Why did you enjoy Harry Potter?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Mauve Shirt
I'm not interested in the politics of Westeros or the sprawling map and pantheon of Middle Earth. I am interested in a secret world not unlike ours, just beyond the reach of us normals.

This is interesting, because I deeply love Middle-Earth, but I also really liked the Harry Potter books.

I enjoy the whimsy and lighthearted tone, and the general sense of fun that animates the stories. Even when the later books became more involved and intense, the series managed to retain that sense of the mysterious, and a feeling that however much you thought you knew about their world, there would always be something more, something glimpsed from the corner of your eye if at all.

Since I listened to the books on audiotape, some elements could be annoying, especially the Sorting Hat's singing and so forth; but I enjoyed the energy of the characters bouncing off one another, and the obvious fun that Rowling was having in writing them.

Yes, the stories and the logic and the world can be picked apart a thousand different ways; but so can anything else, and anyone going into the series with that attitude is making the wrong kind of effort.

I have the first book in Portuguese; need to go back and read that again, in case I ever need to say "troll snot" when I'm in Brazil.

[BWR]

I think HP is best as an element in fanfic crossovers. Like Michael Jackson is best as a punchline or Twilight is best as a target of hate or 50 Shades of Gray is as a joke reference. By itself, HP was pretty messily built, had bland characters (often astoundingly incompetant and stupid) and was a mess of at best averagely handled clichés. It was quick and easy to read, and somewhat engaging. It's main selling point is that it got kids reading. For that, I like it.

[Rodin]

I'm talking about the genre that more or less ended around the same time as WW2 and the Lord of the Flies. Things like Jane Eyre, Tom Brown's School Adventures, David Copperfield. Little House on the Prairie, Little Men, and the books surround Huck Finn are Americanized versions of the same genre.

In the U.S at least, pretty much all of those are what I consider to be "force-fed literature", i.e. books that you need to read for English class but which most people in the intended age range will not voluntarily read and people who read them in high school will do their best to forget them. I think I read Huck Finn, but I honestly can't remember. The only other one of those that I've actually read is David Copperfield - while we did do some Victorian literature it was primarily Jane Austen, with a dash of Wuthering Heights and Tess of the D'urbervilles.

I'm trying to think of a boarding school novel I actually read in high school, and I'm coming up blank. For the American audience at least, I can well believe that Harry Potter was the first story to take place in a boarding school they had ever read.

[SaintRidley]

And Jane Eyre and Huck Finn are very much not boarding school novels, with Jane Eyre being borderline (it is, for a brief bit, but that's minimal) and Huck not at all.

[cobaltstarfire]

I think another thing interesting about Harry Potter is that it apparently made it easier for other YA authors to publish longer books. At least according to Tamora Pierce, she's been allowed to break up her stories across a smaller number of books (ex 2 rather than 4-5, although still generally the same overall length in total) because publishers started to let her have more pages.

[Math_Mage]

I think another thing interesting about Harry Potter is that it apparently made it easier for other YA authors to publish longer books. At least according to Tamora Pierce, she's been allowed to break up her stories across a smaller number of books (ex 2 rather than 4-5, although still generally the same overall length in total) because publishers started to let her have more pages.

I definitely saw this trend in Pierce's books. It was a huge benefit in the Aly books and Terrier, for example. (Not so much in Mastiff, which I wish I hadn't read.)

I started breaking up with the HP series around when the movies started coming out, and finished by the time I started reading book 7--which was, to me, largely an exercise in frustration. So I guess the reason I enjoyed HP was because I liked reading Rowling's kids' books as a kid--but not her YA books as a young adult.

[DomaDoma]

There were three things that set the series apart for me:

1) Like everyone else my age who was a fan at the time, I really, really wanted to go to Hogwarts. That's the boring portion of the list.

2) The plot twists. These were, and still are, JKR's greatest writing strength - The Silkworm, guys, read it. And then you reread it and see how cleverly and pervasively it was set up all along. Heck, there are even red herrings subtle enough that you might have missed them the first time round - Percy Weasley would have made an excellent villain for Chamber of Secrets and don't you deny it.

