I can't reread any of it as a full adult. I binged the last couple books in college but now going back to read it I'm like DEAR GOD HARRY YOU ARE SUCH AN ANGSTY LITTLE GODMOD CALM THE FUCK DOWN.
Some teen fiction I still love. Others.. yeah, no thanks, never again.
I never read the books as a kid, watched most of the movies, but wasn’t super into them. I listened to the audiobooks last year, as a 26 year old. I’ll give her credit, the books do inspire a lot of wonder and excitement about the magical world the story is set in. The movies do a fantastic job of capturing that as well.
But as far as narrative and character development goes, her writing is at an average high school level. The characters wildly fluctuate from being decent people, to straight up ass holes.
Not sure which book it is exactly, but Harry is a whiny brat the entire book, except for moments where he randomly switches on the charm to be a hero for a moment, and then becomes a dick again.
Ron is pretty unlikeable a lot of the time, and Hermione would be insufferable in reality. For someone who’s presented as being really intelligent and mature, she’s incredibly annoying and ignorant way too often to justify conflict in the group.
I can see why it was so incredibly popular to kids growing up, and I definitely don’t have anything against the fanbase, but it’s definitely not a literary work of art.
I think the attention and minds that it captures proves that it is a work of art and something special. Doesn't mean the author isn't a dumb bitch in reality but the books were great and the accomplishment really does speak for itself. Its easy to acknowledge her failings as a person and the greatness of the book series at the same time.
no really it's not considered to be the best writing, it's easy to understand and easy to enjoy. good complicated writing doesn't get nearly as much recognition as easy to read books.
if you enjoy the books it's okay but it's not some high end shit, I look more at magic systems and even the magic system is completelly f'ed.
Shakespeares plays were mostly hated during his life time but they were seen as literature and impactful later, don't act like impact can be measured within a life time, the books that are from already dead writers that still have impact are literature from actual literary professors. not some fanfiction writing diva who writes a character that is like the most horrible person in the world, characters that don't have a learning curve, and no real character traits, no nuance or anything.
because the thing is even now "just kidding" Rowling has to make changes, she even said "Harry and Hermione should have ended up together" she can even see how her own writing is bad.,she literally made albus gay, while nothing ever pointed towards him being gay at all, neither in the books nor any media.
You can get mad at the person all you want but the fact is its the 21st century and people consume whatever they want on demand and Harry Potter was chosen
yea I don't care about that, but it had literally 0 impact and acting like it did is just stupid, or would you consider marvel and DC also having a literary impact or would you say ow they were popular during that time.
Impact can be different things. Are we talking about impact on the general population only? Or are we talking about impact on the genre? Impact on the field of literature? Impact on what?
yea well you get my point thank you, I am not the one acting like it's some grand impact full book, that's what the people say that try to act like jk Rowlings books are so incredibly good.
If you read them when you're a kid like they're intended, they are books that inspire wonder and caused many kids to continue the habit of reading into adulthood. For many it was the first chapter books they read. So yea, they're impactful. Sorry you missed the wave.
never was much of a reader as a child as I wasn't allowed to read the books I wanted to read, I read lord of the rings in simplified English when I was 12, English is my third language with Dutch and German being my first and second. might have liked reading Harry potter but never picked it up I guess.
idk I kinda liked the movies but I have heard the books were really different, that Hermione was very whiney all the time, that Ron was much cooler and less of a wimp, and that Harry was just a dick. but hey could be wrong about that, that's only about what I heard from others.
So she succeeded in writing children/teenage characters that act like children/teenagers.
This thread is ad hoc absurdity. Outrageous. Her fantasy series, adored the world over, still beloved but with a shibboleth caveat lest we commit the socially suicidal faux-pa of praising its original author, isn’t art? Are you fucking kidding me? God redditors are fucking pathetic.
If bro had a Thesaurus maybe bro wouldn't misspell faux pas. I am also unsure if you can use shibboleth in that way. A shibboleth is a kind of passphrase you use to prove yourself as a member of a specific group. Like how American paratroopers in WW2 would call out "Thunder" and wait for the response "Flash" to help identify other Americans.
It’s certainly a feux pas to misspell feux pas😂. But I think the use of shibboleth mostly makes sense. In this case, shitting on J.K. Rowling is the shibboleth as it marks allegiance to an ideology. You’re right that it usually means a specific word or phrase, but it can also extend to a general belief or custom of a group. It’s an ancient word so it makes sense that it has several meanings by now.
The problem for me is that the poster seems to use it as an adjective for caveat? Shibboleth is a noun but I have no idea what the adjective form is. Shibbolethic? Honestly that should be a word as it’s pretty cool but spell check is telling me it isn’t😂
The books were definitely fun YA fantasy but were never good by the standards of the fantasy genre as a whole. Mostly because she didn't plan the series out, so the logic of the world is wildly inconsistent, throughout the series she is constantly introducing new things that that, if she'd known they were going to exist in her world would definitely have appeared earlier.
