The last few days have seen the 20th anniversary of the publication of the first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, and I was wondering what the site feels about Gryffindor’s most famous alumnus
Me, I’m a fan. I’ve read the books and I like a couple of things about J.K Rowling. First, I like the fact that she’s a bit of a nerd. She realises that for successful world building the devil is in the details, so she gives you them. Pages and pages of them, from Quidditch rules to the names (and profiles) of the pubs in Hogsmere. It’s the main reason why the books get bigger and bigger towards the end, as she ensures that every loose end that’s out there is tied up.
I also like the films, though I’m not a fan of how they get darker (and greyer) as they go through the books, but that’s because I’m a it tired of all this “dark=serious” that you see in fantasy and super hero films over the last couple of decades. The Prisoner of Azkaban is my favourite, which has a light touch yet which channels a bit of the old Universal and Hammer Horror towards the end.
Harry Potter is of course, this generation’s own equivalent of Star Wars or (and I may regret saying this), The Beatles. I have a nephew and niece who grew up with the books, and now i their 20s, they get a bit starry eyed and nostalgic when he’s brought up. They will probably grow out of it (*sips from Chewbacca mug*).
The second thing I like about J.K. Rowling has to do with the effect of the books. I remember in the 90s how we would frequently hear people complaining that kids would never read books any more because they had no attention spans because of video games and TV blah blah. Then within a couple of years the kids were queueing up at Waterstone’s at midnight to buy the latest copy of one of those books they weren’t supposed to be interested in any more.
I’ve never read the books but both my kids have. We have the DVDs, half of which we’ve never watched.
The audiobooks, however, have sustained us on many long return trips to the Scottish highlands. The only downside is I find Stephen Fry’s voice tends to make me sleepy – not ideal when you’re ploughing along the A1.
In America the voice of Potter audio books is Jim Dale.
Accio Nookie!
I hear that in the US audio books the houses are Ravingclaw, Hufflemuff, Slideitin and I can’t think of one for Gryffindor, sorry Moose.
I think you can get those as a remastered three CD set – “Whitesnake – The Geffen Years”.
I agree. I loved reading the earlier ones to my kids and, when they were old enough to read by themselves, reading the later ones by myself.
I also like the fact that JK Rowling is generally a good egg.
Oh Harry Potter is unequivocally a good thing. I was in bookselling when the first 5 came out and the third one was when it all kicked off (Azkaban, by common consent the best one, before JKR got too powerful to edit). I was only vaguely aware of the books, but order 50 of the hardback fro my shop, and that was fine. It took us about 3 weeks to sell those, so a very successful book and time to reorder more stock when we ran low.
By the time the fourth came out publication day was a big even, with a thousand or so ordered on our behalf by head office. By the time of the fifth the publication date was partly decided by the logistics of finding enough rolling stock so deliveries could be coordinate.
It was a thrill when those later books were published to see the whole high street full of kids, and adults, wandering into random bits of street furniture because they were so engrossed. I don’t particularly care if that’s all those kids ever read for pleasure, I’m just glad that at least the did.
That said, I did read all of them and also think JKR is a very, very lucky woman. I found them entertaining but more than a bit clunky, in particular the ‘he said’ ‘she said’ dialogue, and the way that major parts of the Hogarth nytholgy, apparently key to how the universe worked, could be dropped into books and form the basis of plots.
Not a fan myself, largely because I find the writing so poor. I gave up at #4 (i.e. when they started to get veery long). I know it’s ostensibly a kids’ book, but they are not exactly up there with the children’s classics, be honest.
Of course they are. The writing isn’t showy, but it’s not poor by any stretch of the imagination.
They just aren’t. You think they are in the same league as Roald Dahl, EB White, RL Stevenson….?
These are books that can be read & enjoyed by adults. For my money, the HP books… aren’t.
Yes, yes and yes.
So we agree then. Huzzah! 😉
To expand:
The only one in your list who is comparable is Dahl. It’s very hard to fault him. But there’s an underlying misanthropy to some of his stuff which makes it a bit hard to take much joy in it, sometimes. He gets kids, absolutely – he knows they love it nasty, and violent, and even nihilistic. But there’s a “we”-feeling in Rowling that he doesn’t have, a sense of a society, of a collective responsibility to one another. I’ll agree that Dahl’s actual prose has a distinct “yep, that’s him” quality to it which Rowling’s maybe lacks, but I really do feel we’re into the “winning on points” territory there.
