samkydd

Whilst on holiday last week I lay on the beach listening to Stephen Fry on my MP3 player reading four of the Harry Potter books, which I'd never read or even seen the films before.

I can honestly say they are extremely well written and Fry is brilliant at bringing the characters to life. As a cynical adult fast approaching middle age, it was a pleasure to be transported into this children's extremely credible fantasy world and I enjoyed every moment of Harry's adventures. I hope that they will be part of the school curriculum in future.

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Dame Starry

I own and have read all of the Harry Potter books and loved every one of them - particularly the final one and I have long been of the opinion that the people who 'slag them off' have probably never read any of them! I also have all of the DVDs.
The whole series has a definite beginning, middle and end and they make up one whole story that takes the reader from an orphaned baby left on a doorstep, to a grown man with a family.

Jo Rowling doesn't patronise children and knows that they love to be both excited, frightened and, above all, entertained.
I think it's an incredible achievement to write a series of books that captivates the imaginations of both children and adults in the way that she has.

In the words of Harry himself, "I love magic!"

DS x.

EllyMack

Hmmm! As a librarian, stock-buyer and would-be teen novelist who's read all the HP books, I can honestly say I think the films are much better.

The books are cliched, under-edited and generally very 'un-creatively' written (ie. the language is somewhat unimaginative). What has made them so successful is the marketing hype that's gone with them. Bloomsbury children's division are riding on their success right now, the rest of their 'stable' being very mediocre and unremarkable.

On the plus side, however, a huge number of kids (and adults) have begun to read because of them. Not sure I'd like to see them on the curriculum though. There are tons more rewarding, stimulating texts out there that are more deserving of that honour than Harry Potter.

On the other hand, I'm a firm believer in people of any age being allowed to read just what they like for whatever reason, so if people want to read HP, then that's fine by me.

By the way, a good teen book with a film background is Michelle Magorian's latest, Just Henry. It's a bit slow and a bit research-heavy (like, she just has to get in what she knows), but is nevertheless an entertaining and thought-provoking read.

samkydd

I'd agree with the marketing hype, which initially turned me away from reading the books when they were first published. Seeing trendy thirty and forty something bespectacled IT workers and investment bankers called Peers from from Putney standing on the Underground with their heads buried inside the latest Harry Potter, making sure everyone could see the cover, was something of a turn off. It's the same with films, anything OTT on the publicity usually means that the film will disappoint and stops me from rushing to join the queue at the cinema.

The thing I enjoyed about the Harry Potter stories that I've had so far is that they are very imaginative, not patronising, they have interesting sub-plots, and despite being pure fantasy stories they have credibility.

Whenever I have gone into a book shop in recent years the main attraction seems to be piles and piles of autobiography by minor celebs that I've never even heard of, young footballers and cricketers with their whole lives still ahead of them, sycophantic TV presenters who think they're popular and well loved by us all, hyped up actors who have just appeared in something big for the first time in their careers and have been advised to "cash in" while they're popular and bring out a book, and also dodgy politicians who were despised by everyone when they were in high office, but now crave celebrity and a twilight career on the after-dinner circuit as cuddly eccentrics.

Many traditional sections such as crime/thrillers are dominated by such awful rubbish as Minette Walters and others of her ilk, who have all the creativity of a Big Brother producer and could no more offer me a feeling of escapism than reading a holiday brochure about the Isle of Wight. So it's not surprising that some adults turn to the likes of Harry Potter books to get the imagination flowing and bring back some sparkle of how they used to feel when we were school children.

I work with someone who has read all of the books, and she seems to think that after Book 3 there seemed to be an awful lot of padding to get to the desired thickness of a 700 pager. I suppose it's like the recording industry when a hungry new rock band's first couple of albums are excellent and then when the money starts flowing in the creative juices dry up and there are other distractions as well and so the third and fourth albums are slung together purely to meet contractual obligations, and the next is a compilation called Greatest Hits!

"...the chairman of Littlewoods stores made a Keynote speech!"

Steve Crook

And the audio books did have Stephen Fry reading them.
How could they go wrong?

Steve