Someone loaned me all the movies and I made it to the end of the second one. Entertaining in a juvenile power fantasy type of way. Speaks to the messianic megalo in all of us, I suppose. But I think the Onion called it about six years ago.
I was like you - I avoided Harry Potter because of all the hype, and have done that with other books and movies as well. Then, my husband got me the first 4 books for Christmas a couple of years ago.
I’ve been hooked since. I hate the hype, but I love the books.
I read the first book when it came out and was unimpressed. I can see why adolescents like the books- there’s a lot of power fantasy stuff in there- but I just don’t get the hype, nor do I understand why people in their 30s and 40s are obsessing over the book as well.
Oh boy!
I put on my wizard hat.
I’m definitely not pitching a tent outside my bookstore, and if there was some pressing reason I couldn’t go, I wouldn’t go. It’s not all consuming. I don’t have Harry Potter sheets and I find the notion of my having them somewhat creepy. I do have a T-shirt somewhere, I think I have a little Slytherin banner packed away, I knitted a scarf (I needed a scarf pattern, I was going up to Canada to visit some friends who also love Harry Potter, and I look good in grey and green…), but I’m conscious that it’s very silly. I don’t take it seriously and nor should you.
I also find the iPhone furor a bit silly, even if I can understand it. I find high fashion tremendously silly. I find sports entertaining to watch but keeping detailed statistics on players is rather creepy. I like movies but I find obsessive fans memorizing the birthdate, favorite color, and make, model, and year of their beloved actor’s latest car to be quite distressing.
Actual obsession, in all its forms, is unhealthy. But enjoying a series and going to a party to get the last book in that series is a far cry from writing creepy Emma Watson/Daniel Radcliffe fanfic and drawing hearts over their faces… when you’re thirty-eight…
There seem to be two kinds of adult “obsession”–
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People like me, who admit to subscribing to the “I’m the grownup now and that means I get to define what it means” mentality, and enjoy the occasional young-adult or well-written children’s book (like Potter, Narnia, Terebithia, etcetera) on the same level as many others enjoy their Tom Clancy, Steven King, or Jackie Collins–as an enjoyable read that hooks one without requiring too much depth of understanding, but which has just enough depth to enable one to think deeper into it and catch nuances. I admit I’d be just as angry if someone spoiled for me the next King novel. (I’d’ve said Clancy, but I’m trying to swear off =P) In other words, this group encompasses what I understand as the typical adult nerd reader.
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Scary motherfuckers in schoolkid outfits who still don’t quite get that aforementioned books are fantasy, and not an appropriate model for one’s life or future plans.
Also, I agree with whoever mentioned the Super Bowl. I think over a lifetime, I know which is more overhyped.
I agree with the OP. Not outraged but it is irritating. It seems that many responders missed the first point of the OP, that he is irritated at HP taking over the boards - not that HP isn’t good at getting kids reading.
LPN, I so totally agree with you - you’ve put how I feel about it in great perspective. The difference between enjoyment and obsession - just because I love all the books (and frankly, would go to a release party but I’m too old and can’t stay up that late. ;)) doesn’t make me nuts - it’s just something I enjoy. Like listening to Rush, eating my favorite foods, etc. It’s enjoyable. I’m not wacko over it.
That being said, my son, who is going to AZ to see Grandma this coming week, will have the book waiting for him (she has gotten him every book in the series - it’s been a thing with them over the years - it has made his collection of books a little more special to him which I think is nice) and I told him, “You’ll be calling me Sunday and letting me know what the ending is, right???” He says, “Mom, I don’t do spoilers. You raised me better than that.” Smartass punk kid…
I think sports provide a good analogy. People get caught up in the hype because it’s fun. The tragedy is that the remake of Fever Pitch took the Red Sox as its subject. It should have been about the release OF Deathly Hallows.
Just to finish this off:
Seamen everywhere.
It’s interesting when someone gets irritated that a certain subjects takes over the boards. Then starts another thread on that irritating subject!
(Not a Harry Potter fan–although I may read the books yet. I know they get “older” as the characters do.)
A bit of silliness never hurt anyone. (She said while awaiting the latest Buffy, Season 8 comic book.)
xx
This. This, along with a few other things mentioned (e.g. clogging up CS with countless threads) is what I honestly don’t get.
I’ll proudly call myself a nerd, but I simply can’t understand the geeky obsessions with sci-fi/fantasy and kid’s stuff that are so prevalent among us.
For every computer nerd who loves classic literature which has withstood the test of time and still manages to be brilliant, it seems like there are fifty neckbearded Star Trek junkies dressed up like Klingons!
Oh, and for the asshole who derided me for having a third-shift job (seriously, WTF?), yes, I am a supervisor in a 24/7/365 data center. I’m not sure what’s so pathetic about that. I’d be welcome to do the same thing on first or second shift at my job if I wanted, but I’m a night owl.
I actually mentioned my distaste for Potter obsessives last night at work, and a co-worker rabidly agreed with me. He found a list online that gives away every major spoiler and on what page it appears. Then he edited it in Word, giving it the bolded title “NEW DATA CENTER RULES AND REGULATIONS,” so that people would notice and read it.
Frankly, I thought it was good for a chuckle, but I did make him take it down from the bulletin board before anyone who cared could see it.
I like the Harry Potter books. What I don’t get is how many people can obsess over “Survivor,” “American Idol,” “Dancing With the Stars,” or … well, television in general.
What I don’t do is go into the “Survivor” appreciation threads and demand they be shut down for my benefit. 
Neither do I.
I’m sorry. Have I made a single post in any of the threads about things that I hated?
No, I believe I took it to the Pit where it belongs.
But what I think is odd that you define one sort of interest by its most extreme manifestation, but the other by its more moderate manifestation.
There are people who are obsessed with “classic literature” to the same unhealthy degree as anyone dressed as a Klingon. There are people who read a good sci-fi/fantasy novel and then move on with their lives.
If you’re going to compare the person who loves classic literature with the person who loves sci-fi/fantasy (and the two genres most surely overlap, by the way), you ought to at least compare like to like.
I read the first three books as they were released and reached a similar conclusion - the books just aren’t that good. They’re very poorly-written, the characters are one-dimensional at best, and (one of the real killers, for me), the series isn’t steeped in any sort of grand tradition or mythology. They feel very current, and basically feel the polar opposite of timeless or enduring.
And I say all of those things by the standards of youth-oriented fantasy. There’s significantly better youth fantasy out there, like the His Dark Materials series, Garth Nix’s Abhorsen books, or even The Looking Glass Wars.
Honestly, I really don’t see much overlap. I have enjoyed Heinlein, and there are perhaps a couple of other authors whom I’d consider exceptions to the rule, but that’s about it.
And I hardly see the same level of obsession with literature as I do with children’s books and sci-fi. When was the last time you found some Dostoevsky fanfic on the web - or saw some crazy dressed up as Holly Golightly at a convention?
“Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - CS Lewis
The point is that part of the experience of reading a book is reading it for the first time. Not the only part, not always the most important part, but a valid part nonetheless. If some asshole blabs out the ending, you never get to experience that part.
People who read the last chapter of a mystery don’t get that. People who actively try to spoil that part of the experience for others are being jerks.
Word.
Tonight, I’m going to walk to Borders and get two copies, one for us and one for a friend. Then I will walk home, and my wife and daughter and I will spend the weekend reading it aloud to each other.
And if someone shouts out a spoiler in the bookstore, I’m going to smack them.
Regards,
Shodan
I’m sorry, did I accuse you of that? :rolleyes:
Asimov? Phillip K. Dick? Ray Bradbury?
Or, say, William “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Shakespeare?