I love Stevenson at his best – who couldn’t? – but he wrote a load of dross as well as Treasure Island. Kidnapped is his next best, and it’s turgid as hell, and not fabulously well written. Try getting a kid to read it. It’s just not terribly engaging. The only world he really constructed perfectly out of whole cloth is the world of TI. Even Jekyll and Hyde, which is great in terms of its psychological insight, isn’t a rip-roaring page turner (despite being incredibly short). Who’s ever read St Ives? Prince Otto? Nobody, that’s who. Cos they’re not very good. He’s often, very often, pretty bloody dull, is old RLS.
EB White wrote two books of note for children, of which only one can surely be mentioned in the same breath as anyone truly great. I think holding him up as a “great” on the basis of Charlotte’s Web is hard to justify IMO. It’s a very good book. One very good book.
Am I saying JKR is faultless? Course not. I think her ear for dialogue could be improved. But I honestly feel like that’s it. Is she a lyrical, figurative weaver of gossamer description? No. But she also isn’t setting out to be. Her forte is character and plot, not prose stylings. Her language, as Bingo says below, is precisely as good as it needs to be.
Oops, forgot Arabian Nights. They’re good. Some of them. 😉
I got the impression she was leaned on to write the latter ones quickly, hence they ended up looking a bit first-drafty. She should have gone the George RR Martin route and taken her sweet time.
I doubt it. Because the key readership was young it made sense for her to write them before the readers grew too old, but I know from discussions with reps that at least on the sales side they were told that each book would be ready when she was and not to a schedule.
Oh. Well then there really is no excuse. Said Leicester Bangs confusedly.
“Going the George RR Martin route”, as far as I can tell, means filling your books with pointless crap and making them 82 times longer than the actual story requires (yeah, I know the same charge can be levelled at Order of the Phoenix). But still – we. Don’t. Care. About. The. Iron. Islands.
The GRRM books are fun for the first couple, but god, they become hard work later on. He’s hardly Thomas Pynchon, despite his obvious desire to write “literature”. The TV show is vastly superior, which tells you everything you need to know: the reverse is true in JKR’s case – the films are so much weaker and less enjoyable than the books.
I just meant in terms of taking her time. The later HP books read like rush-jobs to me. I take Gatz’s first-hand experience, but there’s a distinct lack of polish, and this is not just Rowling’s fault, it’s also down to the editing and copy-editing.
Ah, I see – soz! Yeah, I know what you mean. I certainly felt the OOTP felt rushed and unedited, but that quality control returned with a vengeance in Half Blood Prince.
I think JK Rowling is fabulous and Harry Potter is a great thing. Controversial I know, but I like to stir shit up.
Harry Potter books were one of the first things me and my wife bonded over. I was in my early twenties when they appeared, and by the time the third one was out I had heard of them, but of course hadn’t read them. Why would I? They were for kids. But I met my wife who, at the time, was a children’s bookseller in Glasgow and she pressed them onto me in the early days of courtship. Obviously I had no choice, when someone you really fancy presses books on you, you better read them.
And I can say I was completely caught out. I stopped reading childrens books when I was about ten because I was pissed off that all they ever did was be all preachy. Even Roald Dahl; reading bloody Charlie and The Chocolate Factory was like having a finger wagged at you by a disapproving teacher and CS Lewis, the fucking trendy vicar? “Hey Kids! Jesus is a lion!” Just bugger off, that was an outright betrayal when I found out about that. Sneaking Jesus onto me? Unforgivable. So I had low expectations, I was expecting grimly moralistic stuff about how learning magic is just like learning how to share your toys or something like that.
Which meant I didn’t even spot that Quirrell was (SPOILER ALERT) the baddie.
Now I am a sophisticated person. I have read Ulysses and understood some of it. I have read War and Peace and actually enjoyed it. I even read Moby Dick without skipping the lengthy descriptions of how a whaler works. Not spotting a twist like that truly was a bit disgraceful.
