I'm the antithesis of a voracious reader. If something doesn't interest me immediately, I throw it away.

Based on enthusiastic rants of friends, I tried to read the first book, but after 3-4 chapters, I gave up. It was so bad that I couldn't continue reading it.

It just didn't appeal to me - a boy wizard, the Chosen One to oppose the evil Dark Lord. Hardly an original theme.

Even the most ardent of Potter fans will have to admit that the premise is not original. So, the appeal of the stories must lie in the sub-plots and the detailed components used to construct the fabric of the stories.

In general, the first book of a series is usually the best. So if I thought the first one was bad, the rest are probably worse.

I've seen most of the films. I liked The Prison of Azkaban but all of the others were marginal, at best.

If you want to read a much better book/series of books about a special child, I would recommend Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, and its sequels.

The one thing that really turned me off about the Potter stories was, of all things, the sport of Quidditch.

Quidditch is ridiculous. It's utter nonsene. Even in a fantasy world, it cannot exist as a serious sport because of its idiotic scoring rules.

Let me explain. It all goes back to Star Wars.

Kevin Anderson was authorized to write a bunch of Star Wars books, but he is a terrible writer.

Han Solo, before he became involved with the Rebellion, was a scoundrel, a rogue, a smuggler, and a gambler. He won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian in a card game named Sabacc.

In the films, they never explained the game, but in one of Anderson's books, the author decided define the rules of one of the variants.

Sabacc is similar to poker in that different hands composed of different cards are ranked. However, in the variant of Sabacc in Anderson's book, a completely random event reverses the ranking of hands, on the fly. All of a sudden, based on a completely random event, the ranking of the hands is reversed, so in poker terms, a pair beats a royal flush.

No serious card player who makes a living playing cards, would ever play a game like this for high stakes.

Yes, I fully realize that there are degenerate gamblers in the world who wager on silly things like whether Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow on Groundhog's Day, but most pro gamblers, who make their living playing cards won't touch this type of game with serious money at stake.

The premise is so ridiculous that it makes it impossible to suspend any disbelief about space travel and the rest of the Star Wars reality.

So, back to Harry Potter and Quidditch.

There is no serious competitive sport where one form of scoring is worth 50 times another. But, in Quidditch, if you catch the Golden Snitch, you get 50 points, and the match essentially ends because there is no hope of catching up.

The author created Quidditch as a way of highlighting how special Potter is, but in doing so, made it impossible for me to suspend disbelief in this fantasy world.

So, the rest of Potter fabric simply unravels.

I understand why parents are drawn to the books and films. When they see how captivated their children are, they lose their sense of perspective.

But, as purely adult literature, I don't believe that the Potter books can stand on their own.

LW

Agreed. And while I enjoyed reading these books along with my son, I don't feel any need to return to them. It was a great way to get him interested in reading, a habit I'm pleased to report he has kept.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

I'm not a potterhead, nor read the books, nor was a D&D participant, but i have close friends who are, and through watching all the movies with them, I've come to understand part of the appeal.

Be the change
you wish to see

Good for you!

Want a cookie or something?

Never heard of a knockout in boxing, eh? In theory, a boxer could be trailing 140-0 going into the 15th round of a fight, but one lucky punch would still allow him to win. While no points are awarded for a knockout, it still meets the definition of a form of scoring being worth far more than another form.

By the way, it's 150 points for catching the Golden Snitch.

If you had knocked out a few more chapters, you would have eventually discovered that the main theme of every one of these books is bigotry and its consequences. In the Potter books, it traces back to Salazar Slytherin, a wizard from a thousand years ago who felt that magical learning should be restricted to purebloods, meaning descendants of witches and wizards, with no one marrying or mating outside of that select group. How fanatic about it Slytherin was is somewhat unclear in the books, but it's quite clear that Voldemort and his followers have extended that interpretation to include persecution, imprisonment or murder of muggles (non-magical folk, in Hagrid's words) and muggle-born. It's not difficult to see the parallels between the fictional purebloods or the Harry Potter series and real-life racist groups hell-bent on subverting or destroying members of other groups.

at the AVN line........

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I like freshly baked tollhouse cookies!