I think that came across decently in the second book (I liked Ron then, he seemed needed for the plot) but now I can’t quite figure out why he’s there except as a foil for Harry and a romantic interest for Hermoine. If we could just be shown Ron doing something well and not told about it after the fact (Quidditch game)…
The Weasleys provide a supportive surrogate family for Harry, and Ron is an intricate part of that.
My major complaint about Ron and Hermione missing Ron’s Quittich match in OotP is precisely because following Hagrid into the forest to learn about Gwarp was a cheap cop-out to actually reading about Ron succeeding at something on his own and having the narrative spotlight on him for a change. Ditto having Harry and Hermione taking Umbridge into the forest and leaving Ron and the rest of Dumbledore’s Army to fight and defeat the Slytherins off-page.
Snape or Malfoy will likely tell him. The whole school knew they were together; surely there was at least one student who’s in contact with a Death Eater who’d realize that Voldemort would be very interested in the information.
I said of its time. It doesn’t have much competition, in my mind.
Yeah, then amend my previous comments to read “current literature”. If you don’t think anything else coming out now competes with Harry Potter, then that shows that you have either impressively poor taste, or simply don’t read anything but children’s books. Wait, no, Wendell pointed out that even in children’s literature there are better titles out there right now.
No, and I can’t tell you how much it horrifies me to have my favorite literary couple compared to a couple of teenage characters who are ill-suited to each other. Beatrice and Benedick had passion and bickering. It’s clear by the end of the play (Act 5, Scene IV) that the two of them had more than mere tension going on between them. 
Ron and Hermione just have the bickering, (and bickering and bickering and…) much like a lot of siblings do.
He said there were, but didn’t say which. I’ve read Snicket and the “Loamhedge” guy and Blue Balliet and probably some other current kid’s authors. It’s not even close.
If you want to play adult literary pissing match, I can do that too - do you really want to do that? Or give me specific authors and books to support the case.
Don’t miss the forest for the trees. Trying to write “great literature” that isn’t a page turner might get you short-term props, but a good author should try to tell a compelling story. I recognize that Rowling doesn’t have the most vivid vocabulary, and that the characters start from archetypes so archetypal that they’re archetypal archetypes (but she does enrich them). She’s far from perfect. So is every author. On the other hand, she tells a story extremely visually, mixes humor with suspense and action, shows instead of tells, and leaves lots of stuff for even super-duper-smart adults like you find here to talk about at length for pages and pages about once a month. The fact that a book is outrageously popular shouldn’t be held against it.
See you in a hundred years.
Here are a bunch of better children’s fantasy series:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Green Knowe series by L. M. Boston
The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
The Chubby Lewis series (The House with a Clock in Its Walls and its sequels) by John Bellairs
The Time Quartet (A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels) by Madeleine L’Engle
The Oz books by L. Frank Baum
The series consisting of Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit
The Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin
And there are another half-dozen first-rate children’s fantasy series that I’ve heard described by people whose opinions I trust but which I haven’t yet had time to read. I also haven’t yet had time to read either the Lemony Snicket books or the books by Blue Balliet. (I won’t even get into non-series children’s fantasy books that are also better than the Harry Potter books.) I don’t think that the Harry Potter books are bad by any means. I just don’t think that they belong in a list of the top ten children’s fantasy series written in English.
Furthermore, the only books I’ve mentioned in this post that I would rate as being first-rate novels when placed along all novels, not just those written for children or just fantasy novels, are the Lewis Carroll books.
Well, I said ‘of its time,’ but I don’t care. I’ll cheerfully disagree. I have to admit Excalibre got to me by suggesting my taste was borne of ignorance, but I don’t even care. Think that I’m just a guy who’s only ever read this one series, or think that I just have horrible taste.
We’ll see in a hundred years.
Hey, I said nothing bad about Harry Potter. If you honestly believe that it’s among the best novels of its time, that reflects a profound ignorance of modern literature or a lack of understanding of what makes literature worthwhile. We’ve had these sorts of discussions before, and again I’m sticking to my view that taste is not entirely subjective; there are some objective criteria - or at least, criteria that people of discernment agree upon - that can be used in evaluating works of art. I’m not criticizing the enjoyment anyone has gotten out of Harry Potter - obviously I’m quite a fan of the books - but to consider them on the same level with the best literature of the century (or whatever era you want to call “of its time”) is ridiculous and honestly cannot come from anything but profound ignorance.
I should add that you also said this:
If you don’t even see it as having competition - i.e. you don’t think there is any other literature from the modern era that will be worth reading in a hundred years - that demonstrates just how profound your ignorance is.
Great novels of modern literature:
Possession
Midnights Children
A Prayer for Owner Meany
The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Klay
A Handmaid’s Tale
Name of the Rose
(you can take pretty much any book by any of those authors and it will hold up 100 years from now, but I’m guessing those will be the books those authors are known for).
Harry Potter will certianly be read 100 years from now. And will be considered a classic of children’s literature. It will be, however, more like Anne of Green Gables than Age of Innocence. (It may reach Tom Sawyer status, I doubt it will reach Huck Finn status).
Some more first-rate children’s fantasy series:
The Snarkout Boys books by Daniel Pinkwater
The Charlie and Willy Wonka books by Roald Dahl
Some that I haven’t read but which come highly praised:
The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper
The Wizards series by Diane Duane
The Wolves Chronicles by Joan Aiken
The Crestomanci Quartet by Diane Wynne Jones
My point, incidentally, in case someone wants to argue that any particular series that I’ve listed is better than the Harry Potter series, is not that the Harry Potter books are distinctly worse than any of these series. I would rank the Harry Potter books toward the bottom of this list, but I don’t have any big argument with someone who would rate it higher in this list. My point is that there are a lot of other children’s fantasy series than are in the same league as the Harry Potter series, so even if one is only ranking it with other English-language children’s fantasy series, it’s not that outstanding a series.