3) Predictions. I never got into the shipping scene, but you latter-day readers will never believe how passionate we got about who was going to die, who was a secret Death Eater, what happened with Harry's parents' generation, and what the random Bertha Jorkins flashback signified. (My pet secret Death Eater was Rita Skeeter. I still think my reasoning was valid given the information we had in GoF.)

[Porthos]

2) The plot twists. These were, and still are, JKR's greatest writing strength - The Silkworm, guys, read it. And then you reread it and see how cleverly and pervasively it was set up all along. Heck, there are even red herrings subtle enough that you might have missed them the first time round - Percy Weasley would have made an excellent villain for Chamber of Secrets and don't you deny it.

The mystery genre isn't really my thing, but I've heard quite a bit of praise being heaped on this book as well.

Interestingly enough, JKR is now on record as saying she'd like to do more Cormoran Strike novels than Harry Potter ones. Not because she likes one more than the other. It's because since one isn't tied into an overreaching plot, she can revisit Strike again and again, Sherlock Holmes, style.

Latest word is she'd like to write at least eight Strike books. Well, if they keep selling like they are, she'll probably get her wish.

===

It's also funny that you mention the plot twists, since JKR also said recently that it shouldn't be a surprise that she's writing detective fiction since the Harry Potter series was, and I quote "six whodunits and one why dun it."

An interesting way of looking at the series.

[Jayngfet]

I think another thing interesting about Harry Potter is that it apparently made it easier for other YA authors to publish longer books. At least according to Tamora Pierce, she's been allowed to break up her stories across a smaller number of books (ex 2 rather than 4-5, although still generally the same overall length in total) because publishers started to let her have more pages.

Oh definitely. Once Harry Potter hit it big you saw a whole lot more YA stuff becoming a whole lot more prominent. Granted a lot of it was about shaggy haired magical european teenagers, but it made a whole lot of weirder or less "safe" stuff an easier sell to both the audience and the publishers. We'd probably never have gotten our Artmis Fowls or Bobby Pendragons if not for Harry Potter.

Incidentally, I'm annoyed that none of the other books from it's era became real film series or franchises. The Artemis Fowl film got trapped in development hell for like a decade before being bought out by Disney, and it looks like they're thinking about shelving it in favor of rehashing live action versions of stuff they've already done in animation(there's also the rather cheaply done comic book, but the less said of that the better).

It's also funny that you mention the plot twists, since JKR also said recently that it shouldn't be a surprise that she's writing detective fiction since the Harry Potter series was, and I quote "six whodunits and one why dun it."

An interesting way of looking at the series.

Say what you will about Rowling and her books, but the woman knows how to make a mystery. Most of the time with things like Harry being the hocrux or Mad-Eye being a fake the hints get dropped several books in advance(polyjuice potions and pocket dimensions of holding were both well established years before we began wondering about the goblet), so there's never anything that feels like an asspull. How does Harry escape the goblins? By using that one minor detail from the first bits of the very first books and combining it with a thing he learned in the book before the one he's in at the time. Even the idea that there were apparently hundreds of slaves worming around Hogwarts that we never saw makes sense since we now know what they were(House Elves), and that such a thing is possible(Gnomes infesting the Burrough en masse, without being visibly everywhere).

Harry Potter is basically all about hidden motives and figuring out which of Checkov's guns are currently loaded.

[Mauve Shirt]

And again, for me it was the first series I read that did that. The first thing that for me inspired theories and fandom.
Sure there were other things, I'm sure in someone's opinion higher-quality things, that could have done that. But Harry Potter was the first. So I loved it.

[The Extinguisher]

Honestly, the fact that they were so easily consumed was what made them great for me. That I could stay up all night and finish them was amazing. Seriously, whenever the new books came out, there wasn't even any arguing about who got to read them first. They gave them to me and by next morning I was finished and someone else could read it.

Hmm, now I think I want to reread one of the books. Maybe Goblet of Fire.

[wilborine]

I like Harry Potter for a lot of the same reasons as others have mentioned, quality writing, strong characters and exciting storylines that are very unpredictable. When I first read the books I enjoyed it as it had a lot of the same qualities a lot of my favourite books had growing up like Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton mysteries and school stories and the characters are really easy to identify with.

