I don't know what you guys are talking about when you say Harry Potter isn't written well. In order to win the Hugo award, your novel must be written exceptionally well. The award is given out once a year, and the competition is steep. Even if you have a great story, lovable characters, gripping dialog, etc, but your book is not written very well, it will not win the Hugo award. They will choose a better book that has all that and is written well. It is amazing that a YA novel won this award, considering how many awesome books are nominated each and every year, which are not YA novels. When Goblet of Fire won the Hugo award it was up against; A Storm of Sword, by George R. R. Marlin (which won the Nebula Award in 2002); Calculating God, by Robert J Sawyer; The Sky Road, by Ken MacLeod; and Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson. George R. R. Marlin has won several Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, and many others. Robert J Sawyer has won a Nebula Award, a Hugo Award, and other awards, as well as been nominated several times for the Hugo Award, and two additional times for the Nebula Award. Ken McLeod has won the Prometheus Award like three times or more, and he won the BSFA for best novel. His books have been nominated two or three times for the Hugo Award. Nalo Hopkinsons has won several awards, one of them being the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She is the first author to receive the Sunburst Award twice. The point being these authors are big hitters. I understand we all have different taste in literature, but that doesn’t mean if we don’t like a certain style that it is not written well. Can you honestly say Goblet of Fire is not written well after the information I have presented here? And I am not a fan at all. I don’t really like the novels. I don’t much care for the movies either. All right, I am done with my huge rant, sorry.
The fact that it won awards doesn't make it well-written. It just tells us that most people believe it to be better written than the books it was againt. Most people also don't know what 8 times 7 is and supported Bush on presidental elections.
Somehow, I couldn't imagine my lowly self being wisked away by a burly bearded man after just communicating with a snake and having my evil cousin grow a tail to a school where you learn magic. Just a thought.....
I am a huge fan of Harry Potter, and I can admit that the actual "writing" isn't very complex, and I find that as a good thing. Overbearing, long, and flowery prose annoys the heck out of me. I can only say that they're popular because they are. The books are charismatic, make you care about the characters and the world and the plot. They're not just YA adult books. Everyone from 7 to 77 reads these books. Now, the fact remains that those not "charmed" (get it, I used a magic pun), by these books will not like them or think they are as amazing as others. So yeah, they have their flaws, but they still make it to my 4th fav book series of all time (Behind Wheel of Time, LOTR, and A Song of Ice and Fire).
Again, winning an award is meaningless. It has no meaning. There is no meaning in winning an award. To win an award has no other meaningful implications. I'm not sure how many other ways I can say this. Awards != quality of writing. Quoting awards is not going to make me believe the book is any better than I did before. The books are not terribly well-written. They're not badly-written, either, but the quality of the writing is simply not stellar. I do not read Harry Potter and go, "Wow, that was very well-put. I wish I could construct sentences that elegantly." There are authors that cause me to do this, though rarely for entire books. Barbara Hambly sometimes elicits sighs of admiration. Roger Zelazny has crafted some short stories that are just beautiful in their minimalist elegance. The Great Gatsby and Cry, the Beloved Country both made me pause regularly in thought and appreciation of the quality of the prose. Perdido Street Station had some very poetic passages amidst the overly-complex muddle. (That's a book that I would call "good" but not "accessible," for instance.) I have not once (and I've read the whole series twice, several books three or four time - I do this with many books that I enjoy) ever read a passage from Harry Potter and noticed anything other than its stolid, workmanlike structure. It is simple and direct, enjoyable, but it is not beautifully written.
But isn't it a sign of bad writing if it draws attention to wordcraft like that? Like the argument against said-bookisms, the way they pull you out and remind you that you're reading a story.
I should clarify: I am an English major and a linguaphile. I examine everything I read on several levels and from several angles. It is not that the writing is obtrusive, but rather that I tend to read very closely and consider nuances. I'm always thinking, "How else could that be phrased?" In other words, this is me actively noticing, not the books drawing attention.
