<raises hand>

For the record, I thought it was quite good, much better than the fifth book, which I found disappointing. That's all I'll say about it for now. If I say anything else, I promise to turn the spoiler warning on.
 

Not everybody's tastes are similar though eh?

P.S. Christine, I had an extra question I just added to your writing class article. Thought I'd let you know on here, 'cos its probably not one of the boards that's checked very often.

I intend to read it asap, so I don't accidentally hit any spoilers..

Lisa
 

I'm trying so hard to stay untainted before I get my copy.
 

I am actually reading 4 aloud to all the kids I am babysitting, since they are on the movie schedule and care more about when it comes out than about book 6.
 

This displeases me. Now, I'm at the bottom of a 1,700-person list.
 

*Scurries away before the HP fan-mob notices him and attacks the lone person who does not care for the series.*
 

It just doesn't work for me, I've got no problem with other people reading it, and as far as plot goes it doesn't seem too bad.

The writing style, on the other hand, just isn't what I personally care for. Obviously it works for some people, though.
 

I figured I'd wait a couple weeks and then have a proper discussion, but for now I was just curious how many other finatics there were out there.

dpartridge: There are a lot of reasons people choose not to read books and we are all entitled to our opinions. I read your comments as opinions, but it never hurts to say reiterate that something is your opinion. I did not personally find the books to be cliche and as to juvenille...yes and no, especially as the series wears on. They seem to grow up with the characters.

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited July 18, 2005).]
 

I finished it this morning.

I cannot get going today because I can't stop thinking about it. I promise not to leak anything. Let's just say that I had no idea that a new HP book could effect me to this extent-- even though I am a rabid HP fan. (I awoke each day telling my dear children how many days left until HBP was released! )

Now I have to bite my tongue and patiently read it aloud to my family each evening without dropping even the tiniest hints. It's taking a herculean effort to keep my lip buttoned!

*SIGH*

~LL
 

-Monolith-

I'm looking forward to being able to talk about it.

Abby, what did you read in book 2 that made you think of a potential plot twist? It could be a plot twist that comes earlier in the series. (For the sake of potential spoilers, don't say what you think the plot twist is, just tell us what you read.) I don't think you need to worry about spoiler warnings because Spaceman will probably forget what you say before he gets around to reading book 2.

I liked it better than 5 because Harry has stopped acting like a frustrated teenager (and I don't think that needs a spoiler warning). The frustrated teenager part was what made book 5 less enjoyable for me.

[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited July 18, 2005).]
 

quote:

---

<Looks around wondering if he's the only one who hasn't read any of the books>

---

You mean you haven't read ANY of the books? Not even the first couple of pages of the first book? I can honestly say that I couldn't make it past the first several pages of the first book and some additional skimming to try to see if it got any better. For me, please note, I will never presume to be the end-all be-all judge of good stories, but I have my own tastes, and HP just doesn't seem to fit them.
 

Now if you want to talk about really poor work, let's talk about Star Wars. I got up and walked out of the first movie when it came out so many years ago. I take my kids to them now and try to sleep through the movies. The kids are embarassed by me. I just grin and do my best to look feeble-minded. They move away and won't look at me until they run out of popcorn.

ET wasn't quite that bad, but it was close. No, it was worse, but at least we weren't hammered with further episodes.
 

But her heroes are complex and fallible and very real and likeable, the pacing is excellent, and she drops enough hints to keep even the most analytical obsessive happily occupied. And I like her anti-bureaucratic political stance. She effectively portrays the values of love and courage without getting revoltingly moralistic and sappy.

I loathed The DaVinci Code, too, but couldn't put it down. Some books are like that.
 

Any time that I can just sit and enjoy my boys analyzing every last little detail of how to effectively 'swish and flick', I thank her.

I read the books for others more than for myself.

With regards to Star Wars, many of us SF fans were excited that finally there was a chance to see cinema whose technology could more realistically portray what we read. We felt that finally the technology had caught up to imagination. We felt that others would share our wonder in the science and the challenges of living in space.

And then Lucas made starfighters. And made them clumsy rehashes of World War II fighter planes. And made them bank against an atmosphere that wasn't there, and echo gunfire off the vast canyons of the Deathstar.

We were cheated, and so were you.

[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited July 18, 2005).]
 

My dad is a compulsive "critical reader". Sometimes he seems to read more for the enjoyment he gets in finding an author's mistake, or guessing the ending halfway through, than just to take off with a good story.

An example that always comes to mind is OSC's Enders Game. I loved the book, especially the ending. Knowing my dad is a sci-fi buff, I gave it to him when I was done. By 1/3 of the way through he basically had the whole plot figured out. To me that would totally ruin the story experience.