My point is when I read Harry Potter I was completely wrong footed in a good way, so JK won me over rather swiftly. Because of her, I read Philip Pullman, who is a genuine, fourteen carat genius. Because of him I read Alan Garner who I now think is the greatest living novelist in the UK today.
She has probably done something similar to at least three generations of readers now, as she did to me. Opened their minds. I basically became a less snobbish reader. I married the woman who introduced me to this writer. And so whilst doing nothing but good, JK Rowling became a billionaire. She’s proof that sometimes the good guys win.
And final comment, my wife has met JK’s editor. “There was an awful lot of Quidditch in that last book wasn’t there?” was her opening remark. The reply? “BUT I TOOK SO MUCH OUT!”
This.
I think it’s terribly easy to do the sniffy AS Byatt routine about Rowling, but the fact is her world is complete in every detail, her characterisation is deep and complex and often ambivalent, her “message” isn’t overtly preached, and when you read an HP novel, you’re immersed.
I came to them relatively late: Goblet of Fire was actually the first one I read. I was resistant, feeling a bit “oh, I don’t like the hype”, but god, they sucked me in. I went right back to Philosopher’s Stone, and by the time I’d finished Azkaban, I was ready to read GoF again. I’ve read all of them more than once – I’m a big re-reader anyway, but won’t re-read something I didn’t pretty much unqualifiedly love.
And I’m not easily pleased. I have a very low tolerance for trash fiction. I am, I’m afraid, a bit of a book snob. You couldn’t pay me to read half the shite on the bestseller list, I’ve been a book nerd since I was about 8. (I’m sufficiently book-nerdy to have done an English Lit degree at a good uni and then volunteer to teach the subject, after all!) I suppose what I’m saying is I don’t think JKR is good compared to Maeve Binchy or EL James or something: she’s good. She’s very, very good.
While we’re on the “classics”, has anyone actually read any of the Narnia books barring LWW recently? They’re really quite poor. LWW is lovely, but is hardly going to win prizes for dialogue or characterisation. Even its descriptions are pretty pedestrian. And the rest of the Narnia books are honestly horribly ham-fisted – if you celebrity-deathmatched CSL and JKR, she’d skin him alive. Similarly Tolkien, for all his imagination, is a shocking writer of prose.
Of the most recent crop of children’s fiction giants, Pullman is clearly the best “writer” writer, for my money. He’s absolutely incredible. But he’s hobbled by his agenda, which makes The Amber Spyglass a far less good story than it should be. Northern Lights, however, is surely one of the best novels ever published in English.
But what Rowling has achieved is stunning. She almost single-handedly revitalised the book market, and not just for children. She’s like Stephen King: a writer of fabulous (if sometimes inconsistent) talent who, once all the contemporary critique has died down, will be remembered like Dickens. Plus, she’s just so clearly a great person, and someone you really feel deserves all the money (most of which she’s given away, btw).
Oh, and the Cormoran Strike novels are fantastic, too. She’s not a one-trick pony.
Completely agree about The Amber Spyglass by the way. Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife are as good as Treasure Island or Huckleberry Finn, but Pullman got all preachy by number 3. But he did kill God in a kids book so, swings and roundabouts…
The first two are fantastic, but let’s be clear: NOTHING is as good as Huck Finn.
I’m going through a bit of a “kids books” phase at the moment.
Did The Lion, The Witch… with Little Jr the Elder last year, having avoided it throughout my own childhood as something that felt suspiciously as if it were intended for properly brought up kids. It was…. OK. Shorter than I’d imagined, and the world building wasn’t all that. Plus, for all the rep, the writing was pretty meh.
We then moved on to Potter. I genuinely don’t see how these books can be seen as anything other than a Very Good Thing. They’re exactly as well written as they need to be, they’re full of wit and imagination, they synthesize a long and illustrious history of British boarding school tales (going right back to Tom Brown) while adding to them, and – most importantly of all – they bring absolute joy to kids, and do so via the written word. More important still, it’s the joy of seeing a great imagination fully and exuberantly deployed, which is one of the greatest spectacles a child can ever hope to witness.