Somehow that reminded me of this one reality show where these gourmet chefs step up to a challenge cooking for 8-10 year olds. One of them made a good point about how this wasn't a good challenge because kids these days eat nothing but greasy salty or sweet things and have no fine palette unless it comes with a toy, but the judge (apparently a hotshot chef himself) said cooking was really about making people happy. I've read somewhere here, before, that people will respond to what they like (which is not always quality)... and I agreed, then, but now I'm beginning to think that maybe there's a basic gauge of writing quality that literature-lovers with more specific standards would miss, namely: do people like it? In which case, awards do mean something.
Jeez Louise, Captain Nitpick. If you go back to the beginning, I originally said, paraphrased, "Awards are popularity contests." Ergo, yes, duh, an award measures how much people like something. Thanks for pointing that out. Here's a cookie. Awards are, however, not strongly correlated with quality. --- As for the other, well, people like a lot of things, and that's fine, but don't point to popularity as evidence of quality. That's been my stance throughout this thread. Harry Potter is popular, but that isn't because of its quality. Popularity and quality are two completely separate measures of a given piece of art/entertainment. People like McDonald's food. McDonald's food is, by any measure you can imagine, crap. Saying that being popular gives it some claim to being great cuisine would be absurd. In the same way, I don't think popularity has anything at all to do with the quality of a piece of writing. (If anything, it's got a slight negative correlation.)
The Harry Potter books are not well-written in the sense of their grammatical eloquency, but they are well-written in the sense of characterization, plot, and other such things.
Mine too. Wouldn't be the reader (or person, who knows) I am now if it wasn't for those books. I grew out of them pretty quickly, fell into other genres and such. Very few of my friends actually read romance. Unless Twilight counts. There were no matrix books .
I would actually disagree. I found the characterization to be trite and rather ham-fisted. Snape and Dumbledore are the only characters with much depth, and even they suffer from several episodes of severe mishandling. Percy had moments where he was interesting, as well, I suppose, but then he subsided into generic obscurity. Hermione is the only one of the trio who has more than a pasted-on characterization, and she takes three or four books to actually get there from "bookish know-it-all" as her single note. The plot also had some pretty shaky patches, in my opinion. The fourth book is actually the worst offender in that regard; the whole concept of rigging the contests is contrived and awkwardly handled, and never really justified. (There are so many easier ways to get Harry Potter to inadvertently pick up a Portkey, for pity's sake.) The quality of the plotting peaked in the third book, dipped sharply in the fourth, went up substantially for the fifth, and then petered off into predictability for the sixth and seventh. "Prisoner of Azkaban" is the only one I'd call a solidly crafted plot.
For me beautiful prose is almost opposite to poetry. For me to consider prose beautiful it must be simple and direct. Beautiful prose draws me into the story and never distracts me from it. It enables me to fully visualize the world with out distraction. However the occasional poetic sentence is welcomed. About as flowery as I like a book to get is something like the following. She inhaled air so cold she breathed in a thousand winters. For this reason, I think J. K. Rowling is a good writer. I’m just not big on wizards. Because Harry Potter is simple and direct, it is beautiful prose.
I think that part of the cause for their success is that they were so controversial. My old school banned their reading. Now, granted, my old school was a preachy little Christian school that also banned dancing, but who better to have ban your books than an annoying, self righteous, pathetic little straggler to the 20th century? After hearing that they were banned, at 12, I wanted nothing more than to read the books. When I started reading them, I enjoyed the simple comedy they presented, was intrigued by the witchcraft in modern settings, and especially the naiveté of the muggles. In recent years, though, I've grown to despise Harry, a boy who has never really had to live with the consequences of his actions, whose troubles are always brought on by others, and whose salvation always comes from the opposite source than his troubles. Truthfully, I read up to the Half-Blood Prince just to see him die. Half-Blood Prince did not disappoint me, however. It rather pleasantly surprised me with newly-found darkness, and displayed not only added depth to Potter's character, but to Snape's, and finally jerked the rug out from under Potter's feet in the last chapter. That had been a long time coming. How could she keep the MC so safe for so long? It's madness! But with Snape back where he belongs- and brought there with irony and in a realistic manner- my outlook on the series had grown more optimistic. Since then, I've heard "the next book will finish the series...oh, wait, maby not..." ridiculousness.
