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I voted yes, though I've only read the first 3 books. For what they are (children's books) they're excellent, they tick every box and I'm all in favour of anything than encourages children to read... and as an adult if you want a bit of mindless entertainment they tick that box too.
I agree, I haven't read the last two books (too much else to read - might as well wait for the movies!) but it seems so few children read these days at least this has got them interested and excited about reading... I grew up on Roald Dahl and although children obviously can still read him now, it was different looking forward to his latest book coming out (I remember being very excited about The BFG!)... Harry Potter has clearly had a similar effect...Quote:
Originally Posted by DapperDrake
I honestly dont like the harry potter books. Ive read all 7 but its one of those storys where you get to the end and think "what the hell was the point of that?" I just dont think there is anything of value to get from the books. There is no deep meaning, no symbols, and no real value to be gained from it, other than the oh so unused "good conqures evil in the end." it is mediocer (or however you spell it) writing at best. Although it is entertaining. But on the same note, so are shiny objects and things that make noise.
It's interesting that you don't like them but you still managed to read all seven! I'm not sure if you should be looking for deep meaning or symbolism in childrens books, but the value is what we have said - that it gets younger children excited about readingQuote:
Originally Posted by kevinthediltz
Just reading some of the earlier replies. Hilarious how people (adults) seem to be offended by Harry Potter and J.K Rowling. It is a childrens book. You would hardly expect a 10-year-old to be reading Tolstoy. There are some seriously haughty attitudes on here! Literary snobbery does make me chuckle. Right, back to Chaucer. :thumbs_upQuote:
Originally Posted by starrwriter
I am 15, started reading harry potter at 7 and Istill love the books. I think you can have ''mature tastes in literature'' and still enjoy the books. I mean I love Wodehouse, Kafka, Balzac, Saki and O Henry but that does not mean I dont thumb my nose at HP. They have tons of entertainment and 'masala' with the occasional profound moment.
Harry Potter is like an endless fountain of fantasy.Since I read book one,I always loved them,I grew up with them and I've been anxious for them.And the last three books are definitely very adolescentesque...
My grandson (now 21 and reading Physics and Maths at Imperial College, London) put me on to Harry Potter at the ripe old age of eleven, after he had read the first book and couldn't wait for the second to come out. I thought I'd read it to see what all the fuss was about and have read all of them. Yes, they are children's books, so I suppose there is still a bit of child in me. I love a cracking good story - the stories move on apace, the characters are believable and even as an adult, I can learn something about courage, perseverance, the support of friends, sharing strengths, facing fear, self-reliance, humour, the uses of learning and application, dealing with loss and sorrow. The books aren't deep - they're not meant to be, they're aimed at young readers. I'm sorry for the readers who can no longer take pleasure in a good tale well told, no matter what their age - the loss is theirs.
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Originally Posted by Hank Stamper
i flew through the last two books---soooooo many unanswered questions, mysteries and tensions to be solved...
I used to think that the HP books were fine, innocuous at worst. A bit odd that so many adults were reading these children's books, but hey, what's the harm of a good potboiler?
Reading Harold Bloom's comments on HP made me think again. He kinda has a point. There's room for doubt that the these books are going to make kids future Tolstoy readers. More likely they'll graduate to read Stephen King. Is reading such a good thing in itself, that it really doesn't matter what one reads? Bloom also makes the point that Rowling is not a good writer. She's not particularly imaginative-- and here Bloom excels at rooting out the source material that she mines in assembling Harry Potter's world. He also faults her style as flat and repetitive.
There is a discouraging trend in the whole HP franchise. The lemming-like frantic stampede at the local superstore, the marketing hype, the me-too trendiness. I like to think of the world of books as being about independent thinking and a variety of different voices. The movie business is all about blockbusters... look at the result. Do we really want the publishing world to follow suit?
