Harry Potter Books
Paul Kellerman
Posts: 513 Forum Member
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Was there anybody who DIDN'T like any of the books for some reason?
Personally I loved it!
Personally I loved it!
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Paul Kellerman
Posts: 513 Paul Kellerman
Posts: 513 Paul Kellerman
Posts: 513
Comments
How so?
I'll probably re-read book 7 before the film comes out if I get a chance. Like I said, they're alright but I wouldn't include any of them in my top 50 books.
The cleaning of siruies house drags on a bit,
And generally has zilch impact on the plot.
The actual "reveal" at the end was pretty good, but lasted for no more than a paragraph. The whole "Harry and co in hiding" seemed to be no more than cardboard filler.
True!
I hated the fact Ron got seperated from them.
Actually, it is very important to the plot.
It is but he could have found the locket easily enough without having to go through all the nonsense about doxies and ron's warty hands etc!
I always feel that it is around the point of books 4 and 5 is when JK Rowling was reading and taking allow of Fans opinions on board.
Like certain relationships seem to have shifted to a more preferrable situation for the majority of the fan base.
But I could be completely wrong, it is just how I felt when reading the books.
she changed some orginal key points likr arthur not dying.
I also thought that Order of the Phoenix really needed to be edited down quite a bit, it's too long. I liked the film of that book though. I thought as well the first time I read it that Harry's character changed a lot between book 4 and 5 and I didn't enjoy it as much as I did before.
Also, I made my Mum read the books even though she wasn't that interested, and she asked me after Half Blood Prince, "so who was the Half Blood Prince then?" so I think that book must have passed her by a little bit. I thought it wasn't clear on the film who the Half Blood Prince was really or why he was.
I should say, I loved all the books though I thought they were great!
I couldn;t get past the first chapter. Found it derivative, boring and later when I saw the films with my kids, felt Hogwarts a rip-off of Terry Pratchett's Unseen University (without the wit or intelligence) and much of the mythical content from 1960s Ladybird books of Greek myths etc. Being the same age as the writer I recognised her sources and felt she did a shallow job of patching it into the Roald Dahl style premise behind the whole thing.
Then last year my 4th son persuaded me to read Deathly Hallows. She certainly grew as a writer, eh! I thoroughly enjoyed it. But hopefully her readers will go on to discover Diskworld, and other more exciting and funny places with better drawn characters and much better dialogue! And I don;t mean that as condescendingly as it sounds, reading it back.:o
It has its value as the nursery slopes for folk who hopefully go on to read Pratchett and Tolkien. I think the last book is a million times better than the first.
Wow. Just wow. Kind of shows that some HP fan's believe that the whole world loves the books. They don't. I read them after my FIL said he thought I'd like them as he knows I read a LOT of fantasy the likes of Jordan, Martin, Goodkind, Eddings etc. I found HP truly awful. The characters were badly thought out and paper thin. The plots you could drive a cart through. Most of the stuff you could see coming a mile off. So no, most people do not love HP. Most true fantasy readers find it weak, insipid and lacking in depth.
I thought Professor Slughorn or Harry's father were the Half Blood Prince?
I love it when people set themselves up as the spokesperson for an entire group of people based on their own opinion. I'm a big fan of fantasy fiction and I absolutely adore Harry Potter. I love the fact that you name drop, presumably to make yourself sound informed but it actually makes you sound a little snobby.
I disagree that the characters are all badly thought out and paper thin. The plots really aren't that bad but they are children's books (which I think a lot of people lose sight of). It's unfair to compare them with the authors that you have because they are written for completely different audiences.
And of those writers you mention, they're hardly immune from criticism. David Eddings has pretty much been writing the same story now since his career began and just changing the names. Robert Jordan's stuff can get so dull that it actually makes me fall asleep. There's no such thing as a perfect author or a perfect story.
Harry Potter provides an awful lot of joy for an awful lot of people including myself. They may not be great works of fiction but they are a phenomenon and they ain't going away!