Is the 'Harry Potter' series overrated?

@Lemex - You're probably not quite so mad at JK Rowling at the moment. She's just donated £1 million pounds to the "No" cause, to keep Scotland from becoming independent! Voldemort works in mysterious ways...

 

LOL! I have just heard about this. I guess being English and living in Scotland might make her biased a bit, but just because I agree with her on one thing doesn't stop me thinking she is evil.

 

Oh and open question: what child aged 4 to 9 is going to pick up an 800 page tone? Harry Potter is absolutely not children's literature, it is in fact YA. If people feel it is ok to criticize Twilight's adult themes then Harry Potter is fair game too, surely.

 

But see, I think this goes back to the main problem. All YA novels are garbage. They are written poorly. Written with very loose dumb characters. As much as people want to disagree, I have not read a single YA novel that would get my stamp of approval when it comes to a "classic".

Bella is to a pair of pants as Harry Potter is. Every young, horny teen girl or MILF wants to be in Bella's shoes. Where as every bullied, kid who doesn't feel special wants to be told they are a wizard and be Harry Potter.

YA novels don't write characters, they write clothing that you can put on and wear around to feel awesome.

 

Don't forget, though. When these first came out, they came out one at a time, with a considerable length of time (for a child) between books. Kids couldn't WAIT for the next installments. Now, of course, they won't bother reading Harry Potter books any more. They'll just watch the movies on DVD or whatever. I think your work here is done, @Lemex.

 

You know, you are right. Shame, I didn't even get into my rant about Voldemort's battle strategy.

 

I haven't read Harry Potter but I think what annoys me about this series is the aftermath. It's like radiation after a bomb. You thought the bomb was bad until the radiation came. Grown ups started reading children's books and writer's took notice. Now Ya is mixed up with writers writing ya not for children, but for grown ups wanting to read children's fiction. Now it's become manipulated to suit an entire different readership.

 

Come on, I'm interested and you won't get a better chance/thread!

 

I have no issue with criticizing any of these. My issue is comparing them. That they are both wildly popular is where the comparison stops, IMO.

 

I'm glad someone else thinks so.

 

You haven't read enough YA. This is not what the genre is about.

This is: http://www.readersadvisoronline.com/ranews/dec2006/frolund.html

Here is a discussion of some YA books to consider, and yes HP is one of them:

Putting the "A" in "YA"

 

@Lemex - I'm also curious as to your opinions on Voldemort's battle strategy.

 

Yet hmm

-Eragon
-Harry Potter
-Blood and Chocolate
-Silver Kiss
-Twilight
-Hunger Games
-Ender's Game [hahah two games in one list]

All suffer from the same problem. That I mentioned.

 

But you are essentially saying that because you have a certain opinion of some YA books it must be the same in all YA books. I'm suggesting your limited sample size makes your conclusion problematic.

Consider the vast number of books in most genres that are written with the goal of being a big seller and not much more. Can you judge all books the same as these?

 

What of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green? Would that YA novel fit?

That said, all books have their own problems, but there are two that I like to talk about:

Eragon suffered from a bad case of wanting to be Star Wars in a fantasy world with dragons. So much that you could easily see what's coming if you had watched Star Wars before.

Twilight. I don't know if it was just trying to be bad for the sake of being a bad vampire romance novel but...yeah. :/

 

I absolutely detest John Green. I don't find him as revolutionary as a writer as some people make him out to be.

 

He's a pretty interesting guy, in my opinion (then again, I watch his youtube videos, so I'm a bit biased. )

That said, I do think the characters in The Fault in Our Stars could have been a bit more well-developed than they were. Sometimes I felt they were just there to hammer home a message, rather than just do their own stuff. And do not get me started on Hazel's parents, specifically when they were apparently okay with their daughter flying half-way across the globe to meet a guy none of them knew that well in a foreign country in which English isn't a major spoken language*. We all know how well that goes in real life, don't we? Or the Dutch having no qualms that two horny foreigners are having their first big kiss in the Anne Frank House of all places. Pretty sure that would make the pair the most hated in all the Netherlands. I mean, how would people in America react if I had hot sweaty makeout in front of a memorial dedicated to the victims of American slavery?

Mind, I think the reason people liked it because it wasn't one of those sappy cancer books where the cancer patient is a beacon of stoic determination and hope. He portrayed his characters (at least those who had cancer) as humans.

* I may be proving my ignorance yet again on that one, though.

 

(delete comment)

 

Haha, good point. Well, I think it's stupid how Voldemort operates once he has his corporeal form. I'll ignore everything before he gets a body, because frankly he could only rely on his moronic followers, he wasn't really at fault. When he had a body, at that point he was pretty much golden, he had what he wanted. Harry Potter is prophesied to kill him, so what would you do? Hide well away from this Potter kid, and send armies of hitmen after him, hoping to stress him out so much he starts to lose his hold on reality, or you go after him all guns blazing?