Given that the Harry Potter books are neither particularly original nor terribly well-written, what is to account for their phenomenal success other than marketing hitched to herd mentality?
which is why you base your views of Harry Potter on what Harold Bloom says. Great independent thinking that. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by curlyqlink
The reason Harry Potter has been so successful is because they appeal to children - Rowling's writing might not be up there with Austen or any of the Dead White Male's Literary Canon, but she is writing for CHILDREN not literary critics. If people wrote solely to impress literary critics then there would be nothing but tedious and pretentious guff on the shelves
Will these children end up reading Tolstoy? Maybe not. But that doesn't mean they won't read anything else of 'value'. Taste is subjective anyway. So what if they start reading Stephen King? It won't stop you enjoying Tolstoy will it? :thumbs_up
The reason Potter has been so successful has nothing to do with children. Children don't buy books, because children don't have money. Parents by books, meaning parents read reviews, meaning word of mouth affects the parents choice to buy the books. In other words, Harry Potter is advertised, therefore it becomes cool, therefore parents buy it for their kids, who, after reading the first novel, and having no real reading experience beyond a picture-book/mass-produced mediocre paperback level, seek the next volume in the series, meanwhile enjoying a high-budgeted film adding to more advertisement. I don't know any 8 year olds with 50 bucks and the permission to line up at 12:00 down the block from a bookstore on a Saturday night.
If one had never heard of Shakespeare, how do you think a seeing of West-Side Story would go? If no one knows what good is, how can they know what bad is (I'm tossing in a little Tao Te Ching for good measure here). The absence of experience always ends with the requirement of guidance, I.E. a teacher must teach a student who doesn't know. Thereby the market is acting as the teacher, and the reader is the student. If no one is refuting the market, then he it is taken as law. If the market tells the ignorant this is a great find, what do the readers know?
All I know is, every review you see in the paper for any book passed book 1 is a load of rubbish. All the bad reviews stopped after the 3rd book at best, it being idiotic to keep going if you didn't like the first. That being said, it is no surprise that you get almost all positive reviews for the second volume onward, and those reviews tell nothing but that the reviewer likes the book. It creates another advertisement bias.
On that subject, what other book has had that much exposure? Toys, action figures, video games, coloring books, wide translations, posters, movies, news coverage, a feature on every news paper, and every news station for a week prior to release, what other book? none that I can think of. But, unlike Viagra, the ultimate best-seller product, the book exhausts its usefulness quickly.
I am not talking good or bad here, I am simply pointing out that opinions are biased beyond a doubt, since they are coming from ignorant people. The amount a book sells tells nothing about its quality, it being a fact that MacDonalds sells more burgers than any real restaurant.
The problem, I think, Bloom, amongst other critics has with the books, is the insistence fans of the book have at placing it as a beacon of culture, causing a fabled increase in child readership. I have seen statistics showing that reading rates amongst kids have actually gone down, as projected, since the publication of the first Potter book, and therefore feel confident in saying that Potter leads kids only to read Potter.
Now to the critical criticism:
If for instance, one feels confident in saying that Potter is one of the top 1000 books ever written in any genre, in any language, then the Potter books can be deemed excellent. I have my doubts about such claims, of course. If one can say it is in the top 5000 books ever written, then perhaps one can argue it is a good book. Anything more than that seems to indicate that reading this book is causing one to miss out on reading a better book, since there are only so many hours in ones lifetime where they can read.
I would like to argue that None of the Potter books (or all of them if you accept them as one massive book) fit in the top 5000 written in the history of literature. I feel confident to say, that when one reads Potter, they are missing out on reading a better book (the size of the children's canon is quite large, and, has to be cut even further by readers in order to fill in the time while the age is still in focus). More importantly however, more than half of Potter's readers, according to statistics I have seen, are not children, and most of the original readers are already in their late teens. We therefore can compare this book to the long-list canon of books (Bloom's list has around 2000 works, but that is only the west, and limited by language. The full canon is much longer, when one factors in all of the Eastern tradition). Does the book hold up?