[DomaDoma]

It's also funny that you mention the plot twists, since JKR also said recently that it shouldn't be a surprise that she's writing detective fiction since the Harry Potter series was, and I quote "six whodunits and one why dun it."

An interesting way of looking at the series.

Hmm. OotP would be the whydunit - HBP comes close to the title itself, with a generous sideline in howdunit, but of course there's always the question of Snape's level of involvement - but I have trouble seeing DH as a mystery at all. Not that there aren't twists, because there certainly are twists, but they serve an epic fantasy plot, full stop.

Incidentally, the great weakness of DH is that by its very nature, it didn't have room for any big surprises that weren't either foreordained to be addressed, like Snape's motivation and the prophecy, or unforeseeable to an unfair degree, like the wand-lore and Dumbledore's family. It would be the weakest book in the series regardless, but the fact of a large contingent of fans betting correctly on every major question was what tipped it over from "weak but still great" to "merely good, and I need to take a week to accept that."

[Starwulf]

The characters felt "real." Harry had absolutely no character development from book 1-7. There was no real internal personal journey, the plot was basically him just reacting to external events. If you took the Harry Potter from book 1 and put him in book 7, I'm sure he'd react the same way to pretty much everything. Rowling apparently forgot that teenagers enjoy sex until the latter part of the series, and then tried to make up for it with as many cringeworthy "snogging" lines as she could get past her editors (who, I'd like to add, were clearly asleep at the help for the last 3 books). While I don't need my characters to have an active sex life, the seeming absence of any romantic thoughts or puberty in general blows a hole in the realism line. And when relationships do begin to appear, they're more thrown in because Rowling realized that they were expected than anything that grew organically off the strengths and dynamics of her characters. Beyond that, outside of the main three (and even they had major issues with characterization, as noted above), most characters are incredibly flat and nothing more than two dimensional cutouts of traditional high school drama archetypes.

This is really the only thing I want to respond to from your post, mostly because liking or not liking something is entirely subjective, same as whether people think it's good writing or not. Anyways, as far as "sex" and "relationships" go in this series, Harry does start out being what...age 10 right? I mean, it's 7 books, or 7 years of school, so basically middle through high-school, roughly. What kid is thinking about sex at the age of 10?? Where you? I know I wasn't. I didn't start thinking about sex until about 14-15, before that it was just this abstract concept inside my head of what older people did, and co-incidentally, that's about the same time the relationships really start to appear in the book(books 4-7). Seems pretty common sense to me, not sure why you would question why the kids weren't all thinking about dating and sex before that. My oldest daughter is 11, she talks about "liking" boys, but certainly not about dating them. Again, I don't expect to see any real leaning towards that area until she's 14-15.

[Ravens_cry]

Probably the characters and their interplay, because, let's face it, the world is nothing to really say much about, with much of its interesting bits from the terrifying, but ignored, conclusions one can make. Quidditch is a joke of a sport; a painfully obvious example (even to my younger self) of, while there is no 'i' in team, there is in Quidditch.

[Socratov]

To throw my cp in, shot version: they were like literal crack cocaine.

Long version:

So, here I am, hearing all sorts of nonsense about some book series about a kid going to a magic boarding school. Being a very young Dutchie (polyglotism isn't isn't exactly nature for us, there is a considerable nurture component as well, and I wasn't very good at English yet), I bought them translated. Which was phenomenal. The translation may have alleviated a lot of the writing issues and repetitive prose. But then again the person translating it did a fantastic job. Even my father who, when asked about his native language is still bit vague on whether it's English or Dutch, preferred them in Dutch, as opposed to English (only other book series to achieve this is Artemis Fowl). However, even though the story has been translated it has lost nothing of it's immersive qualities.

then there was the growth aspect of it. When you are about 10 y/o you want that fantastic story full of wonder and magic. As you grow up, though, your tastes for story will change along with your understanding that the world isn't as fun a place as it seemed back when you were 10. This is a huge theme in Harry Poter. This coming of age aspect is what fit me well.