In my professional life I’ve had some dealings with Rowling’s people, and have met her (briefly) once. She’s one of the most enormously impressive human beings I’ve ever come across, in terms of her sense of duty to her audience, her determination to ensure quality control in respect of her creation (and turn down heaps of cash to preserve said quality control) and also her refusal to take herself too seriously. She’s been on an extremely wild ride, and remained a decent person, with her principles largely intact. Never mind Hermione, she’s the one you point your daughter to, as far as I’m concerned.
Pullman, I have read for the very first time this year, currently a hundred pages from the end of the Amber Spyglass. It’s all absolutely wonderful and I wish I’d read it when I was a bit younger – the scale of it all is just beyond thrilling. Agree that Northern Lights seems to be the pick of them (so far), and intrigued to see what the new one will be like.
I will check out Alan Garner on ganglesprocket’s recommendation above, and will also give a shout here for the magnificent Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Absolutely mind-blowing read when you’re ten years old and looking for something utterly vicious and amoral.
Oh, and can I just say shame on Moose for (thus far) overlooking “I met my wife who, at the time, was a children’s bookseller in Glasgow and she pressed them onto me in the early days of courtship”. You’re slipping, old bean.
I missed that. Along with the thing about taking so much out. I be shame.
I don’t wanna be having a dig at JKR because I genuinely love her, and Harry Potter, and I echo all the good things that have been said about her — except one. Because the idea that there was a great deal of quality control around those books is just bonkers. She’s said herself that she wishes she’d taken more time over them.
I didn’t mean the books. I meant everything subsequent/ancillary to the books. She’s absolutely all over it.
Ah, soz.
No worries! I’m not at the end of the books yet, so can’t comment on the later ones.
Orson Scott Card is an arse.
He is indeed. And all his other books are dross, sadly.
Reading the Dahl as a kid I was absolutely thrilled that James’s rotten old aunts got killed by a giant peach. It was both satisfying and absurd.
And he made friends with creepy crawlies . As we all should.
It gave us kids queuing up outside bookshops. Unbelievable! She may have saved the book trade singlehanded, for a while anyway.
I read and enjoyed the books. I’ll watch the films any time they’re on. I don’t quite understand why it became so huge – it’s incredibly derivative for a start – but if I did I suppose I’d be in publishing.
I hear you on the derivative thing – Worst Witch etc – but it’s just more complete and more involving than its antecedents. Tradition and the Individual Talent, dear boy 😉
I think the whiff of familiarity sold it to parents, and grownups generally.
I haven’t read them of seen the films, but I remember falling out of a nightclub in Exeter at shortly after midnight and seeing a line of junior wizards streaming into WH Smiths and out again, and as they came out most of them were already reading. Thats a pretty amazing thing.
I remember stumbling out of nightclubs and seeing wizards. And goblins, fairies and elves.
Just say no, kids.
Were you looking at a Roger Dean album cover?
Somebody asked me a question and the only word they could get out of me was Osibisa….
I’ve never read any of the books (or am I likely to) or seen any of the films – I can’t even recall seeing any clips of them on other TV shows which seems odd. As a result, it seems very odd every time I drive past Harry Potter world (less than a mile from where I was born and grew up) and see the car park full of coaches and there’s always a themed double decker bus about to disgorge another load that has been brought from Watford Junction. The whole thing has passed me by. Perhaps I ought to watch a film to see what the fuss is about but I’m a little put off by my (possibly unfounded) perception that it’s aimed at people that might also appreciate the Lord Of The Rings or similar. It’s a fine thing that it’s helped keep bookshops open though.
Forget the films. Read the first book.
This. This this this.
The films are the decaff latte version of the books. Fine if you’ve read them, but a terrible introduction to Harry Potter.
The films are (understandably) hurried affairs, which miss out a lot. I’d imagine that watching one without having first read the books would be confusing, disappointing and actually rather boring in places.
That seems an odd way to go about making a film. I’m not a book reader so I wonder how many other films I’ve thought were shit needed me to have read a book first.
It is DEFINITELY not aimed at LOTR fans. It’s aimed at people who enjoy great, engaging writing, story and character, so that rules them out. 😉
Forget the LOTR books. Listen to the Radio 4 adaptation.
Mega!