I’m not what you mean when you say “of its time.” Are you only rating it against books published in the past ten years? It seems to me that you are trying to make your category so small that there are few competitors to rank it against. If you’re now going to rank it only against English-language children’s fantasy series published in the past ten years, yes, I suppose that it’s pretty close to the top. I think that’s a pretty meaningless comparison, but I suppose it’s true.
I am assuming from this that you are male. Females tend to NOT look at males they are interested in such a way. Ever. Only teeny-boppers do so to their crushes–be they rock or movie stars and such(Hermione does this with Gilderoy Lockheart). To do so is obvious and yes-dare I say it, common(in the vulgar sense). Hermione is neither.
IMO, Hermione likes Ron because he not only sees her intelligence, but he challenges her, too. He can act as a check on her more formidable personality traits (she tends to go whole hog and is so, so sure she is right–SPEW, for just one example). Ron treats her as an equal, not as a fluffy headed bit of fun. I’ve (mercifully) forgotten the girl he snogs with continually, but if anything, SHE was one of those giggling, simpering wastes of space. Ron admires Hermione’s abilities, but has also seen her vulnerable, and has not rejected her. For a super achiever, this is a huge thing. His regard is unconditional, and that is also huge.
Hermione most likely intimidates most of her classmates, as well as the older kids. Now that they ARE the older kids, who is she to turn to? The faculty? Ron has shared good and bad with her. Despite their acrimony, she and Ron share many of the same values, as mentioned above. She (at least in the movies) set her eye on Ron from the word go (trust me, girls don’t mention spots on noses unless they have an interest in the guy).
I don’t think that having the two of them bicker etc detracts from the realness of it at all–I enjoy it. It’s something I think Rowling does well. It is sublimated passion, IMO, and hopefully, Rowling will not let us down in the last book.
I also really like Rowling’s description of Harry’s jealousy and the smells that evoke something at the Burrow-that something being Ginny, of course. Rowling has teenage emotions taped.
Is the series Great Literature? No, but so what? Why is that a criteria? Neither were Frances Hodgson Burnett’s books, but they are now classics. In children’s books, I look for genuiness of character, interesting plot lines, believable worlds and competent writing. So much of “great literature” is just so much intellectual snob-ism, anyway. HP has all of these characteristics, even if I become aware of the Plot creaking away sometimes.
One last note: I wish that Rowling would give Ron something to do–he was integral in the first book, with the teaching Harry chess etc. Now he is a comic foil and he deserves more. I also want more Neville.
Rupert Grint is cute, in an odd sort of way. And he has great hair.
eleanorigby writes:
> In children’s books, I look for genuiness of character, interesting plot lines,
> believable worlds and competent writing.
I think that all of the children’s fantasy series that I listed have those things:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Green Knowe series by L. M. Boston
The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
The Chubby Lewis series (The House with a Clock in Its Walls and its sequels) by John Bellairs
The Time Quartet (A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels) by Madeleine L’Engle
The Oz books by L. Frank Baum
The series consisting of Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit
The Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Snarkout Boys books by Daniel Pinkwater
The Charlie and Willy Wonka books by Roald Dahl
The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper
The Wizards series by Diane Duane
The Wolves Chronicles by Joan Aiken
The Crestomanci Quartet by Diane Wynne Jones
The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
The things that you list are at least part of what makes great literature. I think that we can compare the Harry Potter books with the great literature of all time. As I said before, I would rank the Harry Potter books toward the bottom of the list I give, but I’m not going to argue much with someone who wants to rank it a little higher. The only books I give above that would rank well if measured against all the great literature ever published, at any time, in any language, in any genre, would be the Lewis Carroll books. It is, then, at least possible that a children’s fantasy series might be just plain Great Literature. If you’ll notice, the discussion of whether the Harry Potter books are great literature started because bup seemed, at least, to be claiming that they were.
Well, I agree that grown women do not, as being coy is part of the game, but I think young females often do, especially when they don’t realize they’re being observed in turn. Teeny boppers and eggheads like Hermione do not react terribly different, except, perhaps, that eggheads would likely grow out of it sooner. Remember Hermione’s crush on Gilderoy Lockhart?
Don’t forget it was Ron that stood up for Hermione in book two when Draco called her a foul name.
He has a sense of honor and loyalty.
And Rupert Grint is a cutie.
Whether or not HP is “great literature” or not is a matter of personal taste and opinion. But certainly Rowling has to be applauded as the greatest boon to children’s literacy since the printing press. Kids are now reading big mucking thick books- and it’s cool to do so. My hat is off to her, and those of us that prefer other fantasy authors should also thank her as now bookstores are stocking those authors too- and kids are picking them up and reading them! Hell, I saw my local bookstore stocking E. Nesbit books- and kids and parents buying them. So, Rowling is great just for that alone, even if her books are perhaps not the best.
I asked myself the same question, and got all het up because, like a lot of the posters in this thread, I kept getting distracted by Rupert Grint and his tiny eyes…and rather than actually try to figure out their relationship with my brain, I just looked at the back cover of …the Half-Blood Prince.
That Ron is cute. Problem solved.
And before I feel guilty for criticizing the looks of a teenaged boy (too late), I will say that in the interviews with Rupert Grint that I’ve seen, he’s much brighter and more charming as himself than as Ron.