And then the characters: Sure the series starts out with a situation where the kids seem to be more competent then the adults (except maybe for Snape). It starts all tongue in cheek, but over time the absurdism starts to make room for some alternate history (though not so alternate, maybe analogous would be more fitting). And eventually the characters stop being tongue in cheek and face the music (a particular turning point for me is the death of Sirius). Sure the romance got a bit left behind, but if I want that I'll go to my mother's collection of Harlequin pockets. Having said that, the characters were identifiable and though they got a bit moralistic from time to time (Hermione especially), the characters did get a bit of depth over time, with small moral failings and nuances.

and yes the dreaded originality: indeed there really isn't anything new under the sun. And indeed, boarding school novels have been done before, even weird ones. That said, they were either written in the victorian era, or they were written past her deliverance of Harry Potter. In her own way she did reinvent the genre. I also have no idea wether it did or did not have a gateway effect for more sophisticated 'literature', but as has been said before, and will be reiterated here, if a book gets kids to read (especially boys in whom publishers have given up all hope judging by the latest YA releases), it has that speaking for them, which is indeed something great.

and last but not least: they entertained me tremendously. To sketch an image here: book would come out, as soon as I'd get it in my hands I'd start reading. I'd be walking around reading, only stopping for sleep (for when I actually did) and shovelling food into my mouth and to not stop until I finished the book. And within 24 hours I'd have finished i'd throw the book for the lions (read: my family members) to to perform a caged death match to see who can read it next who would go through pretty much (if possible) through the same motions as I had, rinse and repeat until everyone had read it. Then would follow the endless and incessant discussion about he best and worst parts. Eventually the moment of preordering came and the whole situation would start over again. To be honest, I kind of miss those days.

[Aotrs Commander]

This is really the only thing I want to respond to from your post, mostly because liking or not liking something is entirely subjective, same as whether people think it's good writing or not. Anyways, as far as "sex" and "relationships" go in this series, Harry does start out being what...age 10 right? I mean, it's 7 books, or 7 years of school, so basically middle through high-school, roughly. What kid is thinking about sex at the age of 10?? Where you? I know I wasn't. I didn't start thinking about sex until about 14-15, before that it was just this abstract concept inside my head of what older people did, and co-incidentally, that's about the same time the relationships really start to appear in the book(books 4-7). Seems pretty common sense to me, not sure why you would question why the kids weren't all thinking about dating and sex before that. My oldest daughter is 11, she talks about "liking" boys, but certainly not about dating them. Again, I don't expect to see any real leaning towards that area until she's 14-15.

Also: it was (set in the) the 1990s. Things have changed even in last two decades. As I said before, I would have actually been in Harry's year - and while, granted I am NOT a statistical sample - I don't think the books were unreasonable for the time (and country) in question. Actually, they gel pretty well with what I remember observing at the time. (Heck I don't think sex education was ever mentioned in the books and I defintely remember than happening in both last year junior (the year Harry would have started Hogwarts) and senior school, so the wizards were probably a bit behind the times on top.)

[Mauve Shirt]

Wow. I just realized that next year it will have been 10 years since we found out that Snape killed Dumbledore. Pretty sure it's reached "Luke I am your Father" non-spoiler infamy now.

[hamishspence]

I'm talking about the genre that more or less ended around the same time as WW2 and the Lord of the Flies. Things like Jane Eyre, Tom Brown's School Adventures, David Copperfield. Little House on the Prairie, Little Men, and the books surround Huck Finn are Americanized versions of the same genre.

Enid Blyton wrote several "boarding school" serieses, as well.

"The Worst Witch" might qualify as a "Potter prototype" - aimed at the same age range as the first Harry Potter book, I think.

[BWR]

they were like literal crack cocaine.

They were metaphorical yet literal at the same time? Similar yet identical? Or did you mean 'literary'?

[Knaight]

In her own way she did reinvent the genre. I also have no idea wether it did or did not have a gateway effect for more sophisticated 'literature', but as has been said before, and will be reiterated here, if a book gets kids to read (especially boys in whom publishers have given up all hope judging by the latest YA releases), it has that speaking for them, which is indeed something great.

All indications I've seen have been of it getting people to at least read more. Given that the practice is applicable to reading more literary books, the idea that it indirectly gets people to read better books is highly plausible. It didn't get me reading - I've been reading vociferously since I was 2, and Harry Potter was a bit beyond 2-4 year old me - but I did read some of the books a lot, and I've also read plenty of more literary fiction. Sure, it's an anecdote, but there are a lot like it, and that's at least indicative of a quality hypothesis, though it doesn't amount to actual data.