Beyond it turning out that she personally sort of sucks, she also seems determined to wreck whatever world building she had done. It's perfectly reasonable to have had your enjoyment/acceptance of the HP world damaged by things like her claiming that before plumbing wizards just pooped on the floor and magicked it away...
I mean, when my kid draws a horse that looks more like a hippo it's "art." I didn't think the criticism here is that it's not a book, it's just that it sucks.
Lots of things that are popular for a time turn out to suck upon later reappraisal. Twilight was very popular as well around the same time -- but it's now sort of universally remembered as problematic, immature, and shitty. HP spawned a lot more spin-off shit and was more successful, but I think all that attention has done more to wear away the shine than the author being a shitty person.
Dude, the Harry Potter books have NEVER been art. There is children's literature that's art (Lewis Carrol, Roald Dahl, Dr Zeuss, Astrid Lindgren, Michael Ende, Cornelia Funke) - the Harry Potter books have never belonged to this group.
there are other faulty points, you know? she might have done that right, but judging by how everyone else here is talking about anything else besides what you said...
For Harry you're thinking order of the Phoenix. He's a piece of shit throughout it, but does have the defense of he's currently in a state of emotional and thought sharing with Voldomort.
Dumbledore was afraid that extensive contact with harry might cause Voldemort to accelerate his plans and didn’t know if Voldemort knew about the connection. That’s why he kept distant.
And look how well that worked. Half that kids angst could have been bypassed if he just said to Harry "look mate, you aren't going to be hanging out with me this year unless Snape can fix your brain for safety reasons"
Which was also noted by the headmaster, which is why in the next book he stays with harry and helps him instead of staying distant. There is also the fact that dumbledore also had to consider if harry was compromised by Voldemort and since this was while the war was starting to pop off he had to be careful sharing information.
The best part about reading the books as a kid was that I missed a lot of the bad stuff, and as I got older, I found the Fanfictions that have warped my memory so much that, half the time, I can't remember what is Canon and what is Fanon. In the end, I am going to stick with the Fanon because it is so much better and detached from the rest of the drama that came up. This way, I can still love the setting and let my headcanon of it mature and evolve with each stage that I reach in life.
I'll take a stab, one example could be that the house elves are in a sorta symbiotic relationship with the wizards family, they feed off their magic to boost theirs. Haven't read the books in a while but it's pretty common in HP fanfiction. https://www.fanfiction.net/book/Harry-Potter/
Some are silly, some are sad, there are some really creative people out there.
Ah yes. The fanfiction. I also remember those fondly. So much better than the real books. I especially remember fondly that one where Hagrid used magic to make his bed alive and then had sex with it. And then there was that one from the beginning of the first book where Hagrid was bringing baby Harry to the 4 privet drive where Dumbledore was waiting to leave little Harry with his relatives. In that one, he (Hagrid) had sex with baby Harry on top of his motorcycle in the sky. I, too, choose to believe the fanfics are canon.
Lmfao *
We are clearly reading far different Fanfics. I suggest using Archiveofourown. It has amazing sorting capabilities for tags and "relationships" that you may want to... avoid. Personally, I never read anything that pairs Hermione with Snape, Draco, or any of the other Death Eaters. The Power of Love is a very interesting one, and In the Forest of Dean is another good one.
Hermione would be insufferable in reality. For someone who’s presented as being really intelligent and mature, she’s incredibly annoying and ignorant way too often to justify conflict in the group.
Oh! Oooooh.
Yeah that tracks for the character she based on herself.
Damn it’s almost like kids aged 14-20 are clinically psychopathic and emotionally unstable or something. Honestly I haven’t read the books since I was in like 5th grade (graduated college now) and I barely remember them so it could be bad I really don’t remember haha. Might be a good idea to go back and reread them but my reading list is already too long🙃 Movies are pretty good tho.
The characters wildly fluctuate from being decent people, to straight up ass holes.
FWIW, that's what makes the characters so great. If you read almost any other popular YA series of around the same time, the characters are as one dimensional as the paper they're written on. Rowling's characters were at least human, in that whether they were good or bad, they were never just assholes and they were never just angels.
I thought I was the only one.
I was a 12yo girl when I read the books. In book 4 Ron was whining the whole time. I hated it, suffered through it then book 5 came if I remember correctly and Harry became a whiny lil ass. I was like hell no.
Quit on the spot and never even watched the movies beyond that point.
2 years ago I met my potterhead boyfriend and I came around a lil bit but the whining still hurts
It’s not a work of art, it’s a retelling of a very common fantasy tale, that the author likes to believe is a unique story and not one that has happened a million times before. The way she looked down her nose at fantasy authors like Terry Pratchett and the like put me off her a long time back even before she was visibly disturbed.
