7 Replies to “The obligatory Harry Potter post”

  1. Well Zed’s arrived this morning just after 7am and she’s reading away as we speak…well I type.

    We watched the television “spectacular” last night and I have to admit I was laughing away. It was almost painful to watch.

    I’m not a big fan of the series, and that especially goes for the movies (the stars of which were noticeable in their absence last night). I really don’t see the fuss.

    I’m with you Martin!

  2. The movies are dreadful and I’ll agree that HP 5 was sub-par (and FAR too long). However I thought books 3 and 4 were superb and I’ll probably read this one too.

    Its easy to be cynical (especially given the snowballing hype) but I like to see people (especially kids) being excited by a book for a change.

  4. Walking through Princes St Gardens this afternoon, the benches were filled with people reading the book. I agree with you, Dave, that it’s cool to see folks getting enthusiastic about literature. It’s more the blight of an unnecessarily high page count that I’m upset about.

    Damn near every 600+ page book I’ve read over the last two years has made me want to break a window with it. The more time I have to invest in a book, the bigger I expect the payoff to be. The payoff in Potter 5 was abysmal, and given the repetitive nature of the series, I am extremely dubious about 6 being any better.

    I suppose you could say the same about Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, but at least they’re only 300 pages long (consisting mostly of sparsely typeset dialogue, so you can read them in an hour or two).

  5. Anyone remember the first book? Not only was it brilliant, but it was easy to read at about 200 pages.

    Can we have that back, please? I couldn’t wait for the second book to come out. Now with each new edition, I dread finding the time to read it – more so now that I have a little one to spend my time on.

    Hang on, weren’t these supposed to be kid’s books?

  6. The mystery to me is not how bad the last one was, but how bad the first two were. For what it’s worth, I thought Azkaban, Goblet of Fire and Order of the PHoenix were fine. But /how/ did she become famous at all on the strength of Philosophers Stone and Chamber of Secrets, which read like Jennings crossed with CS Lewis.

    I remain mystified.

  7. I thought as much. I quit after the first three. It just got way too twee for me and there’s better stuff out there to spend my time with. Like Neal Asher. That guys rocks!

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