As for publishers giving up boys, I don't buy it. There's John Green for one thing, and the idea that boys won't read things targeted at girls seems pretty specious. I know a number of male Tamora Pierce fans, for example.

[Socratov]

They were metaphorical yet literal at the same time? Similar yet identical? Or did you mean 'literary'?

oops, yes, that I meant. though, I fear that by rereading them I have sniffed some of the worn pages by accident...

All indications I've seen have been of it getting people to at least read more. Given that the practice is applicable to reading more literary books, the idea that it indirectly gets people to read better books is highly plausible. It didn't get me reading - I've been reading vociferously since I was 2, and Harry Potter was a bit beyond 2-4 year old me - but I did read some of the books a lot, and I've also read plenty of more literary fiction. Sure, it's an anecdote, but there are a lot like it, and that's at least indicative of a quality hypothesis, though it doesn't amount to actual data.

As for publishers giving up boys, I don't buy it. There's John Green for one thing, and the idea that boys won't read things targeted at girls seems pretty specious. I know a number of male Tamora Pierce fans, for example.

Yes, but still, in the YA range of books, it seems as if there is a 1 book geared towards boys for about 20 books aimed at girls? And sure, boys that do read (myself being guilty of it) have their guilty pleasures and don't let some marketing typing keep them from reading and even developing a taste for it, but it's not exactly a widespread practice, nor will the overwhelming number of books marketed to girls entice boys to start reading. HP did change that though...

[warty goblin]

As for publishers giving up boys, I don't buy it. There's John Green for one thing, and the idea that boys won't read things targeted at girls seems pretty specious. I know a number of male Tamora Pierce fans, for example.

I never thought the early Pierce novels were particularly targeted at boys or girls. I thought they were targeted at people who liked swords; which has always been one of my primary demographic allegiances. Particularly at that age, if it had swords it had my attention.

[Knaight]

I never thought the early Pierce novels were particularly targeted at boys or girls. I thought they were targeted at people who liked swords; which has always been one of my primary demographic allegiances. Particularly at that age, if it had swords it had my attention.

The publishers seemed to think that they were targeted at girls in particular. People who liked swords are a definite demographic they appeal to, and I was also pulled in through that*. Well, technically I was in the people who like pole arms category, and was informed that the main character of the Page-Squire-Ladyknight series had a spear and liked to use it, but it's pretty much the same demographic.

[Yuki Akuma]

Because my sixth year primary school teacher read the first book to us. I really enjoyed my time at that school, so the series brings back warm fuzzy memories.

[JBPuffin]

I started with Book 2, then Book 7, then restarted so I could see what I missed. I reread them last year, and while part of it is pure nostalgia, I can't help but like it. Is it the best writing? I'd say it's about as good as Rick Riordan, whom my sister thoroughly enjoys, so not necessarily. Did things get real rather suddenly? Yep, but that clicked as logical for me - more secrets, more problems. But was it marketed to make it awesome? Thanks to the movies, it has. So, if you want a reason, I'd say it's the movies...although I've never seen them .

Also, there's a fanfic out on fanfiction.net of a Harry Potter/Dungeons and Dragons crossover that made the series all the more endearing. Oh, and it makes a heck of a lot more sense than the big picture you get from the normal novels. Yeah.

[HeadlessMermaid]

Other than Harry Potter, the only boarding school series I know of is Enid Blyton's St. Clare's. These books were objectively awful. To quote wikipedia's page on the author, "her books have been criticised as being elitist, sexist, racist, xenophobic and at odds with the more liberal environment emerging in post-war Britain". On top of that, authoritarianism reigns supreme, and the teachers are always right in the end, even if they appear severe at first. Except for the arts professor, who is obviously pretentious and light-headed. The wildest thing that happens is a midnight party with ginger beers, and then you're supposed to feel bad about it, because the students should have asked permission.