The answer is of course, to me at least, no. It is perhaps an enjoyable read, but is it more important than lets say Alice in Wonderland? should we judge it on itself or on what came before? There are 7 books, spanning around 4000 pages give or take (I am mentally calculating here) meaning in the time it takes a reader to read this, they could have read about 40 books of poetry, or 10 other important novels, or even all the major works of any major author. To read Potter, in my mind, is to not read something else. I, a self confessed bibliophile, find it difficult to decide which books get read, and which don't for myself, for fear of wasting an hour or two of my reading time. This is, lets say at 50 pages an hour, 80 or so hours of reading of other works disappearing, so no, I am not a fan of the Potter, I am a fan of Faulkner. I am a fan of Lewis Carrol, of Edward Lear, of Rudyard Kipling, but I am not a fan of mediocrity, which this clearly, according to me, is.
all i can say is hell yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
Right so parents are forcing their children to read Harry Potter?Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
I'm not denying Harry Potter has been shrewdly marketed, but the series is successful precisely because the book appeals to children. If it didn't appeal to children - i.e. they didn't enjoy reading Harry Potter - then it wouldn't be successful.
While I take your point about 8 year olds not having $50 (did the books really cost that much? I bought mine in hardback for £8.50, about $17), I think you may not be altogether correct. The early HP phenomenum spread in the UK through word of mouth - it was the children themselves who passed on the message. Rowling's original target audience were the children who were of an age with Harry himself, the eleven, twelve year olds and these children do have pocket money, or at least many of them do, and some of them are already in the book buying mode. I don't think my grandson was alone in using his pocket money on books - he asked his mother if it was possible to order a book; she replied that it was and on learning that he wanted to order book two of the HP series, suggested that he waited until it came out in paperback when it would be cheaper. No, was his reply, he wanted to read it as soon as possible and didn't want to wait; he then went on to point out that his mother had always said he could spend his pocket money on whatever he wanted and she could hardly object to his wanting a book. (That boy will go far!)Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
I agree that the later hype was fuelled by the publicists but the first few books were sold as books - the films didn't start to appear until later. Also don't underestimate the pest power of children who want to be part of a trend. I would have been a bit doubtful about putting the books in front of younger children, especially the later books which are very dark. Interestingly, the Philip Pullman books were also a word of mouth success among children themselves but never caught on in the same way partly I suspect because they are much darker and more difficult to read and the readership stayed with older children - even the film has not created a similar surge of interest in the books. I would never have recommended them to younger children, especially the last title, The Amber Spyglass, which I would have found deeply disturbing as a child.
As for the Lit Crit reaction to the books, I can't help remembering Dorothy Parker's assessment of The House At Pooh Corner - she produced a response that she hoped would show how sophisticated she was -'Tonstant Weader threw up' - and was ridiculed from all sides, as people pointed out the books were written for children not New York literati.
With regard to children catching the reading habit young, I can only say as a former teacher of children to the age of eleven, the younger they start finding pleasure in books, the more likely they are to carry on reading. I knew I had 'caught' them when I heard them laugh at something they were reading for themselves. As for whether they go on to read anything of quality, I suspect that depends entirely on the teaching they receive subsequently on how to judge books, or any other experience for that matter.
Hhmm - so are we to deduce from this that you have not read HP, JBI?Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
That you are criticising books you have not actually read?
who are you calling ignorant? you have an opinion, which you have kindly spouted here, and you are biased beyond a doubt AGAINST Harry Potter, so does that make you ignorant too?Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
I agree that Harry Potter is never going to be in any literary canon (nor should it) and I agree that for an adult, to read Harry Potter is to not read something else... however, the criticism of Harry Potter by literary critics is the same - to borrow your analogy - as a restaurant critic going into McDonalds and complaining because the cheeseburgers are not made from foie gras and caviar. They are massively missing the point.