Some people just read that way. I don't, and I believe it makes reading generally more enjoyable for me. On the other hand, it may explain why I'm not much of a writer (yet).
 

Of course, I enjoy the books as light reading. It is relaxing to me to just read and see what happens next, not having to worry about keeping everything straight in my head as in some more complex novels. I do enjoy them too, though in a different way.

 

For some reason she is able to look beyond it, but I am not.

TETO has always been my favorite acronym, what it means is "to each their own." I also, in my familiar style, pronounce it "tea-toe." What's the point in spelling an acronym out when it just begs to be pronounced phonetically?
 

Couldn't agree more about the adverbs. Her heros are rich and colorful, but I do not *entirely* agree about the 2-dimensional bad guys.

Here's the thing, and it is one of my favorite things about the series: Book 1 is written for 11-year-olds. Book 2, for 12, book 3, for 13, book four, for 14...

As each book grows up, as the characters grow up, and as the audience grows up, the characters begin to depen. In book one Voldemort is just theevil dark wizard. But that's how an 11-year-old would perceive him. I remember trying to explain to someone that age that sometimes someone could be good and bad at the same time. They didn't understand. Younger is hopeless. Older, they can begin to gleam something.

In fact, for all the "plot holes" thrown at the fact that Dumbledore did not tell Harry enough things, I frankly can understand (partially...until the 5th book) what he did. Harry might not have been a child, but he wasn't a man either and he wasn't ready to understand how the world works. He wasn't ready to understand how a man could not be an "evil dark wizard" and still be so cruel and throw people pell-mell into prison. (Book 4)

No, I am impressed with the ways that the chracters, especially the evil characters, are deepening as a growing adult's perceptions would. The fourth and fifth books did a fairly good job of beginning to show what was really behind the death eater's masks. I won't say anything about the sixth book here.

So 2-d characters? no. Not even the bad guys. Not even Delores Umbridge. Frankly, there are people lik eher in the world.

STAR WARS:

Mike, I agree with you. They suck. I didn't realize it fully until the prequels came out because I watched the originals as a child and everyone else said they were cool and I had to think so too and I read far more undercurrents of plot and romance into them than was actually there. But they are mediocre at best.

In fact, I'm sick of people going to movies for the special effects. We're cheapening the movie industry for not expecting more. Special effects caught up with plot, eh? Seems to me that spcial effects took over for it and I won't have it anymore. I did not see Episode 3 in the theatres. I don't go to a movie in the theatres unless it looks very good, and when people tell me "you have to see it on the big screen"I can only assume they mean that all it has are special effects, because plot shows up on my TV quite well, thank you.

That was something of a rant, wasn't it?

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited July 19, 2005).]
 

dee_boncci, I guess I'm more of a critical reader. I love to try to "second guess" the author. Along with that, my philosophy is that if the book is worth reading again, spoilers are not going to hurt you because the second time you read it, you know what happens anyway.

I get very impatient with how coy and secretive Lucas and Spielberg are about some of their movies because the money they make on those movies depends on people going back and seeing them over and over again. If knowing how it all turns out "spoils" the story, then why would anyone want to go see it again? There has to be more to the experience than just learning how it ends.

Of course, maybe people go back just to see the special effects over and over again. <shrug>

But I think some people reread a book not only because they want to re-experience the story and revisit the characters but because they may also want to see how the writer "did it," how the story grew and how things were set up for the reader so that the ending was satisfactory.

Christine, thanks for the observation about how the books have grown in how they are written and for whom they are written as the characters have grown. That's way cool, and I will share it with everyone who will let me tell them about it.
 

I may have to mull over the idea of reading the extended series - the fact that the story grows up as the characters grow up might make it worth while.

The one thing that has drawn me back to see each of the MOVIES is that I thought they did a spectacular job of matching the mental imagery I had created from Book One. I thought the set, costumes, and casting were spot-on.

I have felt, with the Harry Potter series, like I've been a bit on the "outside" -- my friends have been rabid HP fans while I've been very so-so about it all.
 

As an adult, I haven't been able to just have fun anymore when I write. It's all so serious. Everything has to fit, be real, be perfect. It's been a long time since I just had fun with a story.

I don't read YA, as a rule. I tried recently, after I read Harry Potter, but much of it goes the opposite extreme -- it's just stupid. It talks down to its audience, can only be read on one level, and isn't any fun for an adult.

I thought, how weird? I like Harry Potter so much, and it's YA, so why not all this other stuff? And then it hit me -- balance.