And how do I know these little details? Oh, but I read them when I was a kid, and liked them. Why on earth did I like them? I can only guess. Maybe because I was an idiot who liked books indiscriminately. Maybe because the notion of being on a boarding school, and therefore away from your parents/guardians, is SO thrilling (at least on paper), that it doesn't matter much what happens next. Maybe because focusing on a school environment is a very big deal for readers whose environment is school. Maybe because when you read about a whole bunch of kids, it's very probable you'll find a character you identify with and passionately root for (and at least another one you associate with an "enemy", and hate). I'm open to other interpretations as well.

The thing is, if even St. Clare's can be appealing just because it features a boarding school, imagine Hogwarts! A place of magic and wonder! Where kids break the rules all the time! Where the lessons are dangerous! I believe that these elements alone are more than enough to explain why kids love Harry Potter, before even getting to Harry the Chosen One and the mysteries and the adventures and the villains. The setup is a goldmine right from the get-go, and if there's any other boarding school book that combines these elements, I'm not aware of it. Is there?

And that appeal applies to adults, too. I think we have severely underestimated how much adults yearn to break some rules and get away with it, to do foolish and dangerous things, to berate their professors and bosses, to have some fun, dammit. Pure, unadulterated fun, unrelated to money and sex. Childish fun.


I liked the series overall, and I'm certain I would have loved it if I'd read it as a kid/teenager. Of course, there were parts I didn't enjoy, or found lacking. I won't delve on these, but I'll tell you one thing. If Harry had stayed dead, and that was actually Dumbledore's plan from the start, I would now be raving how Harry Potter is one my favorite works of all time, its literary flaws be damned. But, the coward does it with a kiss...*

*That was me being a smartass. I don't actually consider Rowling a coward, or that having a happy end for Harry "ruined" anything. I'm just saying.

[Mauve Shirt]

I guarantee if Harry had died at the end there'd be a 40% drop in the pool of Harry Potter detractors. Well, of the current stock. There would obviously be orders of multitude more detractors, but fewer of the ones that hate it now. The Venn Diagram shifts.

[jesley]

I prefer reading the book rather than to watch movie of Harry Potter.

[Raimun]

Hmm, I don't remember how young I was when I picked the first Harry Potter-book. I do remember I was on a cabin, the book was there and I had nothing better to do: "It's fantasy? I'll try it."

I read the book pretty fast (slim book, easy read) and it was kind of fun. Later on, when I had access to other books in the series, I read them as well, because I wanted to know how it would all end. The books were always easy and fast to read so why not? I always enjoyed reading the books.

However, while I have read all of the books (and watched all the movies) and I did like them, I'm not really a fan of the series. I've never felt like reading the books a second time or even actively deciding to rewatch the movies. What's even more telling is that I never really think about the world of Harry Potter like I would think about the world of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or Metal Gear. The world of Harry Potter just never makes me ponder about the motivations behind the characters or the way the world is or how the history of the world affected the setting.

It's also pretty telling that I don't think I have any favorite characters in the series. None had any antics that would have been that memorable. Harry itself was bland, other two main kids couldn't have been more stereotypical (like every other kid in the series) and Dumbledore was too distant and undeveloped like every other character with some promise. Even Snape was pretty one dimensional character when you think about it: "He's the grumpy and mean professor... except he really had a heart of gold all the time!".

Overall, I also thought the magic was a bit lacking as well. It's hard to explain what was missing but Harry and co never seemed like proper wizards. Sure, they were in a school and just learning the ropes but none had any interesting spells. Even the so called big gun Harry had, the "Stoppus Badguyus"-spell (don't remember the proper name any more) was reactive in nature and highly situational. Badly mangled latin and questionable logic, indeed...

The above may seem rather harsh if you are a fan of the series but I do point out that I still enjoyed reading the books, even if they didn't have any lasting impression on me and I think they don't hold up that well if you start taking them apart.

I guarantee if Harry had died at the end there'd be a 40% drop in the pool of Harry Potter detractors. Well, of the current stock. There would obviously be orders of multitude more detractors, but fewer of the ones that hate it now. The Venn Diagram shifts.

I doubt it. Sacrificing a main character at the end is not an automatic way to make your series critically acclaimed. Frodo didn't die and most people still think LotR is a literary masterpiece.

At least I had no problem with Harry surviving. If Rowling did anything right it's that Harry didn't die arbitrarily. It would have been serious mood whiplash and not in a good way.