay for it.

That being said, I tend to agree somewhat about Books 4 & 5. They weren’t as compelling for me as Book 3, which seems darn close to the high point of the series so far. (Other contender is #1, IMHO).

I read somewhere that Rowling (in Phoenix) was trying to make Harry more grown-up, more like a “real teenager,” who would obviously have issues and be terribly angry about all the horrors that had happened to him.

Nonetheless, when I was reading #5 aloud to my daughter, I wasn’t even tempted to read ahead, and I’ve never gone back to read it again – a Harry Potter first for me. It just doesn’t work terribly well for me, and I think you’re right – too many pages for the plot and too little judicious editing.

Has anyone else heard that she’s already written #7, because she knew how she wanted the whole thing to turn out?

I do think the HP series will be read in the future, much the same way that Lewis and Nesbit and Grahame and Boston are still read. Perhaps not all of the series, but certainly the first few.

Mrs. Furthur

6

I, too, will be buying the next one as soon as I can. I plowed through four and five in about two days, just before classes started again in January. Of course, that means I didn’t sleep for about 36 hours, but I felt the sacrifice was . . . well, not worth it, really. There’s HP fanfiction out there that’s better.

While I realize that JKR was trying to make Harry more of a “real boy”, I really think that she handled the development of his character rather badly in that regard. Instead of making his character more complex, it made him simpler and even more stereotypical.

Of course, I’d love it if JKR just got rid of Harry entirely and focused on the adult members of The Order of the Phoenix, but then it wouldn’t be a children’s book, would it?

7

I won’t be buying it immediately… I’ll be getting it from the library immediately, and then buying it as soon as it goes paperback. While my favorite so far was Prisoner of Azkaban, the last two have still been quite good. The books are maturing as Harry matures, and I think that they’re doing a good job at it. Of course Harry is acting angry and irrational… That’s not a stereotype, that’s an accurate depiction of many teens. Add in the badly broken family and all of his past exploits, and it’d be unrealistic for Harry to not be an arrogant twerp. But hopefully, he’ll mature past that.

8

Very anxious, while i agree that book 3 may have been the peak of the series, 4 and 5 were very very compelling and a joy to read. I just wonder if i am the only person who doesn’t think book 5 was under-edited…the more potter the better for me, perhaps it is because Rowling has created such a rich world i enjoy spending as much time there as i can even if i feel it isn’t advancing the plot.

9

Very anxious! I’ll get it when it hits stores. I agree that PoA was the best of the series, so far. BUT, OotP is a very close second for me. It was a very awesome book, IMO. I really enjoyed the fleshing out of the world and what this controversy is doing is doing to the magic world. Much more interesting story than anything that came before it, but PoA was a little more fun to read.

10

I’ve only read the first book. Perhaps the series has improved, but I generally don’t like “chosen prince(ss)” books…and that’s what HP is. He’s marked as special from nearly his birth, he’s a damned natural at a sport he hasn’t even SEEN before, and which uses skills that he hasn’t been exposed to before. Sure, he had a rough upbringing, but he’s getting too many freebies, IMO. I think that the major problem with this book (and quite possibly the sequels) is that Rowling loves HP too much. He didn’t seem to grow internally in the first book.

I might, someday, check out the other books from the library, but I was not totally charmed with the first book as so many people seem to be. In my experience, if I don’t like the first book in a series, I certainly won’t like the sequels.

I know of other children’s authors who can write a much better story, most notably Diana Wynne Jones.

11

I wouldn’t worry about that too much. I haven’t read any of the Potter books, but I remember my reading habits when I was a kid, and they were voracious and indiscriminate. I read the local library’s entire collection of Piers Anthony books, which was substantial, despite the fact that Anthony was utter crap, and I knew he was utter crap. But I had a lot of time, and not enough books, so I went through all of 'em. Harry Potter, by all reports, has at least three good books to the series. That should be enough to get any hypothetical future children who are interested in reading thirty year old books to read the entire series. Which is, most likely, not going to be a whole lot of kids, but probably no more or less than would read any other old book on the shelves.

12

Book 5 is, IMHO, a near-direct response to these kind of comments. The well-loved (my favorite too) Book 3 did give us a bit much of “Harry, the Golden Boy,” and Book 2 is the worst offender on this score. But Book 4, despite Harry’s pre-ordained escape from the bad guy, ends with a fellow student’s death which Harry cannot prevent. In Book 5, there’s no doubt but that Harry’s lack of judgment led to another character’s death. That’s what made Book 5 hard to read–Harry didn’t lack the power, he just wasn’t smart enough or sensible enough to do the right thing. The only thing I didn’t like about the psychology of Book 5 (and the end of Book 4) is that the other characters didn’t react to Harry in the sustained skeptical/saddened way they should–they should be treating him the way we might treat someone who accidentally ran over and killed his Uncle.

Nonetheless, we now seem to have a Harry who is in some ways ignoble and much less sympathetic. Whether he will grow from it remains to be seen.

13

I’m in full agreement that Rowling is not Lewis. But both are writers and both wrote (well, Rowling is currently writing) a series. Whether Rowling is as good as Lewis, and Harry Potter is as compelling a series as Narnia, is a matter of opinion.