The adult world is full of complexisities. I need not turn to fiction to find them, although I enjoy finding meaningful and complex stories that I can read again and again and find new stuff each time I do. I love layers, I love real characters. What I don't like is complexity for the sake of complexitiy -- difficulty for the sake of difficulty.

Harry Potter takes me back to a simpler time but without talking down to me and without being meaningless. I've read each book at least ten times (except the fifth and sixth). I don't find must new stuff now, but always for severeal rereads I have found stuff I missed the first time, new depths, but never is it all that complex -- it's still, at its heart, a simple pleasure I don't have to work to enjoy. I can always enjoy the story on that level.

At one point in my life I wrote and read to escape. I don't know why I do those htings anymore, I've lost sight of it. But for a few brief hours as I read Harry Potter I remember a little bit of the answer. Simple and juvenille? Thank you. I needed that.
 

Finished it last night. It took me back to the better part of the series (ie. not book 5, which I loathed). Lots of things to satisfy long time readers of the series.

I look forward to seeing how she wraps everything up in the seventh book. And she better wrap it up at seven!
 

This is all building to a climax. I have no doubt that book 7 will finish it.
 

As for her finishing it up with number seven, we know she can make a book as long as it needs to be without hurting the saleability of the book, and if she needs to make number seven the longest of them all, I bet no one complains unless she doesn't wrap it all up satisfactorily. I think she can do it, and I wish she'd get going already.
 

I have to say that for me, the first four books had a "fairy tail" feel to them. They were much more light hearted, despite the dangers. I guess I'm in the minority of loving the fifth book for leaving the fairy tail behind and becoming a real fantasy story.

As for the latest one....excellent.
 

I actually looked for overusee of adverbs this time and found the writing much tighter. Seems the writing style is growing up with the characters.
 

In fact, while I still have problems with book 5, I don't dislike it. I had to reread it to get to the point where I decided I liked it and understood what she was doing, but at first it was kind of a shock. Now, the problems I have with it are not the teenage angst that seemed out of control the first read and seemed to make a little more sense the second time through. Rather, for being the longest book to date it seemed to me that the least amount of actual plot happened. I thought that what the bad guys spend the year trying to acomplish was a bit silly.

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited July 20, 2005).]
 

I totally agree with Beth on the holes and the adverbs, and I've always wondered what the editor was thinking. But you know what the great thing about these books is? The genius of the imagination. She takes all this old English mythology and brings it out for the young people of today to grasp and live--mind you, she gives it her own unique bent. She didn't mean for all of it to be so popular--BTW can you imagine how stressful it must be for sooooo many people to have an opinion of your book. You're NEVER going to please everyone. And for some reason the negative is louder in your head than the positive.

Christine, I've been reading YA novels steadily for about two years now and I have to say I agree with you. But, I have found many jewels as well. My favorite book of all time is a YA novel that I read three years ago--and no it's not HP --It's by Lois Lowry, called "The Giver". An amazing and life-changing story. There are two others in the same series, "Gathering Blue" and "Messenger". Both are excellent--"Messenger" more so than "Gathering Blue". "Holes" is another fun one by Louis Sachar. The movie did NOT do it justice. beyond this I've found mostly mediocore literature. Too bad really. It's no wonder the kids don't want to read. If nothing else Harry Potter has spawned a whole new generation of readers.

I decided at the last minute I had to reread 4 and 5, so started last Thursday, and got them done by Sunday morning so I could start on 6. I'd had the same issues re teenage angst of book 5 (and I taught 8th grade at the time, so I had that perspective to bring), but felt better about it after rereading it. I did enjoy 6, and look forward to 7.

I had not read them until the first three were in paperback - got them shrink-wrapped from Avon! I went on bedrest during my twin pregnancy, and just sucked them down. I was impressed at how hard it was to put them down - she just impels you from chapter to chapter. Then I started writing and yes, those adverbs became irritating. But they did not distract from an engagingly-told story, or characters I could belive in and with whom I sympathized. The books definitely grow, and it was funny because I caught myself noticing the LACK of those adverbs in the dialogue tags, and just as I was mentioning it to my husband, she did it twice in a row! There is one she used twice that bugged me, but overall I felt the book was what I had hoped for, and we are all set for 7 in three years.

Meanwhile, movie 4 will be out this fall...
 

Though I did enjoy the book immensely.

----------
Wellington
 

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited July 20, 2005).]
 

I always read any book with what I call my "third eye". It's kind of my way of not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I heard this guy once talking about rated "R" movies and how people always say well it's only rated "R" for violence or they only say the "F" word once. He compared this to a brownie with crap in it. Would you eat that, he'd asked.