Get the LP set! Mega mega!
Only the second most improbable drama series ever on radio 4. After The Archers.
I’ve been to the studio trip twice and thought it was great both times.
That gift shop, though — bloody hell. They magic the money out of your account.
haha, don’t they just. Accio all your fucking cash.
The studio tour is properly ace.
Girl child has requested the tour for her/their 15th birthday. I’m bracing my wallet.
This has also lead to her reading a book for the first time since Diary of a Wimpy Kid (she has watched the movies umpteen times). This is a very good thing. She was devouring the first one and worried she would finish before our holidays (I bought her #2) – amazed at the extra detail that isn’t in the movies. She might just see the point of books, eventually.
I think she’s great and the Harry Potter books are most definitely to be applauded. She’s not always the most elegant writer and a lot of the magic stuff comes off as no more than a mildly witty twist on well-worn fantasy fiction devices, but that’s more than offset by her displaying mastery in two areas: one, the brilliant long-term plotting that frequently pays off in a delightfully unexpected manner and two, she’s got the absolute measure of the unfairnesses and arbitrary cruelties of childhood and is able to put the pain of those sort of experiences across as well as anyone I’ve read.
ooh that last one is a great point.
I have to give some major credit to an author who makes kids really keen to read. All over the world.
I remember talking to a Swedish lad (he must have been 11 or 12) who was a fan. There was no way he was going to wait a year until the book was translated into Swedish: he was reading them in English.
I am definitely a fan. I read all the books for my own pleasure. A tad long’winded in places perhaps, but she knows how to tell a story and create interesting characters.
Part of my family’s growing up and very much loved. I took my youngest to the play last year and it was terrific. No spoilers but if you are a Potter fan you’ll love it
I took the family to see the play too. Fair bankrupted me but was absolutely bloody magical.
JKR single-handedly gave a lifeline to bookshops.
In terms we can understand: is she the Adele of literature?
Not really. The huge sales all came on the day of publication, and cost cutting was so savage that no one on the bookshop end of things actually made any money from those. Lots of fun of course, but not really a second Christmas for the bookshops.
Coming back from a Cornish holiday about 10 (?) years ago, it was seriously Stepford wives/creepy seeing about 50% of the train (mainly adults) reading the Harry Potter that had come out that weekend.
They do look awfully long but JKR seems, as stated above, a good egg.
If an ideal album length is 30 mins, what’s the ideal book length?
287 pages.
About 135mm, I’d say.
My benchmark on pretty much anything is that Kubrick got the Great War, all of it, down to 88 minutes.
Taut, tight, no flab; shorter duration than a football match.
Anything time-heavy (apart from Test Cricket), and I find myself thinking, “hmm, do I actually really need all this, when Kubrick managed to get the Great War etc. etc….?”
Probably unfair, but saves a colossal amount of time.
This.
Films in general are too bloody long.
Probably the greatest film ever made is The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film. It lasts 10 minutes. That’ll do me, chief.
*thwack*
(that was for Skirky)
I like to think I know a little bit about “proper literature” (which undoubtedly means I don’t) but I read the first Harry Potter because my kids (and GLW) told it was a great story. I read it in a day sat on the banks of Lake Bala because I couldn’t put it down and every book from then on became a family event.
Its like a big film blockbuster franchise – great fun but don’t start digging too deep. It also got two of my three boys reading when I was pulling my fast-diminishing hair out trying to encourage them (the other one never had his nose out of a book), and for that alone I would be eternally grateful to JKR (and she’s one of the soundest multi-millionaires I know)
I read vast tracts of it to Twang Jr when he was little and have sat through most of the films, but I lasted about 10 pages trying to read it for my own pleasure. Mrs. T has read them and TJ dozens of times but it’s just not my bag, well done as it is. I do find the steady morphing of Hermione’s nose over time quite funny though.
I was at the right age (i.e. on the cusp of Primary/Secondary school) when the first Harry Potter book was released, but of course I wasn’t part of the zeitgeist so it wasn’t until a few years later (around the time of the 1st film) that I first became aware of them. I’ve always been far more interested in the books and wouldn’t recommend watching the films straight after you’ve read the corresponding book. The books are good, and like them or not, JK Rowling (probably) did wonders for children’s reading between 1997 – 2007, far more than any teacher could’ve done on their own. Having said that, I’ve always prefered Roald Dahl and have never subscribed to the Pottermania collective that continutes.
