The OP is stupid but so is this part of your reply. Maybe you’ve heard of a little book called Bridge to Terebithia recently made into a wrongly-marketed movie of the same name?
Oh, dear God…
:rolleyes:
That kind of says it all, doesn’t it?
On that note, as a third-shift worker, it’s bedtime for me.
So you’re a fat guy who drives slow? 
Actually, no. I’d never heard of that book before the movie was hyped.
There you go, getting all logicky on me. Fine then. I still maintain the themes that Rowling explores are a cut above your normal kids’ fare, and I enjoy the books.
No worries, neutron star. For some reason, you’re not the only Doper who’s stuck a “g” in the middle of my name. 
Now now, Shodan. We all know better than that.
What, precisely does that say?
Seriously, why are you being such a condescending dismissive dick? This isn’t a case where there’s a children’s series that a very small number of adults are obsessive creepy fans of. This is a series that is hugely popular among children and adults alike. If you’re claiming that all adult HP fans are somehow immature due to their fanhood… well, that says a lot more about you than it does about them.
Well it won the Newberry award in 1978 and is about
a somewhat outcast/loner boy who has a secret world (in imagination only) that he shares with his best friend, a girl. Its across a river which they cross with a rope swing (the eponymous Bridge). One day, she goes without him, falls on the rocks, and dies. Grief ensues.
I’ve never read a Harry Potter book, but all this worry about spoilers kind of mystifies me as well. Isn’t a characteristic of good literature its ability to still be good even if it is "spoiled’?
I mean, we all know how Gatsby, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Huck Finn, Dick, etc. end; that doesn’t make them less enjoyable, to me at least.
Thanks…I’ll have to check it out!
Well, it certainly says something, though, what, exactly you think it says is unclear, your pissy little eye-rollie being on the inarticulate side.
Whethe you think HP sucks as literature or is up there with Dickens – as the New York Times reviewer believes – I don’t think it’s status as a literary phenomenon is open to much debate. “For a time, the first three Potter books held the top positions on the Times’ hardcover fiction list of best-sellers, leading the newspaper to create a separate category for children’s books. The fourth work, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” had a first printing of 3.8 million in the United States alone.” (Cite.) Multiple sources create Rowling for single-handedly reigniting an interest in reading among children otherwise obsessed with TV and video games. (Cite, cite.) Of the best-selling books of the decade 1994-2004, five of the top six had “Harry Potter” in their title. (Cite.)
Just because something isn’t big to you doesn’t mean it isn’t big – and I mean “big” by any objective measure. This is big – big like Elvis, big like the Beatles. So get over yourself.
I don’t know. I mean, I know how Gatsby ends, of course, and I still enjoy the re-reading. But I’d still say that the first time I read the book was a unique experience - not intrinsically better, but different, because I didn’t know what was going to happen on a story level. Each re-read may reveal new things about the writing, the themes, or even the reader, but it will never be quite the same.
That’s the problem with spoilers. You can still read the book, and still enjoy the book, but the chance to explore something completely unknown is lost.
YMMV, and all that.
Sure, but it’s obviously not as good – not as fun to read for the first time – if you know how it ends. This is especially true with this book, the last in a series, that is going to resolve an epic brewing battle between Good and Evil and resolve a lot of questions that have intentionally been left hanging until now. You may still enjoy reading it knowing the ending going in, but you’re not going to enjoy it to the same extent (probably) or in the same way (definitely).
No book or movie becomes worse for being “spoiled.” It’s not the book/movie itself that you’re spoiling; it’s someone else’s experience of it.
“Rosebud” was his sled.
So you’re saying that all mysteries should tell you the name of the killer on the dust jacket? All romances should contain the Cliff Notes summary on the dedication page? That the Lord of the Rings would have been a better novel if Tolkien had called it “The Book Where Gandalf Appears to Die, But Doesn’t Really?”
If so, then I guess you just don’t understand why people read literature.
Oh, snap!
I work at a University, in the same department as the Bookstore, so I’ve had to hear endless upon endless talking about this book. Some people really can’t avoid it.
Liking a certain book, or movie, or music, whatever is fine and dandy. There’s something about overwhelming, fanatical popularity for something that creeps me out, though. Some people take it so seriously that it becomes one of the most important things in their life, and when a person’s logical sense of priorities is impaired, that to me is fucked up.
That’s probably one of the main reasons why I’ve avoided Harry Potter altogether. I avoid other mega-popular things for the same reason. I really don’t like the herd mentality of it all.
Well, personally, I think Dickens sucks and that Harry Potter, while it has its problems (Rowling’s world-building is simply awful), is still better than a lot of what gets published. I haven’t even read the last one yet (obviously) and I’m already willing to bet that it’s not part of the 90% (or what feels like 99% these days) of the crap that gets published yearly. Would I put the series up there in the pantheon of children’s literature? I’m not sure right now. If and when I have kids, I can see reading them all the Harry Potter books along with the books my parents read me, which included The Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit. I did an awful lot of reading on my own as soon as possible and I was a teenager or an adult before I really read some of the classic children’s literature and, to be honest, I probably enjoyed it more as a result than I would have as a kid.
A gazillion folks read “The Da Vinci Code,” too. Those people get laughed at a lot in these quarters. You can’t cite popularity as being eqivalent to good.
She didn’t.
Which is why I didn’t try to. I very specifically said “Whether you think HP sucks as literature or is up there with Dickens, I don’t think it’s status as a literary phenomenon is open to much debate.” I’m not much interested in whether people think it’s good or not, since that’s completely subjective. I do get impatient, however, with people who act like they simply cannot understand what the big deal is (what, you’ve been under a rock for the last 10 years?) or who act like other people aren’t entitled to be super excited about it just because they, personally, are not.
ETA: Thank you, storyteller 