I guess told in that light I would have to say I already do. God help me. But it sure does make you think. I wish I could be that idealistic. Anyway my mom's always quoting it to me--BTW I'm 29 and the mother of four. I just roll my eyes, inwardly of course, and say "Yes, mother, I know". I eat crap.
 

Anyways, I sort of liked some aspects of the book, although other aspects were just going too far.

The plot is held up very loosely and is difficult to follow. He changes his own rules on a whim. And finally, he's just way too fricken obsessed with proving religion bad.

What I did enjoy were the characters. He made the characters extremely well.
 

For my YA fix I've switched to the Redwall series.
 

Yet I had a lot riding on this book, I didn't like 5 but I don't think it shouldn't have been written. But hey one of them had to rank as my least favoite. As for six I really enjoyed it, it may turn out to be my favorite.
sure there were language problems like when #possible spoiler# it said that Slughorn ejaculated instead of said I almost wrote a letter to JK Rowling about it.
 

P.S. It's gonig to be in the Discussions of Published Books and Hooks part of the forum.

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited July 25, 2005).]
 

I read the book last week in about five hours. I definitely enjoyed it, but I wished I had re-read 5 more recently. I did listen to it on audiobook within the last year, but I know I had forgotten some details that would have been nice to have fresh in my mind. So I'll probably re-read 4, 5 and then 6 again in the next little while (if I can find time, yipes).

Since this isn't a spoiler thread I won't comment on specifics.

As far as His Dark Materials goes, I am a Christian and hated some of what Pullman was preaching but still enjoyed the first two books. Then the third one with the portrayal of God really got to me, and I had a hard time enjoying it. But I thought his world was vivid and well done and the whole series was well-written, so kudos to him for that.

[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited July 25, 2005).]
 

I finished re-reading Order of the Pheonix (as I wanted to catch up, and it was the only HP book I hadn't read a half-dozen times), and I couldn't wait for 1447 people to read it before me. So I drove to Borders, I shelled out twenty bucks, and bought my first HP book...but surely not my last.

On the drive home, I put it carefully in the front seat, and reached out my arm to keep it safe if I braked too suddenly. I felt like I was bringing home my firstborn.

I suspect I'll have it done by tomorrow night. Sooner if I don't sleep.
 

Yep. Better than the last ones.
 

Definitely better than the last. I squirmed all the way through Book 5, but could not put down 6.

R
 

I haven't read all the posts, and I won't. It took me forever to slog through #6. I thought JK totally slacked on characterization this time around, so I wasn't very interested in what happened to anyone.

I'm with Dakota. That took me forever! I finally finished it last night. I read three other books at the same time as I was reading that one (the last three HPs I read in one sitting). Just didn't get me at all. So sad. Has she lost her touch?

I know a lot (or most) liked it and say it's her best, but I have to say it was paper thin on plot and it seemed the whole thing was water, characters especially, until you got to page 500 and then suddenly you realized she's....[edited to stop a spoiler. sorry.]

You know what? It felt like a prologue for book seven because she brought up a thousand questions that she never answered. A definite let down. Too bad.

But hey, I'm glad everyone else got a kick out of it.

[This message has been edited by pixydust (edited August 08, 2005).]
 

I was impressed by a number of things, notably a scene towards the end where Harry Potter and the headmaster (Dumbledore?) discuss calling their enemy (Voldemort?) by his name. I thought Rowling displayed a keen mind and supple imagination in the way it was developed.

But there were a few things I didn't like---for instance, I'd'a told Rowling to dump the first chapter and start the story with the second. (Necessities in the sequels may have negated this, however---and not having read them I can't say for sure.)

Besides all that, having come to the book with a vast knowledge of imaginative literature, I've got to say I've read better things, of similar theme, elsewhere.

Anyway, I have volumes one through four, given to me as a gift by the same niece and nephew (well, their parents, actually). I may take them up someday.

(This may be an inappropriate post in this forum...I don't know, I'm new here, and haven't fully explored every thread and forum...)
 

Not that Beliefnet is...extra careful about sacrilige and so forth. They did an article about Jesus Christ: The Vampire Slayer, which I thought was cool. But the fact that there would be a minister that would write this very serious article over HP volume whatever...it was creepy.

I mean, the guy knew how to talk the talk, you know. It wasn't like an Onion article or something like that. It was...creepy.
 

I mean, if it were me, and I were writing a book building up to a dramatic conflict such as we all expect to come between Harry and Voldie, would it not just make complete sense to take away the one ray of hope? Total sense. I KNEW she would HAVE to kill Dumbledore off before the last volume. Talk about your perfect setup for the clouds of absolute despair, from which the hero would rise victorious.

Therapy for fictional grief. What do they call that? Fi-psyche?