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Chris:
1. you mean it's not safe for children to use ouija boards? You have evidence of this?
2. I'm suspicious of things others rave about. I often miss things on this basis, and have to admit when I'm eventually hauled to see / read / taste them that they're actually rather good. Have you actually read the Potter books, or are you working from Cole's Notes?
Yeah, i agree with all the above. they are just bad books. No two ways about it. Everything in them is poor.
Rubbish. But I notice a pattern in your postings thusfar: are you trolling or stupid?
Nailbunny: Firstly, as an aside, it seems odd that fans of the books seem to automatically revert to a sociological reason for their value, rather than the more immediate description of what they get out of readingthe things, as the Log Lady has done above.
Perhaps it's because of all those snotty people out there bemoaning the fact that children aren't reading Seamus Heaney's translation of 'Beowulf' - which is deathly, by the way. Feelings run rather high about these books, so it's safer to say 'well, my kids are reading them rather than playing video games' than it is to say 'well, I like them'.
Secondly - hasn't recent research shown that the number of books being purchased by or for children hasn't actually risen due to Pottermania?
No. Or rather, it's much like government statistics: the issue is contested, and now there are 'proofs' of both positions. Ultimately, of course, it's impossible to know what would have happened to any given child had there not been a Harry Potter craze.
Anyone care to elucidate as to why?
She's good at what she does. Very good. Her prose can be rocky, her dailogue can be trite. The same can be said of every author I can think of - P.G. Wodehouse is one of the best writers in English, and he was capable of utter crap (and terrible racial caricatures which were acceptable at the time). Marlowe and Milton wrote passages so awful even English teachers don't read them. Shakespeare's characterisation in 'Romeo and Juliette' makes 'Home and Away' look like Turgenev.
It doesn't matter.
Harry Potter works. It's enjoyable. I care about the characters. I enjoy the story. I don't really understand Jack's objection that the books have a consumerist ethos; the kids in them want the best new stuff, yes, but I haven't noticed a strong tendency to asceticism in the children I know; but in any case, I don't ask my reading matter to be ideologically correct. If every world I visited on a literary tour was the kind of gentle techno-socialist enviro-Heaven I'd like to live in, I'd rapidly give up reading for rifle shooting.
As to the quality of writing being bad, I simply have to disagree. Rowling isn't a great prose stylist. She doesn't try to be E. Annie Proulx or Anne Michaels or Jeanette Winterson. She's a fantasist; her writing is about the world she makes, and it's immersive, engaging, and though it began very simplistic, it's getting less so.
I just spoke to my brother, who has two kids, both reading the new book right now. The question which arose from our conversation was not 'what's so good about Rowling?', but 'why do some people hate the books with such a passion that they become evangelical about it?'
So come on, folks. The majority of you seem to loathe the Potter books. Let's have some reasons. Not what isn't good. What's so damn bad? |
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