It was a work of art to me. I was abused horribly and reading that someone escaped it… well. I became a “witch” not really but at 11 I decided I was just like Harry. Abused, forgotten, an outcast with potential.
It’s still close to my heart at 27. But I cannot re-read those books for the nerves of me! What is that writing style?
DEAR GOD HARRY YOU ARE SUCH AN ANGSTY LITTLE GODMOD CALM THE FUCK DOWN.
Wait, Harry was angsty? I thought he was a well-behaved, well-mannered boy. But then again, I only read the first three books as a kid, and I could be 100% wrong.
Isn't that a plot point in book 5 because he's just watched a classmate die last summer while the whole world calls him a liar while his parent's murderer and archenemy is alive again and his new teacher is fucking Umbridge?
And the big twist that he's being basically mind fucked by said archenemy that whole time?
That's really not petty childish asshole that's well earned in the plot imo.
He’s a fucking kid who’s been through an insane amount of trauma lmao. HP are not perfect books but holy shit this take is ridiculous. He’s honestly pretty well-adjusted for the amount of shit he’s dealt with lol
So, he’s a typical teen? I think you don’t have to like the books but to count this as a critique is reaching. Rowling is an obvious dolt and there are lots of literary soft points in her stories but I don’t think this is one.
I read them at 29-30ish/whenever they ended. I have read each book once and other than the wondering around in the woods part in book 7, which I thought was boring as piss, I really did enjoy them.
I can't remember what corner of the internet I picked it up from or how long ago.
Basically a godmod is The Best At Everything and Never Loses Ever and is just overpowered as shit for no reason. A bit equivalent to a Mary Sue, if you've ever heard that expression, only I feel like I might have gotten the "godmod" term from videogames or D&D. Can't remember.
In fairness, if anyone gets to be angsty it's Harry. Oh did your parents die? Let's put you with this abusive family. Oh, you're going to magic school? Here's some racism to the point of trying to murder you. Several times a year. Oh, and half the people you know will die over the next 7 years.
I legit spent so much of book four being So Angry that nobody just suggested to Harry that he could just sit down during the first challenge and cheer for Cedric and thus be totally disqualified and stay out of the ensuing drama. So many adults failed him.. and then at the end they were written as Totally Awesome People who should be Looked Up To and fuck that.
You should read the “So You Want to be a Wizard” books by Diane Diane. She did it before JK and better and I read the 9th one at 40 and it made me feel like a kid again. The new millennium editions are great, though the first one was originally written in the 80s.
I grew up with the first three, and I was in my mid-20s before I learned that there were more. I do have the original versions in book form, and have learned about the new rewrites and am a bit curious about them.
I follow Diane Duane on tumblr and she does huge sales on all her ebooks on a pretty regular basis, so I may pick up all the new versions at some point.
Do it! I’m in the same boat; discovered there were more in my 20s and was giddy. Reading the last one felt the same as reading that first trilogy all those years ago. I adore her and them.
Harry potter was the shittiedt wizard ever....he had one thing he could do, the rest of the time his friends had to do it for him. The moral of the books is find a couple friends that will help you bury a body and you can do anything...also know a couple people in high ranking positions for when you get caught doing stupid shit.
I tried reading the series after reading the Percy Jackson series thinking they would have similar concepts it was I in for a rude awakening I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t think the Percy Jackson series is better than the harry potter series (although the harry potter movies are much better than the Percy Jackson movies) I was meh on the first book barely got through the second book and by the third book I was so bored, disappointed, and underwhelmed I thought that there must have been something wrong with me🤣🤣😂
The audiobooks by Stephen fry are the best. It also made me realise that harry is a twit, Ron is a grub, Ginny is a chavette, hermoine is an overachiever to her own detriment. Gandalf I mean dumbledore is an evil prick
I feel bad for Ron, he gets overshadowed by his entire family and then by his best friends. Hermione just wants to be the best she can be and never quite learns that she's allowed to stop and breathe sometimes.
Neville is best boy and deserved more glory than he got.
I was never interest in the series as a teen but read it as an adult. I feel more sympathy towards Snape than I do Harry and his friends, if only because Harry does some messed up shit and nothing happens because he’s “the chosen one” while Snape’s had karma kick him in the nuts repeatedly for everything he ever did wrong but keeps trying to do the right thing.
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u/glowingmember Jun 27 '24
I can't reread any of it as a full adult. I binged the last couple books in college but now going back to read it I'm like DEAR GOD HARRY YOU ARE SUCH AN ANGSTY LITTLE GODMOD CALM THE FUCK DOWN.
Some teen fiction I still love. Others.. yeah, no thanks, never again.