The Harry Potter Topic

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Gosh can't believe we don't have this one yet So which book is your favorite?

I haven't read Goblet of Fire yet so I'll go with Prisoner of Ak-whatever. Mostly for it's length. The first two just seemed to short (for a college student/grad) but prisoner's length let the story grow more. I do like how she tries to hid who the real villin is and give a couple red herings.

 

That is good to hear. I am reading the first one now and have not been enchanted by it the way that I had hoped. I was afraid that the book would have trouble living up to the hype, and it has.

I was not planning on reading any more of them, but I think I will give it a go.

 

I like the last one the best becuase of the suspence. It's also very long. 732 pages I think. The older Harry gets the better the books get it seems. Does anyone know when the next one come's out?

 

Though the fourth one might be slightly better. I still like the ending of the 3rd book. I couldnt let go off the book. It was the best. Does anyone know when the new book is coming out?

 

I believe that she said summer this year, but I may be mistaken.

 

I like the last one the best, except for the crappy and horrible use of irony in the last chapter. Titling the last chapter "The Beginning"?

 

Harry Potter is just too commercial for me. I'll never read them.

 

yeah its turning into a pokemon like saga. i shudder to think of how commercialised it will be soon

 

I must - must! - express my opinion on Harry Potter.

Now, there are people who say, "Harry Potter sucks," and they've never read the books - and probably don't know how anyway. But I have read the books - and my opinion and attitude by both Rowling and her childish slop worsened every minute.

The first book would have been an exciting additive to the life of a fourth-grader. Instead, it was smeared in the faces of all society, due to communique coincidence - and soon became, instead of useful, creative literature, a popular hazard to the health of the older literatures - the more depthful stories that had reached grey hair instead of adolesence, figuratively. Harry Potter influenced the ignorant public as a wind would lean trees, convincing most people that literature was, indeterminably, always going to be Harry Potter.
J.R.R Tolkien has been compared literarily to Rowling, who wrote her first story on a napkin. A note here: Tolkien made his own language, which was much more complex than his country's, and a complete world which is more vast in imagination than the Forgotten Realms and smaller in the understanding of the public than Don Quixote. Rowling's Harry Potter was the opposite: a blend of all things common to society's small-minded mythical knowledge and a large begging for its love - and its money - both of which would be gained easily, because society was itching for easy-to-read brainwash portable television.
Literature is an art. Writing is a verb. Harry Potter is mere writing, as its main pinnacle is entertainment, and only serves to go as far as a person can be entertained. There is reason Harry Potter should be an additive to the discussions of inclined literary circles; instead, it should be on the bookshelves of fourth-graders or at their schools. Hearing it discussed by men and women who belong to adulthood - bragged about, even - makes me disgusted. Besides the exceptions of common study of mass money-making socialism based around the most susceptible-to-influence youths of the world, Harry Potter is useless as a form of creative information to a person who reads for insight instead of hand-held television.
It has become a plague of merchandising - and whether that can be tracked down to Rowling or not, it has become as a demon and possessed the soul of the word "Reading". I've seen people walking around public streets wearing shirts that have advertisements for Harry Potter scrawled all across them - or merely HP for a less syllabrically-intensive workout, as that's what all the readers are lusting for. Toys of Harry, hardcover books dropping into the greedy hands of society by the millions... and here's the bottome line: Rowling is a billionaire.
If a writer who is a true philosopher becomes a billionaire off of cheap trinkets and T-shirt sales, then he is not a writer or philosopher, but a politician, a merchant, a scoundrel, and a manipulating conformist. Has Rowling become rich off of an expensive and extremely-popular movie, T-shirts, and cheap trinkets? Yes.
By reading Harry Potter, a person limits his own view of the literate world - as children's tales. Fans eagerly await the next "HP" book and then despise the classical runes of time - forget about Steinbeck, Bierce, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Poe... and concentrate on making more money to buy even more Harry Potter T-Shirts.
Is this entertainment? Yes - and well it is, at that - but it is an imbuation of childishness into a world greatly needing good literature. It is a disgrace to the classics and a force-feeder to their own readers. It'll make me scream if I see another person with an HP T-shirt and an HP hat and HP shoes carry around a copy of Lord of the Rings because they think it'll be another cheap entertainment ripoff like Harry Potter - mostly because of the popular new movie that should be called "Blunt-minded Society's Personal Version of Lord of the Rings." Harry Potter is a book written for fourth-graders, and as such, is being greatly abused.

