OK Hands up I am a Harry Potter fan lol I love the stories and actually I am going to say equalling it will be possible not entirely sure it will be ever be that far surpassed. The characters are fun, it has strong fairy tale elements etc. I think it has the potential to go down as being as timeless as the likes of Shakespeare etc and the other authors that were just as popular in their time. However like most authors/writers I would like to think my book could have that kind of impact.
That's interesting. I wonder if I would feel that way, had I grown up with the books. Possibly yes, stickler for nostalgia that I am.
It depends on what you mean by "surpass". If you mean financially, the answer would most likely be "least likely". However, if you mean in the sense of storytelling, I would say "possibly". I had a friend who once admitted to me that she cried at times because she couldn't attend Hogwarts. Though these books may not be classic or even all that unique, it touched the hearts of millions. She created a magical place that many children (including me) wished they could attend. She made a dull, mundane, every-day thing for kids (school) into something fantastic and new. Though the whole idea of a magic school has already been done, she made it so that it seemed brand new. Everyone wishes they were Harry, being able to go from average to magical. What Rowling did was clever. She wrote about someone mundane who was launched into the limelight of a world unlike our own. Not only that, but the characters are amusing and have a back story, the environment is alive and reactive, the adventures are full of twists and turns, and the sense of humour hardly ever goes dry. However, I would like to put in that there have been books that were able to surpass the Harry Potter series when it comes to all these fields, they just haven't gotten the recognition. The fact that Rowling combined them all together is what makes a difference. Personally, I've read a couple of books that I've deemed "better", but my idea of a book being better is to have it provoke deep thoughts and emotions out of me. No matter how much I love Harry Potter for its entertainment, I can't really say that it's made me think very deeply.
The main thing is that there are a few books and series out there that are better, they just are not as advertised as harry potter is, also, the movies made the books a lot more popular than they would have been without.
I have a theory about Harry Potter series. I am 22 years old. When I read first Harry Potter book I was about 9 years old and about 17 when the last book was released. The Philosophers Stone is aimed at children that age it isn't aimed at teenagers or older. As the books developed Rowling kept changing the posts so that by the time the 7th Harry Potter book was released it would be unsuitable reading for a 9 year old. Notice how few people actually start dying in Harry Potter until later into the books. In Chamber of Secrets, that big snake never killed anyone (despite his look being instant death). It mearly stunned people into a coma that they all recovered from. You can bet if that thing turned up in 7th book there would be a lot of death. I think that due to the increase in target audience age it will be really hard for a newcomer to Harry Potter to properly enjoy them. An adult could well find Books 1 & 2 to be too easy a read (thats the reason a lot of my friends didn't get into it). A child who gets hooked on Harry Potter would I would guess get hugely stuck on Books 5-7. My cousin is 11 and is on Book 6 at the minute. He hasn't a clue about 90% of whats going on in the book. THoughts on that?
I enjoyed the books and Rowling world is something quite different but as far as plot goes, it's pretty straightforward. i really didn't see many twists...
That's the brilliance of it. Rowling allowed the series to mature along with the audience, thus ensuring that her readers could relate to Harry and company's adolescent problems. They did the same thing with Toy Story 3. By the time that film came out, kids who fell in love with the original movie were now college-age, so the plot was especially emotional and poignant for them (yes, I cried at the end).
Its brilliant for the likes of me yes. I think that unless you grew up as Harry Potter grew up you will either be struggling with the dark themes later books or rushing through the earlier books to get to the darker stuff. When you had to wait 18 months between the books being released it meant that you got more mature and you could handle the step up every time. But you could read all 7 now in 1 year.
I did grow up with the Harry Potter books, but I wasn't particularly that fanatic about them. I couldn't get into the reading the first two or three until I'd listened to them on audio tape first. They are good books, and JK Rowling is a good writer, but there's no doubt that something better will come along. The thing with Harry Potter is that it's so successful because of the films and marketing multiplying sales of the books. Some people are so obsessed with Harry Potter too. As for the actual writing, there isn't much characterisation other than what's shown through the plot. It's mainly just a good plot and concept. So yes, there are obviously going to be books that are better than Harry Potter.
People said nobody would be as big as Elvis, then we had the Beatles, then Michael Jackson came along. Fads come and go. Different generations need their own things.
not to mention Sir Cliff out sold them all lol doing his own things quietly over a longer period of time
At the height of the Harry Potter era - between books 5 and 6, there was, and still is, a massively successful website called The Leaky Cauldron. I was a regular member there and we, all adults from across the globe, had some very complex, often months-long, discussion threads of good and evil, moral responsibility, judgment and acceptance, God, immortality, death. I don't believe the plotline was simple. I also believe Jo Rowling was in desperate need of an editor who was willing to chance offending her by actually editing her books. Will anything ever match it? Yes and no. Something will come along better-written for sure. But Harry Potter was a miracle of time/place and cyberspace. It was a phenomenon as well as a series of books. More than. If anyone here doesn't know the story of how the books came about, it's an interesting lesson in preparation for a writer. I may be recalling incorrectly, but the time from her first having an inkling of idea to having written the first book was six years. She knew everything that would happen in every book before she started writing. Though she did alter a few things as she went, like not killing off certain people, for instance, just because she liked them. Or because we did. But everything was known to her in a set of massive notebooks before she wrote the first chapter of Sorcerer's Stone.
Tamora Pierce's works always captivated me far more than Harry Potter ever did. I adore that woman's work, I really do.
I don't want to paint the wrong picture. I think Harry Potter is a fine series and I have so much respect for Rowling, but I don't think there is anything that makes the series stand out that much. Will anything ever be as popular? I don't know. Harry Potter is so popular it's absurd. But, companies have a lot of interest in building a series up. It's an easier way to guarantee profits. As hard as it is for me to believe how successful a story, let alone Harry Potter, can be, I'm sure that, in the future, something will be even more popular. And, I have a hunch that, when this time comes, the story will deserve less merit than Harry Potter. That's just the way things work.
7 different books and 7 accompanying movies? That equals 14 huge premieres with massive amounts of publicity. Ms. Rowling is a genius.
I don't think Harry Potter is a fad that will ever go -- Elvis and the Beatles weren't exactly a fad, seeing as they're still hugely prominent decades later. I grew up in the height of Pottermania, and was first in line for the midnight book and movie premieres. It doesn't matter if Harry Potter isn't the best-written, Nobel Prize-worthy series out there; it's still an amazing, fantastic series that pushed the boundaries of what you could do with youth fiction, fiction in general, and how wide of an appeal books could have. Each book I was absolutely captivated with; the past 2 Potter movies have made me cry in the the theaters. Rowling may not be the best writer, but she has a hell of an imagination to write such a series with all the pieces fit perfectly into place. After finishing the series, I realized how clever she really was; little details in past books become much more prominent in later books (i.e., Riddle's diary becoming a Horcrux). Anyone who can capture the imagination of kids, teens and adults all over the world and get people of all ages reading again deserves some pretty solid admiration. Nothing can ever beat the feel of going to see a Potter movie for the first time, or turning the pages of the newest Potter book, excited to read every single sentence. I can remember the excitement and joy this series has brought me, making a huge impact on my life as well as others. That's why Potter's not just a fad; it's something people are going to want to live up to and read for a long time. Most of all, I can still remember my disappointment on my 11th birthday when I didn't get my Hogwarts acceptance letter. Even today, it's still a bit real to me.
