When I first started reading Harry Potter, I was struck by its humour and charm: the plays-on-words, the quirky list of school supplies, the old-fashioned British-children’s-book atmosphere, the awful Dahlesque Dursleys, and the descriptions of Harry’s boarding school, teachers and classes.
The “magic” element was an added twist - I’m not normally at all interested in science-fiction, the supernatural or the like, but as I was enjoying the book so much (and felt that the author had thus far demonstrated an unusually fine touch), I kept an open mind and thought it would be interesting to see where it led. I thought it might awaken in me an appreciation for a whole new genre. It’s always great to discover new avenues of interest, so on I read.
At a certain point, though, I realized that, though I was reading dutifully on and on, I really wasn’t enjoying the books much any more. Too many very long (to me, anyway) chase scenes and too many convoluted plot twists and too few moments of humour or examples of daily school life. Too many ghouls and sinister events and not enough McGonagall.
Still, I’m very glad that this series caused many, many children to begin to develop the habit of reading.
Voldemort was almost completely destroyed when Harry was just a boy. The whole point of the series is that he’s nearly helpless at first and then slowly regaining power, and at the same time the people opposing him, including Harry, are gaining knowledge and, in the case of the kids, power, to counter that. Sure, in the “real” world Voldemort could have outpaced everyone, gained full power quicker and enslaved the world, but that would have been a boring story.
That rather echoes my thoughts; there was a lot to like about the books, but I wasn’t so captivated that I made it to the end. It absolutely nails the kid lit tropes; a downtrodden and abused child discovers an unknown world in which all his dreams can come true. The overall theme was nothing new but there was great charm in the execution, and Rowling was a bloody genius when it came to names.
It was a children’s series of books and later films to me until maybe around HPPOA or HPOOTP. Then I started at the beginning to catch up.
Before I had read any of the books and just from seeing the movie posters, I remember thinking that I hoped they didn’t put Harry and the girl together because that means they’d have to do all the boy/girl school stuff - make ups, break ups, silent treatment, etc. At least with the romance between Hermione and Ron, Harry only had to go through that as a bystander, i.e. the best friend. Though he did go through the jealousy thing after Ginny showed interested in other guys, but that was when he first noticed she wasn’t a little girl anymore.
As for Quiddich, Rowling wrote/said that she needed a wizardly sport for kid wizards/witches to play. And that by the time she got to later novels, she regretted it because she got disinterested in writing about it.
I personally felt that with the first three books each one was better than the last, but then the 4th book was longer instead of better and the last three books weren’t even as good as the 4th one. I’m not sorry I read them, but I think they would have been much improved by tighter plotting.
Something that would have helped would have been introducing the concept of horcruxes and the legend of the Deathly Hallows (and particularly the Elder Wand) much earlier in the series. That would have allowed Rowling to avoid some of the infodumping in the last two books, and it probably would have made the last book fit in better with the earlier ones.
You’re absolutely right. And completely wrong. It’s a children’s book written for children by a novice writer.
the author seemed intent on weaving morality skits in to the books. All 3 of the kids save the others at some point in the book.
The time turner is a MAJOR plot fail. It could easily have been used to prove Sirius’s innocents as well as solve virtually every crime. But it’s entertaining in the book.
yah well, a chick wrote it. Got to throw some romance in there. Most of the relationships were train wrecks but isn’t that life?
Quidditch is a very creative and thoroughly STUPID game. I mean the beaters alone are bizarre. 2 people deliberately trying to hurt other players? REALLY?
I actually thought that was the most creative part of the book. Again, it’s a morality skit scattered over 7 books.
I watched the movies and then read the books as an adult. The plot holes were so large as to make it tough reading. I was however very fascinated by the screenplays. Condensing a book and keeping it faithful for a movie is a talent that people don’t often appreciate. A lot of dialogue was swapped around to keep things flowing.
I thought both writers did a great job on this with the exception of the series ending. The best bit of writing by Rowling was the final battle and the movie hacked that up. That could have been done verbatim.
I give HP a thumps up not because it’s great literature but because it’s endearing and well suited for children. As written they grow as children grow so the series works over a wider age group.