You really have a stick up your butt about these books. Personally, I think the books were written well enough for plot and characters. Harry may have not had depth, but he had growth. From a child to a teenager. Hard times and good times. It was what made Harry believable. Just because a character doesn't have depth doesn't mean they aren't well written. She capture the way a true child would react to these situations and that is well written. The plot was well written as well, as I said before the way the story twisted from light happiness to a very serious and dark matter.
Um, Sephie... the seventh book has been out for over a year, now. --- Leaka; as I've said repeatedly, I've read the entire series several times and enjoyed it. However, the question asked was "Why are the books so popular? Are they just that good?" My answer is, "No, they are not that good. In fact, they have a lot of flaws. They were, however, well-marketed, and were good enough to keep the attention after they gained it." And actually, yes, lacking depth means the character is not well-written. That's what a well-written character is. Describing a one-dimensional character beautifully might be well-written description, but it is not a well-written character.
I still think Harry was written well. And I don't think he was a 1D character, I don't think he was a detail. I think Harry was one of those stock characters. And the books were popular because they were believable, even to me. I'm like the Harry geek nerd of the world.
Harry is the hero-boy. He isn't particularly bad. In fact, he isn't particularly anything. He is primarily defined by his role in the world and his role in the books. He wins because he's the hero, and he's the hero because he wins. About the only character trait he demonstrates clearly is a disregard for the rules. I would, in fact, agree with you; he is a stock character. That's not a good thing. --- Again, there are many books that are "believable," and a vast percentage which are more believable than Harry Potter. These books are not multimillion dollar industries unto themselves. Why? Why are these "believable" books not as successful as Harry Potter, if the reason for his success is "believability"? The answer, of course, is that Harry Potter is not successful because the books are believable. Harry Potter is successful because it A) was chosen and heavily marketed to be a superstar bestseller and B) was not written by a monkey. Consider, as an analogue, the Presidential elections. Are the candidates leading because they really are the very best possible options for the Presidency? No, they are leading because the political parties chose them and threw money behind them, "advertising" them to the American public. The Harry Potter "phenomenon" is the creation of the publishing industry. They were fortunate in that they chose a fairly solidly-written book which was able to more or less hold up under the heavy scrutiny and end up being a favorite.
If I met you alone in a dark alley, I think I'd be scared. LOL. Aren't you being a bit harsh with your "monkey" comment?
What I meant by that was that is wasn't complete crap. Sometimes they try the marketing blitz with something that is just pathetic, and it doesn't go anywhere because people try it due to the hype and then chuck it. Harry Potter wasn't bad, so when they hyped it to death it managed to (mostly) bear up under the onslaught. However, it didn't become popular because of the writing quality. It became popular due to the ads, and it held its popularity because, well, it wasn't utter tripe. (Something needs to be REALLY bad before the average consumer will actually give up on it. We are astonishingly malleable creatures.)
Nothing that anyone says here is going to take even so much as a dollar away from the millions that Ms. Rowling has already made from this series. If you really "can't understand" why the series is so popular, then (I hope someone has already said this but I can't be bothered to read all the replies to check): Write something better yourself. My challenge to you: Stop trashing other writers and start writing something decent yourself, if you can. xoxo
If you don't read the thread, then your comments are going to be completely irrelevant. As this one was. The OP asked a sincere question; s/he was confused why people who rarely read voluntarily would pick up Harry Potter (and love it.) No one has said Rowling shouldn't have made money. So far, I'm the biggest critic of the series, and the worst I've said is that it wasn't really the greatest example of fine literature, but it was pretty good, which is why the marketing (the reason for its popularity) managed to stick. RTFM, as they say.
Harry Potter was enjoyable, it was one of the most well marketed books in the history of mankind (the exception being the bible), but in no ways an example of great literature. Then again, it was easy to read and, more importantly, it grew with the reader (+- 1 book every year). Not to mention it was published during an excelent time (the great second comming of fantasy after 50 years of relative silence). Although indirectly it also gave us complete crap like the Eragon movie.