Well, he went for the second, which isn't bright, but here's where things get really dumb. I know he sort of went for the first too, but really he was only building strength, he had no interest in making it a war of attrition for some reason, which he could have done very easily considering he had the reigns on the Ministery of Magic. Harry has one school behind him and a plucky band of 19 year olds, Voldemort has the entire wizarding system of government!

So, let's take the ultimate and most important part of the series and the end of Voldemort's war on Potter and Hogwarts - the Siege of Hogwarts. Voldemort does everything stupid! He's not trying to capture Hogwarts like some medieval invading army, he's trying to do one thing, really, he's trying to kill Harry Potter and all his friends. Voldemort really isn't the type to want the prestige of being the den of Hogwarts, and isn't above tearing the entire damn castle down to get his goals and hang his promises to Draco and Snape and whoever else.

Now, Voldemort has his entire army camped around Hogwarts Castle, Hogwarts has a magical barrier around it protecting it from evil and all that, and the people inside can summon food in so everything is set for some kind of new and bold strategy. What I would do here if I was Voldemort was keep the barrier around Hogwarts up send small teams to enter the muggle world for military supplies. What kind of supplies? I'm talking field guns, B-52 bombers, shells, bombs, and a nuke.

The barrier around Hogwarts stops magic, but it doesn't stop physical objects in motion, and so even if the bombs and shells do not explode when entering the protected zone, the speed the bombs are falling, and the shells are flying means that some serious structural damage is going to happen to Hogwarts Castle.

So I'd just keep pounding and pounding Hogwarts with HE bombs and long-ranged artillery, and then after a while I'd back my entire army up. Make sure everything is quiet, freak the surviving wizards out, make they sweat a bit, and then drop the nuke over Hogwarts, making sure it's set to go off above the magic field. What happens in a nuclear blast is a heavy wave of super-heated air expands out, blasting everything with essentially horrendous force. So that would surely knock Hogwarts down completely, if not pretty much remove any trace of it at all. If, somehow, the blast doesn't get through the magic barrier, killing every single person inside, the radiation will.

I know Voldemort is a wizard supremacist, and looks on muggle technology with contempt and yadda-yadda, but it would take someone hopelessly stupid to not see the obvious tactical advantages of heavy ordinance and nuclear weaponry.

Instead, what happens? He invites Harry out to duel, making him vulnerable, unwittingly destroying one Horcrux, and starting the road toward his last Horcrux being destroyed, and ensuring his own death.

STUPID! Here is the apotheosis of evil in the Potter universe, and he's an idiot.

@Link the Writer - Yeah, I'm a fan of CrashCourse too! *high fives*

 

I think I always had a detest of YAs because none of the kids were like me. They were always so eccentric and cool. None of them portrayed in any way normal. I never really was a fan of stories like John Green, I watch his videos too, because I was to into Escape of Imagination.

That and I was always into the macabre. I like dark stories. Psychological horror. Ghost. Supernatural stuff.

Teen novels, imo, can be summed up as thus:

-Teen is either some special chosen one and goes on some adventure to save the world because only a child can apparently stop a bad guy, but not an adult. Harry Potter as an example

-Teens like the ones portrayed in John Green's novel, some sort of moral life lesson, understanding ones spirituality, etc.

-Teen romance, usually something fairly mystical. Whether its a vampire or a werewolf, or just the most gorgeous guy who is some kind of fantasy ideal man

 

How about Isaac Asimov?
L M Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)?
Sherman Alexie?
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)?
JRR Tolkien (The Hobbit)?
Ray Bradbury?
Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass)?
William Golding (Lord of the Flies)?

There must be one in there you don't find deplorable.

 

See, that's what I thought, you haven't read the true library of YA fiction, you are referring mostly to recent commercially popular books.

 

Hehe @Lemex, quite a visual presentation.
That would be interesting of course, but isn't that Deus ex machina at its finest? Using guns 'n' stuff. It's the same as "Why don't eagles take the ring to Mordor?"

 

The Hobbit and Ray Bradbury mmmm lamb

I read To Kill a Mockingbird, it was boring. Not only that, but writing things in the southern language really bothered me.

Hated Lord of the Flies, boring

Hated Flowers of Algernon, boring basically

Anne of Green Gables, don't really care much for female protagonist and once again boring

 

Not really. Deus ex Machina is when something really unexpected happens and the hero is saved by the gods. My improved version of the events is the exact opposite, since it's the bad guy using his brain and the resources so easily at hand to get the advantage and kill the hero.