 

Well, I have to say that GoF is my fave, followed closely by PoA and CoS. Sirius rocks! As does Tom Riddle...
By the way, why do you think that people have so many -us names? Sirius, Remus, Severus, Lucius, Rubeus... ??

Ara
(Trying to survive 1,5 hourds more...)

 

I read the books, and they are good. I am a child, though sometimes I can act like I'm not(that's a dif story... ) I am disgusted all these companies are making these little stupid harry potter toys though. But I still think the books are good and just because there is a movie on it and tiny action figurines, it doesn't mean Rowling is to be blamed. The fact that one writer cannot stop 3 to 4 whole factories in making them is sensible. But I don't think Rowling should be compared to J.R.R. Tolkien because Tolkien's books are hard-core fantasy while Rowling's books are society in our world mixed with society in Neverneverland.

 

It's not even as if Rowling is the one pushing the merchandise aspect of this whole thing. Warner Bros. has some rights to it, last I checked, as well as the publishing company.

All she did was write something and sell it to the right people. She is a talented writer, she wrote something that people like. Luck and talent.

The story is endearing and witty, without being "heavy". Not everything has to be serious, it's a kid's book. Adults who analyze things too much should stay out of children's literature, an leave it for those of us who just like to read.

(Just to stay on topic, I don't have a favorite, the whole series isn't out yet. I like them all, so far.)

[This message has been edited by Damona Silvercloud (edited March 13, 2002).]

 

Taluntain:

Answer 1: I must've been a bit vague - that's exactly what I meant to say.

Answer 2: "You can definitely not say oh, the books are terrible and merchandise only makes it wose".

I do say this - the books were terrible to me as reading matter (they were contentless but for imaging I could behold on the godless Television) and the merchandising discouraged me even more after I read them and the hype was abirth. I see nothing wrong here - you said that it is fine to be disgusted with the $$$ made in the process of writing - and I am. I find it obliterating to my judgement of personal classification that Miss Rowling has made more than one billion dollars off of Harry Potter - something no writer, not even Stephen King and his offspring, have accomplished. Perhaps a person needs an income of money - but many writers see money as a thing to argue against. Argument and action make something literature instead of childrens' slop, except in very few cases, 'HP' not included.

 

I love- LOVE- children's literature, or "Kiddie Lit" as my mom the English teacher calls it. I particularly like the work of Edith Nesbit, Madeleine L'Engle, and Ursula LeGuin. But I hate - HATE- Harry Potter books. I read them all because so many people whose literary opinions I normally agree with liked them, and kept hoping I could finally please my friends by saying, "good call! This Harry Potter is great stuff!". But I just couldn't like the protagonists. They seemed evil to me. I didn't like that people without magic were portrayed as stupid and worthy of contempt. I didn't like that Harry Potter punished his "enemies" among the other children by inflicting terrible curses on them. I especially didn't like that his little girlfriend, Hermione, was portrayed as an unpleasant character while she acted in a Lawful Good fashion and as a heroine as soon as she started lying and cheating. It might have only mildly turned me off from an author of grown-up fiction, but these terrible moral examples are being urged upon children. J.K. Rowling was once called on this by a kiddie-lit reviewer, and her response was, "I don't write for kids, it's not my fault if my books are marketed that way". To me, this was the last straw. Especially after the first book was such a big hit, there is no way she can disclaim responsibility for her books being read by children. I won't read any more Harry Potter, EVER.