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viktor_haagI had made on abortive attempt at reading through the Potter books and came to a brick-wall halt about 100 pages into "Goblet Of Fire".
When my copy of "Deathly Hallows" arrived, and the cover protected with acetate, I set about to chew through the entire set.
On subsequent reads of the first three books (and re-read of part of the fourth), I came to the same conclusion. Book one is quite possibly the weakest of all the books. Book's two and three suffer greatly from having repeated setting background material presented in fairly pedestrian ways, but are successively better than the first. Book four's foofahrah about quidditch left me completely cold (as this is one of my least favourite bits of detail about the series), but was otherwise a fine pivot on which to hang the series.
After going past the familiar point in book four, things improved significantly. Once the boring quidditch stuff was put firmly in the background, I liked how the texture of Rowling's background deepened by an order of magnitude from the first three books.
My favourite of the series is almost certainly book five with book seven being a close second.
I was, in general, not a fan of the epilogue of book seven as it seemed a much too half-hearted stab at a coda: inappropriately short to serve for the entire series and to support the weight for the number of new characters introduced. However, one detail I did appreciate about it; I thought it was clever of Rowling to ensure that none of the characters depicted in the coda had any participation in the principle institutions depicted in the series.
I'm glad I've finally managed to read all these books; it is worth getting past the first three books and on into the meat of the series, and it's heartening that the first three are the quickest and easiest reads. I doubt that they will occupy the status of fond re-read candidates in the years to come, however. They certainly haven't replaced any books on my shelf of classics, but I do see why they became the phenomenon they did.
Rowling is just good enough as a writer to keep you going, and she definitely does improve as the books progress: this could be because her natural voice is not, in fact, well-suited to the ages at which the first two or three books are pitched. The later books seem definitely more in her wheel-house than the earlier ones, and she seems to have addressed their creation with a surer hand as well.
Her character building is not tremendously rounded, with some surprising exceptions that come to be revealed only at the end of the series. Nonetheless, she shows a deft touch for the stereotypes she puts in play: they have just enough life to sustain themselves, and their standard bits are not over-used to the point of becoming tiresome. Or at least not enough to put one off continuing to read.
On the whole, I'd give the series a thumbs up and say that they should be on your bookcase at home, most especially if you have young children. These books are not as well crafted, or as rich, as Tolkien, Lewis, or Cooper; what they are, however, is more accessible to the modern reader and will likely remain so for a good couple of decades. These books are a great place to start building your children's library, but there will be better books found when you branch out from them.
When my copy of "Deathly Hallows" arrived, and the cover protected with acetate, I set about to chew through the entire set.
On subsequent reads of the first three books (and re-read of part of the fourth), I came to the same conclusion. Book one is quite possibly the weakest of all the books. Book's two and three suffer greatly from having repeated setting background material presented in fairly pedestrian ways, but are successively better than the first. Book four's foofahrah about quidditch left me completely cold (as this is one of my least favourite bits of detail about the series), but was otherwise a fine pivot on which to hang the series.
After going past the familiar point in book four, things improved significantly. Once the boring quidditch stuff was put firmly in the background, I liked how the texture of Rowling's background deepened by an order of magnitude from the first three books.
My favourite of the series is almost certainly book five with book seven being a close second.
I was, in general, not a fan of the epilogue of book seven as it seemed a much too half-hearted stab at a coda: inappropriately short to serve for the entire series and to support the weight for the number of new characters introduced. However, one detail I did appreciate about it; I thought it was clever of Rowling to ensure that none of the characters depicted in the coda had any participation in the principle institutions depicted in the series.
I'm glad I've finally managed to read all these books; it is worth getting past the first three books and on into the meat of the series, and it's heartening that the first three are the quickest and easiest reads. I doubt that they will occupy the status of fond re-read candidates in the years to come, however. They certainly haven't replaced any books on my shelf of classics, but I do see why they became the phenomenon they did.
Rowling is just good enough as a writer to keep you going, and she definitely does improve as the books progress: this could be because her natural voice is not, in fact, well-suited to the ages at which the first two or three books are pitched. The later books seem definitely more in her wheel-house than the earlier ones, and she seems to have addressed their creation with a surer hand as well.
Her character building is not tremendously rounded, with some surprising exceptions that come to be revealed only at the end of the series. Nonetheless, she shows a deft touch for the stereotypes she puts in play: they have just enough life to sustain themselves, and their standard bits are not over-used to the point of becoming tiresome. Or at least not enough to put one off continuing to read.
On the whole, I'd give the series a thumbs up and say that they should be on your bookcase at home, most especially if you have young children. These books are not as well crafted, or as rich, as Tolkien, Lewis, or Cooper; what they are, however, is more accessible to the modern reader and will likely remain so for a good couple of decades. These books are a great place to start building your children's library, but there will be better books found when you branch out from them.