My chance to be sniffy and superior. Top ho! Nothing I like more. So here goes: Harry Potter is aimed at kids. I fail to see why an adult would be interested. (See also: comics and films based on comics and One Direction and anything else aimed at 12 year-olds.) So, that’s that sorted. Yes.
Have you read them?
I started the first one, but gave up. I find that whole world (magic and wizards) a massive turn off.
…My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.
I like that. Is that from the first one?
Federico Garcia Lorca
Expelliarmus!
You’re not sniffy and superior, you just recognise dreary writing when you see it.
Hey – don’t mess with his self-image, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
*sigh* taking the bait.
I like the Harry Potter series. Do I take them seriously? No. Did I enjoy them? Yup. Enough to read them all.
Do I read comics? You betcha. Some of the best reading I get is via that medium.
Do I watch comic book movies? You betcha. Wonder Woman will be one of the films of this year.
I’m OK with people disliking specific publications or movies on specific grounds. But the dismissal of entire genres seems…intellectually lazy and snobbery of the worst kind.
Some of the Judge Dredd runs – Necropolis, The Long Walk, The Dead Man – stand up to any ‘written’ book. The casual, lazy dismissal of Charley’s War smacks of ignorance of the worst kind. It’s accessible, and it looks at WW1 from the angle of the ordinary bloke and his family. How many text books can you summon that did that? And did it in a ‘kid’s’ collection? Pat Mills arguably did more for kids of that generation than Tony Robinson did. When the Monocled Mutineer came around, I already knew most of it because of Mills and Colquhoun.
The first, and indeed second, Superman movies (the Reeve ones) are good movies by any standard. They stand up as good questions of what it means to be human. As I said before, I think WW is one of the movies of the year. A superhero movie that finishes on a note of hope, that manages to get through an entire movie without unnecessarily sexualizing the female lead.
Harry Potter may well be derivative in some areas – and for those interested, I urge you to check out the Luke Kirby book coming out later this year. If you look at the entire run, the concepts of loyalty, friendship, the nature of death are all explored in a way that make them accessible to all.
I don’t get the ‘virtue’ of sniffing at these things; as I said, it strikes me as being lazy. I (like DisappointmentBob) am a reader. I didn’t do Lit at University, but I have read all my life, and extensively. My collection is in storage right now, and I’m paying $170 a month to look after my 1300 books. I have a LOT of comic books. I equally have a lot of ‘serious’ books – Moon programme; the English Civil War (with particular reference to the emergence of the Levellers and their ilk); Founding Fathers; the development of the Atom Bomb and its scientists. My point is not that ‘hey! I read important books’ but that books, of all sorts should occupy us all.
Dismissing entire genres out of hand is the worst kind of critical review. It’s ill-informed.
I don’t think there’s a big difference between enjoying a J.K. Rowling book aimed at 12 year olds and enjoying a Lennon & McCartney song aimed at 13 year olds.
“The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn’t betray it I’d be ashamed of myself.” Noam Chomsky said that. So.
Has anyone dismissed an entire genre out of hand? I’m sure it goes on all over the place, but I haven’t seen it on this thread.
Gary’s post upthread from mine
Yep.
I really like the production design side of the films. I think the world they create is absolutely fantastic. I also like many of the characters in the films. The problems I have with the films is that they’re too long and after the Prisoner of Azkaban I struggled to find anything like an interesting storyline. I thought the scripts and whatever posed as a story were very poor. All style and no substance I think is the term.
As for the books, maybe I’d have read them if I was 10 years old again, but the books do look a little long, so if the writing in the books was as poor as the writing in the films I can’t imagine that I’d have got very far with them without getting bored.
As I say though, the production design is fab and I really enjoyed the studio tour, but I can understand what someone said in an above comment that JKR is one very lucky lady.
I’ve been to the ‘Potter world’ part of Universal Studios in Orlando, which is fab and very well done. At JKR’s insistence, it is perhaps the only place in the USA that you cannot buy Coca-cola or Pepsi (except possibly Utah). For that alone she deserves applause.