I have a theory – probably erroneous, but one which I’m fond of (I’ve aired it before in “Cafe Society”) – that J.K. Rowling dislikes sports and finds them boring; and is baffled by the obsessive enthusiasm displayed for them by many millions of people. I see her as, with Quidditch, satirising this whole thing by inventing a sport which is basically insane. It is wildly complicated in its rules, and the ways in which it functions (or fails to): essentially it doesn’t, and can’t, work. Nonetheless it has, in its milieu, huge numbers of super-devoted fans: who think about little else, and are fascinated by its most obscure minutiae, and will and do talk to death, anything Quidditch-related. My taking this view is no doubt influenced by me being one of that small minority of males, who are bored to tears by all sports.
Not only is it a good theory you nailed it. I searched it on the internet:
“[Quidditch] was invented in a small hotel in Manchester after a row with my then boyfriend,” she has written alongside the text. "I had been pondering the things that hold a society together, cause it to congregate and signify its particular character and knew I needed a sport.
“It infuriates men…which is quite satisfying given my state of mind when I invented it.”
As a child who grew up with Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, I am in total agreement that whatever gets children to read and enjoy reading is worthwhile. Nancy and the Boys were hardly classic literature and were about as formulaic as it comes, but they were responsible for two generations of youngsters developing the reading habit.
The HP books ‘grew’ with their young characters. The stories got more complex, as did the reading level, as the protagonists aged - along with the generation of readers who were captivated by them. I’ve never known another series that did this, so I have to give Ms. Rowling props for that, if nothing else.
I don’t know why everyone rails so against quidditch. Yes, it’s illogical… but it’s not actually any more illogical than plenty of real-world sports. Why are all the scores in quidditch multiples of ten? Well, why does tennis go love-15-30-40-game? At least in quidditch any given score is always worth the same number of points, and the numbers all already exist.
I suspect that there are a number of cases where the books in a series grow more complex as they go along. The example that I think of immediately is The 24 Tales by Beatrix Potter. Yeah, it’s 24, not 23, as I wrote in an earlier post. An unpublished manuscript has been discovered and will be published this year.
The part that bothers me about Quidditch is the scoring regarding the Snitch.
Supposedly, if you catch it, it’s worth 50 points, but in every match described, catching it always ended the game as a win for the catcher.
What gets me is just how could there be this world filled with tens of thousands of beings living in parallel to ours and we not know about it? Yes, Hogsworth and the other stuff is hidden behind magic so you cant see it so it must be some sort of interdimensional bubble. Well if thats so how come air and water can enter? Cant a satellite see Hogsworth? How do they fit 100,000 people into a stadium yet the Muggle world doesnt notice?
But at the same time they can conjure up dragons and storms and all so wouldnt that effect the Muggle world?
Ok, I have learned they have representatives with various governments and anyone who does learn something they can erase their memories. I doubt that would work out with all the different countries today not to mention the past like Nazi Germany.
Also this society seems so backwards and old fashioned. Their level of technology and the way they dress is all 19th century. They dont have computers or even electricity. In “school” they dont learn ordinary topics like math or english.
Food - they produce almost none of their own instead they somehow conjure up gold and trade with the Muggles. Wouldnt the worlds banking system after awhile notice a bunch of gold just showing up every now and then?
And this Hogsworth school. It seems like everytime you open the wrong door one can get killed by some monster or fall into some never ending staircase or something. Why would they allow children into that?
So to me the Harry Potter world is just too far out there.
Yeah, catching the Snitch only wins the game for your team if you’re not already 150 points (or more) in the hole. When one team has a Seeker who’s significantly more skilled than all of the other players in the game, this is likely to happen. But in a pro-level game, play can go on for literally days, in which case the score difference could be almost anything at the time the Snitch is caught.
I think Quidditch gets a little more hate for absurd rules than it deserves. The Snitch/Seeker stuff is absurd, but that’s just a narrative device to allow one character to plausibly be the hero of every single game. Take the snitch out (ending the game after a set time, then, like normal sports), and it’s pretty much soccer/football on broomsticks.