But so is whether books 4 and 5 are great or “not that good.” I think books 4 and 5 are darker and a little more difficult to understand than the first three books. Maybe, to some, this makes them a little more inaccessible. I don’t remember The Horse and His Boy at the moment, but I do recall a couple of books in the Narnia series being ones I likely wouldn’t return to, for pretty much this reason. And while I’d stop short of saying that books 4 and 5 are not that good, I could certainly understand this being the case with those books.

Of course, what may prove to be the real problem is what you said. Rilchiam–that Rowling takes 1200 pages to tell a 300-page story. Both 4 and 5 were a long slog; and while I enjoyed them, the level of detail and the length combined made each a little more work than I expected. If Books 6 and 7 continue Rowling’s pattern of “must add more details and make it longer than the previous work,” then I think your original premise could have some merit.

14

Rowling’s got me by my completist short’n’curlies. Even if the next one’s a steaming turd, I’ll by the rest of the series. Else, the incomplete series on my bookshelf would be like eyes froma painting that follow me around the room, no matter where I stand.

-j

15

If I find a hard cover for half price like I did last time, I’ll get it. Otherwise, I’ll add it to the wishlist and wait for my birthday or paperback, whichever comes first. They are great books, but they are children’s books and I just can’t justify spending so much money on a children’s book for myself.

[hijack] I personally thought A Horse and His Boy was the best one of the series. but then, you’re talking about a girl who owned every single Black Stallion book as a child, so maybe I’m biased;)[/hijack]

16

Am I the only one who thinks that 4 and 5 are the two best of the series? Honestly, the writing is considerably more mature, and I love the fact that Harry is a flawed character. They really have a depth and complexity to them that the first 3 don’t have. Not that I don’t like the first three, but I feel that the books progressively have improved, with the 5th being the best of the 5. I’ll be snatching up number 6 as soon as I can.

17

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, Lynn, but I would like to evangelize for a moment: [ahem].

The first Harry Potter book is to the fifth like a single cell is to a meadow vole; it’s the story in its simplest form. As each book progresses, Harry becomes more and more self-aware. At first, Harry begins learning about a new world he is a part of without even knowing it; by the fifth book, he knows extensively about his past and things that happened before he was born, things that most children don’t become interested in until they’re older. Like any child, his universe expands slowly beyond his home life, then beyond his school, then beyond his family, then beyond his own abilities, then beyond his own existence, which is pretty much the same order we all go in as we grow.

As for being a “rageaholic”, as the OP described him; anyone who has lived with an adolescent boy would tell you that Harry is pretty much average in the anger department for his age group.

18

Although, like most of the people here, PoA is my favorite, I do like the direction the books are taking. The first two books were light, fluffy adventures, self-contained stories that could stand alone fairly easily. They were fun stories to read, but didn’t really have any dramatic punch. PoA is, IMO, the start of the real story arc, and I really like the darker tone Rowling is taking, introducing major flaws to the main characters and having situations that don’t wrap themselves up cleanly once Harry defeats the Bad Guy.

I do agree that the last two books have suffered from Rowling’s rise to prominence- it seems very much like whoever edited them was afraid to tell Rowling to cut stuff out. The end result is bloating (although I think Book 4 was worse in this regard than Book 5, despite its shorter length). Fortunately, I find Rowling’s world clever and interesting enough that I don’t mind the bloating that much. She’s witty enough that I don’t actually get bored, even as I recognize that competent editing could have condensed each of the last two books by 50%. I had a similar reaction to The Lord of the Rings, in that I feel that the same story could have been told much more efficiently by a better novelist, but the world Tolkien created was fascinating enough that I didn’t mind the long detours and random multiple-page descriptions of local culture.

19

I thought 4 was written better than any of them. I’ll defend this to the death because it’s true. The execution was flawless.

As for enjoyability, far be it for me to argue that, and I do agree with the prevailing opinion that 3 was the most enjoyable. But for execution, 4 was as good as it gets.

Phoenix was unnecessarily long. I don’t think that was the main problem with it though. I have a tough time rating it because it’s not like the others. It’s much darker, far fewer of those little warm moments. I don’t think as many people would be complaining of its length if it wasn’t so close to Hagrid free, if there had been more Luna, if we got to read one more example of Fred and George rebellion before they went on their way. I think the main problem was, that although Rowling planned for things to get darker and tougher for Harry as he got older, she got us all a bit too used to the “gee-whiz” fun of the series.

I’m not too anxious for the next one yet. I’m pretty confident that there’ll be a shorter wait than there was for Phoenix. Rowling had a lot on her plate during the time she wrote Phoenix. She became a tremendous internation celebrity, she was frequently on the sets of the movies, she got married and she became pregnant during the 3 year period (doesn’t it seem like it’s not that long in retrospect?) before Phoenix’s release. This one’ll probably take closer to 2 years.

20

Not looking forward to next book in series at all.

I enjoyed the first one. Barely made it thru 2nd, barely skimmed the others. Too repetitive! Author too much in need of an editor. (and has way too much power and money now to get one).