Anent the films, I did wonder whether, by the final books, she had the cinema in mind. I remember reading The Battle of Hogwarts and thinking that it was going to look amazing on screen.
We were in Orlando last year. You’re right, it’s very well done. Astonishing projection on the rides and the train was brilliant.
The actual Harry Potter ride was spectacular, I thought – real state of the art stuff. Even the queuing area had a level of detail that was on a par with Disney.
We also (this was about 5 years ago, admittedly) took advantage of the phenomenon of it draining away early visitors from the rest of Universal. Strolled onto Hulk, Spiderman etc. rides with nary a queue.
When the books first came out I hated them for two reasons.
One, they glorified boarding schools and having been to one, the picture painted in the books was far shinier than my experience – making it seem like a gloriously larky fairground ride where there’s only fun, excitement and a little bit of danger to add an edge.
Two, the stories were so derivative of the things I grew up enjoying – cramming a whole menagerie of magic creatures into one world, but worse than that, completely ripping off the one author not yet mentioned above – Ursula Le Guin and the Earthsea trilogy (later expanded). For those not familiar, the story of a young orphan who travels to a wizard school, and slowly develops a mastery of magic, in the process unleashing and defeating malevolent forces. A dark story, Sparrowhawk’s grim travails and hard-won life experiences captured my imagination in a way that Potter’s escapades could not touch.
Having got that off my chest, I agree with the positive comments about JK Rowling being a good egg and the beneficial effect her books had on stimulating readers, young and old – just not this one.
Here are Le Guin’s thoughts.
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-ArtInfoTheftConfusion-Part2.html
Well if we are on the subject of derivativeness, Jim Dodge’s Stone Junction came out in 1990.
It’s about an orphaned boy with a scar on his forehead learning how to be a magician and his rather odd relationship with the man responsible for his mother’s death.
Ursula Le Guin is another writer I hadn’t read till after I had done Harry Potter. All I can say is I am bookish but was not brought up in a bookish house. All my knowledge kind of comes from the nooks and crannies of my own reading, and I have JK Rowling to thank for some of the most interesting I have explored in recent years.
I do think Le Guin is right though. A Wizard Of Earthsea is nothing like Harry Potter. It’s better, it’s certainly similar in places, but the whole is vastly different.
I greatly admire J.K. Rowling’s commitment to her young readership: when the series lifted off, it could have easily gone wrong trying to keep the sequels going, but she not only managed it, but the novels got better and more complicated as her readers grew up.
That said, they are not really my thing, to be honest: I don’t have kids, and don’t feel an urge to read children’s books. But, on a very self-interested note, there is a generation of Japanese (and Korean, and Chinese) students who have an interest in delving further into English Literature because of Harry Potter, which has given me a job for the past decade that I might not have expected.
There seems to be a clear divide between how the books have been devoured by your kids and how much you’ve enjoyed bonding with them over the books / films / amusement park rides , and the writing itself, largely damned with faint praise.
Which is a fair enough I guess.
Well I didn’t read ’em because they were kids books weren’t they – I mean I’m an adult (or I was back then). Then a friend who I respect said “You want to try these they’re really well written”. I resisted for some time but bought one to take on holiday and devoured the thing in about two days (mind you I made sure that nobody else could see the cover !). I then went down the route of getting them all as they came out – though I drew the line at queuing up at midnight along with several hundred kids dressed up as wizards ! I think they’re good books, well written and most enjoyable. Thought the films were “OK” but nothing more – mind you I haven’t seen the last three or four. I’ve read her “adult” books and they aren’t bad either. The Potter books are certainly a change from the normal style of “fantasy” novel most of which appear to be retreads of LOTR.
I am a big fan of Ms Rowling. Anyway, when this thread started I meant to post a recommendation for an excellent book that is clearly very influenced by Harry Potter, Donna Tartt (The Secret History) and Narnia but also moves into very adult content.
It is The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It is the first part of a trilogy but the first is the best. Well worth reading. It is set in a preppy New England college for magicians but is dark and immersive reading. There is a wonderful and memorable section where the students transform into large birds and fly south towards the Antarctic.